Friday, March 14, 2014

Self-portrait with paper lantern, not balloon

I had to stay over in Rochester Wednesday night because of the blizzard.  On the way back I stopped to take a self-portrait


and I drove along Lake Ontario for a while to find a good spot that wasn't a farm, and it was very cold but I was a child in the moment, knees in the snow, face in the snow to check the camera angle, "and go!" running up a hill and having no idea how the shot would turn out, and wouldn't you know it, the paper lantern I bought at Target kind of worked as a kite but not a perfect one, dipping and twisting---

I didn't intend this metaphor.  All I did was go to Target for balloons and buy a paper lantern instead.  But the mind knows more than the person does.  Life is like running with a paper lantern.  You can run as fast as your legs can go, but the lantern does whatever it wants.  Its movement depends on so much more than your speed.

Still, while I was taking the photos, I thought if I could figure out how to run perfectly, I'd have the perfect photo.  But the lantern went all over the place, and I couldn't figure out how to take multiple shots at once on my camera because I haven't used it in so long so I only got one shot per run, and I did multiple runs trying to get this thing to fly, and I made changes to the way I carried my arms and the path I took and which side I held the lantern on.

I used the first pic.  It was the most honest.  There was no advance study; I just ran.  It's not the world's most perfect photo, but it turns out to be the most appropriate.

Dr. Westesson said today that I should schedule an appointment with him for trying the February blocks a second time -- an appointment with two slots so he can try multiple locations.  I think this will mean trying the ilioinguinal block again at the original point, a no man's land southwest of the bellybutton.  I'm not sure whether he will try a symmetrical block this time, both sides.

I started reading up on ilioinguinal nerve entrapment and got really scared and sad.  There are implications for pregnancy, for example, that I won't type any further about right now.  And all the diagrams are of men, which is stupid.  But I want to learn more about it to see if there's any observed link to diet.  I still have this feeling that if I could eat very simply for a long time, a year, my pain would resolve.

I'm hoping the results I had in February are repeatable even if the nerve block doesn't work long term.  I hope I feel the same relief, however short.  Knowing where the pain is coming from would bring part of this to rest.

Wednesday, March 12, 2014

"No dice.  I'm sorry" to the things that came with me.

Shower on. Soaps go on different parts of me. I forget which go where.

"Just do it the same. Just do it the same. Why didn't you do it the same? To corroborate."

The needle pricks are three inches away from before. I won't call it a teardrop, the shape of what remains between my legs.

Now he will consult with the other doctor. And they will flunk me. I'm not repeatable. Last time was a product of hope.

"All the hopes I had before weren't specific enough?"

Where are they?

The tech stayed with me waiting for a cab for an hour. I panicked, and then I panicked that I was panicking. I was lightheaded or forsaken. Maybe he will put a good word in for me with the doctors, tell them they should still believe in me.

I thought my grandpa was an angel, prayed to him specifically. What, I have more to learn? Is that it?

This is my Paris, you know? This is my marriage. This is my adulthood. All my rites of passage for the past seven years have come from my pain, all of them dictated, chosen by a silly little nerve that refuses to be found. That the universe refuses to find.

The doctor said if we find the nerve and it's in my belly, we can snip it and stop it forever. My life is a game of millimeters. My life is a game of permission. Does chance take me in or does it refuse.

When I was 18, I mused about how contained we are, never able to be sunsets except as dancers. But pain colors the dance. How can you be a sunset when pain colors the dance.

It's very hard not to run away.