"Health Care" according to Kaiser Permanente

Get it taken care of, they said.  It's easy, they just freeze it and it's gone.  My instinctual tendency to want to avoid visiting the doctor is no coincidence, and today was a testament to that, disproving the above mentioned "it's no big deal, just get your ass to the doctor" mentality.  The skin tag on the right side of my mid back was beginning to cross over into the unpleasant and gross territory.  From continual snagging on my bra and clothing, it had been stretched and pulled into newer, more expansive proportions.  It felt like a displaced third nipple.  Being that I was soon to lose a hefty percentage of my health care coverage at the cause of being "laid off," I finally decided that I would get to a doctors office and get it taken care of. Upon making the appointment I was very specific about what I wanted out of the visit.  I told the woman on the phone, "I have a skin tag that is enlarged and bothersome because it is continually getting caught in my clothing, and I would like it removed."  I mean shit, that's pretty clear cut right?  Well cut is the operative word here, I suppose, because my practitioner cut the skin tag off me today with a pair of scissors.

I'm still horrified.  Let's start there.  My general practitioner Dr. Khan seemed to be new, because she didn't know where anything was and nervously over explained logistics and mundane details I didn't give a shit about.  The nurse had to show her where the drawer with the supplies was.  What she lacked in experience, she made up for in talking to you like you were a retarded ten year old.  By over accentuating words and sounding enthusiastic she managed to talk me into bypassing a dermatologist.  I ended up feeling a lot like a retarded ten year old, actually.  I also remember feeling sullen.  Maybe even a little disappointed in life.

 I suppose I was lucky I got anesthesia.  Sure I may get an infection, but hell, why go through the time and trouble of getting referred to a specialist who has the proper equipment to remove a growth on my back when I can just have it lopped off over the counter?  What a fucking primadona I am.  Goddamn.  

What's more, Dr. Khan also explained to me that many people come in with similar requests, but many have clusters of smaller skin tags all over their necks.  She mentioned that in those cases they just tell the patient to "go home and cut it off themselves."

WTF?  Isn't that what they tell you not to do?  So I could have saved myself a $15 co-payment and cut this thing off myself at home?  Balls.  

I also asked her about the mole on my face while she was examining me, and without so much as looking at me or asking any questions she blurted "If you've had it all your life it's fine."  Cool.  

After injecting the skin tag with an anesthetic, she had me lie down on her little table of horrors while she pulled out her scissors and other shit that was completely inappropriate for this procedure.  She told me she needed me not to talk to her for a while because she had to concentrate.  I was repulsed.  Then I stared sadly at the ground.  I began to wonder what people said when they were told by their doctor to go home and cut their skin tags off themselves.  

She started to come in on me with the scissors.  It honestly scared me.  I just couldn't get over how low budget and morose this was.  On so many levels.  Why was this happening?  Why was I letting it?  

Thankfully it didn't hurt much, but here I am ten hours later in a little pain.  Funny thing is, a friend told me his aunt used to remove skin tags by tightening a hair around them, then waiting until they died and fell off.  At first that story grossed me out, but it's sounding pretty palatable at this point.  It makes more sense then ripping off the thing while it's still fresh.  Especially since my back wouldn't stop bleeding.  It didn't help that I had taken about 1400 mg's of ibuprofin the previous day.  Real neat.

After my "procedure" was over I asked her about my back.  I told her my lumbar spine had been in pain for about 4 months due to over exertion in yoga class.  She poked around my spine and said it felt fine.  She also told me because I was petite I didn't have strong muscles in my back and that's why I was prone to hurt it.  It's weird because I do yoga about 3-5 times a week, so I feel like I have a pretty strong muscular frame, but whatever.  I was also advised to never to do backbends as well, one of the common types of poses in most yoga classes.  Sure, no more back bends ever again.  You got it.

Then she gave me some literature on back pain.  Actually, she couldn't find it.  She had to ask the nurse again.  It was hidden behind the pamphlet about "Gonorrhea."  I guess their pamphlet section was out of alphabetical order, that's why she couldn't find it.  It had nothing to do with the fact that she's a clueless tird.

All in all I really got boned dry today, but the unfortunate part of all this is, you see your doctor feeling like you're supposed to be able to trust them, thus you're automatically prone to being cajoled into these sorts of unsavory happenings.  Something inside you knows it's wrong, but you are confused and scared and so wearing that stupid little smock, so you feel extra vulnerable at the cause of your semi nakedness.  And even when I did ask questions, she blew me off and came up with some reason why her bunk reasoning was correct.  What is one to do?  It's a lose-lose.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed that I don't get tetanus or something.  If I do, you better believe I'm writing a complaint to the grievances department.  Yeah, really stick it to 'em.  Yah...

Help Obama!  Do something!  You promised...

Stepping closer

I have been restless.  I often stay up late into the night, thinking, dwelling, anxiety ridden.  I don't know why.  The ball is moving, the forces are taking me to the next destination, just as planned.  Why can I not take comfort in this?  Why do I remain unsatisfied?  I made a decision to change my life, I left my job, the most difficult hurdle thus far.  I put in my 30 days notice with my landlord...I am on my way, however though the ultimate destination is marked in my mind, it's still not a tangible reality.  There is no set date to work towards.  It's all still somewhat speculative.  It has been one week since I have stopped working and I can already feel the days slipping away from me.  It's comfortable, minus the reality.  I took a longer than necessary moment to bask in the glory of breaking the chains of servitude.  And I was enjoying it.

The tentative date to leave remained a big questions mark.  I began to prolong my departure, for this reason or the other.  People started to discourage me from leaving, told me it was a bad time to go--too expensive, too cold, too soon, too sad.  It's never a good time.  It swayed me.  I felt guilty.  I wondered when I really would go.  Never did I once doubt the idea of leaving, but the matter of when was a different story altogether.  Should I wait until Thanksgiving was over?  Early December?  But then the holidays would be just around the corner, and I may want to come back for the holidays, so why not wait until after that?  How long would I keep waiting?  But then it got hard to look at myself in the mirror, because I knew what I was doing.  I was getting scared again.

I had to choose between facing myself in the mirror and accepting the fact that I was going back on my own word and distancing myself from my goal, versus facing the backlash felt from abandoning the most important people in my life during a predetermined calendar period of togetherness.  When I can't decide I usually choose both, but this time I decided to choose the latter, because at least that one didn't lead to self deprecation.  So without thinking about it, without investing too much emotion or sentiment, I went online and bought a one way ticket to New York City.  On November 17th, I will fly into a city where I have little to no friends, family, job prospects, or a place to live.  I don't know what I will do, or where I will end up, but I take comfort in the fact that the ball is rolling now, and I know where it lands.  What happens after that is still in the air...

comfort in the hopeless emptiness

I have never been more afraid.  There's no cloak to hide behind anymore.  I am finally going to find out what I'm really made of.  

After 5 years at the same job, the same unfulfilling job that failed create any sort of feelings of long term satisfaction, I have decided to take control of my own life.  The fear toyed with me for approximately one year.  Maybe longer.  The void that was a precursor to the fear was a cause of my aimlessness.  The emptiness that came along with the aimlessness was so palpable, but I found ways to fill it.  I wrote it off, I drank, I partied.  I managed to have fun.  I also managed to let 5 years blow right past me.  

I didn't understand why I felt so paralyzed by fear and anxiety.  I was getting older, but I wasn't growing.  Those moments where everything became a blur, where I sought distraction from reality, I began to look within my self and question my purpose.  Was this it?  Was this life?  What was I meant for?  I'd always hoped I'd be destined for greatness, but I suppose I expected greatness to come and sweep me off my feet, to come and save me from the banality of it all.  It had not.  I couldn't even comprehend what kind of greatness I was destined for.  I certainly hadn't excelled at anything just yet.  Then the hopelessness began to seep in.  Perhaps I wasn't destined for greatness after all.  If I was, wouldn't I have achieved it by now?  But the funny thing was, all that time my passions and creative abilities were staring me dead in the face, and I wasn't even paying attention to them.  They were incubating, dormant.  I had never even considered them as abilities.  I wanted to believe I had a chance without really believing it.  I guess I was waiting for someone to rescue to me, to validate me, to save me from myself.  When did I wake up from my trance?  I really don't know.  

All that time, I could always peg my potential failures on my lack of interest in anything I did.  It always felt better to resign myself to not being good enough because I didn't care about it.  It didn't hurt so much that way.  If I cared, failing would be all the more painful.  I desperately wanted to find what I loved, what I excelled at.  I didn't understand why it was taking me so long to find it, when all my peers were pursuing what interested them, and thriving.  I felt alone, useless, ineffectual.  I told myself I didn't care.  I wished for it to find me.  But there's a pattern here, because I continued making myself of victim of circumstance.  In actuality I avoided every opportunity to give myself a chance to do what I loved, because I was so fucking afraid of failure.  I never wanted to even have to deal with the concept of failing, so I never tried.  Not trying was so much safer.

Yet when you don't try for so long, and you let what's bubbling inside you go stagnant, you begin to accept the mediocrity.  You accept the idea that you are incapable of being exceptional.  You are caged, and you have no idea.  You plead for happiness, but security starts to mean more to you.   I could have remained here, in a place devoid of passion.  I was too afraid of anything else for a while.  But then I started to transfer my fear into a different kind of fear.  I began to fear what would happen to me if nothing changed at all, and I continued to live a seemingly mediocre existence.  To possibly confront living in regret.  That really frightened me.  I knew I had to leave myself with no choice in order to take action.  I gritted my teeth and made a choice.  I took a stand on my own behalf.

On September 15th I was laid off from my job of 5 years, and I requested that this happen.  It was a bitter-sweet feeling for the obvious reasons.  I can't say there wasn't a welling in my chest when I walked away from my office for the last time, and that I didn't look back, but I can say I have never felt more free.  I'm finally giving myself a chance.  I've never felt more unsure, fearful, anxious or more alive.

life's surprises

It always comes when you least expect it.  That's a trite little number you can apply to so many of life's offerings; love, tragedy, all of it.  For good, for bad.  It always manages to knock you on your ass.  You begin to hit a stride, possibly feel content, like you have it all figured out, perhaps not, maybe even comfortable with the routine, then BOOM.  Down you go, as life knocks you over your smug little head. 

Today started out like any other ordinary day, but became a day less ordinary when I got the call.  

LCD Soundsystem once said, "I woke up and the phone was ringing, surprised, as it's early.  And that should be a perfect warning that something's a problem."  

I think we inherently know something's wrong when we get a call from a particular person at an unconventional time.  Something inside you tightens, and you brace yourself as you place the phone against your ear.  

Yet it never makes the blow you are about to receive any easier.  My father had a stroke this morning, collapsed at work and was ambulanced to an unknown hospital.  That was all I knew.  A flood of scenarios ran into my head.  Was he alive?  What happened?  How bad?  Would I ever see him again?  Why now?  Why ever?

It's situations like these that allow the underlying guilt to surface.  Seeing my dad in ICU, the big bear of a man that was always there to help me move furniture into my new apartment, or drive me to the airport mid week, or readily able to advise me when I was and wasn't getting ripped off at the mechanic, jolted my sense of what closeness between family members was supposed to be.  At the hospital, I held on to his hand, suddenly remembering how large his hands seemed when I was a little girl.  On a trip to the zoo when I was about six I remember gripping his immense thumbs in my entire hand and marveling at how enormous and strong they were.  Now his hand was covered in tubes and bandages, not nearly as commanding as it was all those years ago as he guided me through the petting zoo.  

The stroke rendered him incapable of speech.  I watched him struggle to get a few words out, exhausting himself into silence, resignation.  I had avoided calling him for the past month.  I was trying to evade his questions and sermons regarding my impending layoff at work.  I knew he would nag me to look for a government job, because they were one of the few places hiring, affording me some kind of stability, and it didn't hurt that it served as his current place of employment.  I however, had other ideas.  I very much did not want to work for the government.  I wanted to transition into more creative pursuits, I wanted to chase my passions.  Those sort of lofty ideals wouldn't sit well with him.  I knew this.  I didn't want to hear it.  So I didn't call.

Now I long to hear him nag and bitch at me.  I wish with all my being for a sermon from him.  He is no longer the person I previously found unpleasant to talk to.  He is vulnerable and weakened and indifferent.  From his hospital bed he stares vacantly, able to answer yes, or no, able to be spoon fed his hospital food.  I sit there powerless and just stare at him.  I wish for nothing more than the person I was avoiding to come back.  His stubborn commentary would be music to my ears.  What I resented him for is what I long to have returned to me; it was the essence of him.  But now it's too late.  It's easier to wish for anything when you have nothing. 

Slowly and steadily, with each year, my family tree is losing all its leaves.