Useless Desires

Blog useless desires

I’m listening to Patty Griffin, she’s singing the song “Useless Desires” in G. I love this song. It talks about a hopeless situation but it sounds so, groovy. Her voice makes me think she would understand me. “Everyday I take a little pill, that gets me on my way, for the little aches and pains the ones I have from day to day. Help me think a little less, about the things I missed, to help me not to wonder, how I ended up like this” she sings, so smoothly. I went to Oncologists clinic today up on the hill. Blue sky and Azalea bushes on the way up to the entrance. I saw familiar faces there. Kind eyes, sincere smiles and warm hugs. That place has seen a piece of me. Truth be told, I came in one morning with the most stubborn bloody nose I’ve ever known. A quick blood test showed my platelets were at 3. Platelets keep your blood together, clots it so it stops running.  I think 170 is the low end of the healthy platelet count range. The nurses rolled me in to an isolation booth because of all the blood which a few times I swallowed and then heaved up into a plastic bin held in front of my tired, cranky face. I’m not a morning person. So, on this spectacularly gross morning, I go to the bathroom and lock myself in, my mom is waiting just outside the door.  I shuffle across the room and onto the toilet. What I remember next is waking up with my head on the handrail next to the toilet paper holder looking down on the floor where a little pool of blood the size of a slightly deflated balloon lays between my feet.  What happened? I think.  Coming back to consciousness and knowing, in that second, that I had lost it makes me leap up. I must have opened the door and then I do recall fainting into mom’s arms, she catches me and sets me gently down onto the floor. I wake up again to see my blood splattered along the leg of the nurse who looks just like (find this name). Just like her.  I, thinking I’m funny and clearly, not exactly “with it” I start calling out to the Nurses “platelets! please platelets!”  I’m waving my hand in the air and we’re amazed and chuckling a little bit because it had already been such a long morning, taxing morning. I was glad to have experienced fainting though, I have never fainted before so it was telling. Silver linings make their way. The emergency stretcher comes for me as I lay on the floor. There is a guy whose job it is to move me through the hospital and a woman whose job it is to walk next to us. She is very capable and one of her hands is much smaller than normal and missing a finger I think and they wheel us all around the corridors until we are in the Emergency room.  I had to go to the bathroom.  The nurse doesn’t think I’ve got the energy so he brings a commode into the room. There is talk of sending me home. We’re unsettled from the long day. I stretch off the hospital bed and use the basin that has been brought in and when the nurse comes back, it is full of blood. I’m admitted to the hospital.  The platelets arrive, the nose bleed stops and the satisfaction of being out of misery in so enormous I lose track of time, forget people’s names, fall into a deep sleep while mom is left to relay the details.  In the grand theme of things, we call this incident a “set back.” Many years ago,I had visited this clinic at Christmas time with family. We sang carols. Ignorance is bliss because at the time I had not been diagnosed nor had I ever thought I would be. I felt sorry for the people in those chairs trying to survive, getting blood, feeling quesy, bald heads and long faces. I couldn’t imagine how they did it. How they faced such dire circumstances and so much discomfort but still had smiles on their faces.  And then, come to find, I would be one of them. Sitting in one of those chairs, bald, quesy, and fatigued my perspective changed. I didn’t feel sorry for my cohorts, I understood this circumstance. Get blood drawn, someone brings you soup. Read the paper. Take a nap. Watch bad television. Talk and listen to the nurses who are busy but focused when it’s your turn. Wait for lab results. Nod at the person next to you quietly asking “what you in for?” “what treatment are you doing?” “Oh, you had a transplant, when was that?”” How are you feeling?” and over the hours of waiting for results and donated cellular energy friends are made. Even as you feel a little bit sorry for yourself the companionship of those who are worse and better off than you lends a fine perspective. It could be worse. It could get better. It is a profound experience and, like so many things in life, it was not what I expected. So today full of familiar faces and fitful memories is how it plays out now in the clinic. Nurse Molly has had her baby boy, nurse Mark is still writing music, building a log cabin, smiling all the way across his face and Dr. M is as calm and open as ever, asking me to share how I feel today and listening to my words but also taking me in on the whole.  “I see progress” she says. This feels really good to hear. “progress is made, when progress is made” (Jesse in the band Amelia I sing with, wrote that in a song)Now Patty is singing the last part of her songs “goodbye, goodbye, goodbye old friend you, won’t be seeing me again. Goodbye to all the window panes, shinning in the sun, like diamonds on a winter day, goodbye, goodbye to everyone”    Life is good. Teisha 9/29/09