Tuesday, November 13, 2007

Goodbye For Now

Currently on my IPOD: Pyramids by: Trouble Over Tokyo

Hello Kids,

Life sometimes takes you by the throat and squeezes just enough to diminish your ability to think straight, right? Due to health issues, novel issues, Christmas issues, NY issues, insert whatever issue you think I have here, I will not be blogging until after the 20th of December.

And no, it's not you, it's me.

Here are a few sites dealing with things literary (some more than others)that you can check out while I am away, pillaging words and taking hostages from my character selection...

Web Del Sol

Mad Hatter Review

Quick Fiction

Bust Down the Doors and Eat All the Chickens

Design Your Writing Life

Infectious Addiction

Aesthetica Magazine

Astonished Head

Underground Voices



Enjoy the ride through the holiday season and I will be back up before you know it.

Yours in Getting Serious, Going to NY and Giving to Others and Myself,

Cicily

Wednesday, November 7, 2007

Shadows

Current mood: busy
Category: Writing and Poetry

CURRENTLY ON MY IPOD: Carol Novak's Poetry CD (Wanna read my review of it? Here's the link: http://www.eclectica.org/v11n4/janus.html

Dear Friends and Stalkers,

I'm late, I'm late, for a very important date. No time to say hello-goodbye! I'm late, I'm late, I'm late!

I have appt's again with the blood suckers. No clear etiology as to what is going on. But, I do think that maybe my gastroenterologist wants to have a love affair with me. Or maybe he just loves me for my colon. The small bowel, the large bowel. Or maybe it's just the way I use my semi-colon that turns him on. He called me yesterday after receiving lab work and asked to see me. Uh...Sure. Maybe I should make him rice krispi treats that look like semi-colon's. Do you think he'll get the joke?

Anywho..

I must get work done this morning on the book. A deadline is fast approaching and I feel slightly inept at my abilities to pull the ending off. So instead of an original witty blog you get a cut and paste of something from my poetry file.

Enjoy and subscribe if you like it.

Shadows

By: Cicily Janus

Shadows

I watched
You rest
In between
Shadows of night

They turned
Into sweet bullion
Crispness awakening
Dawn arising

Your chest falling
rising
falling
rising
falling
Into a natural
Creviced position
Of sleep

Friday waned
Saturday came
The clock
Showed no mercy

I longed for
The second hand
And yours
To stop time

Marked as a woman
From seconds
To minutes
To hours

Declining sleep
Giving way
Sounds of
Your silence

I sought after
Your sighs
Of contentedness
Craving corrugation
To break apart
My insomnia

Between the covers
Of awareness
Into the yawns
I can't remember life

Before your name
Before the shards
Of you sleeping
In the shadow of me



Yours in Shadows, Silence and Surrendering Yourself,

Cicily

Currently reading :
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland: A Pop-up Adaptation
By Lewis Carroll
Release date: 01 October, 2003

Thursday, November 1, 2007

Twenty Percent of You, Me and Everyone We Know and the Doctors Who Try to Take It All Away

Current mood: grateful
Category: Life

Good Morning Kids,

I heard an interesting statistic the other day. Wanna hear it? Alright. Did you know that 20% of all time spent on the internet, across the world, is spent on myspace and blogger. This just proves that I am not the only one with an addiction. Like I have said before, I can stop. Really I can. Put the phone down. I will not hurt you or anyone else.

Yesterday was a little bit on the mellow side for me. Not much to report other than you can tell by the time that this blog was posted, that I haven't had much sleep.

Okay, enough of the melodramatic rambling about nothing.

I wanted to take this opportunity to offer some advice. I know, the best advice is that which is solicited and taken with a grain of wheat germ. But after all I have been through in the previous year or more or maybe through my whole life and as a closet nurse, I have something to say.

Doctors.

They can be very very nice people. As a matter of fact, most of the doctors I have worked with are very nice and helpful people. But there are a few that need to be reckoned with.

As human beings it is certain that we will fail at some point or another. We will stand back up after that failure, dust our britches off and then go about trying the same stupid human trick again until we get it right. But when you are messing with human lives you better be damn well sure about not only yourself, but the life you are tooling around with.

But, there comes a time also when us humans must admit to a certain lack of knowledge and ask others for help. I have to admit that my medical history seemingly becomes more complex with each passing breath, but this does not mean that I am impossible. It just means that I am quite unique.

I am going to share a story with you now and I think, hope...that each one of you will learn from my infallible bad karma. Last summer (2006) I needed a surgery to repair my stomach as it had herniated up through my diaphragm. I was opened up from sternum bone to pelvic area. They were able to repair me in about three hours. Afterwards, I was admitted to the hospital for about 12 days.

I was discharged in stable condition. I had a touch of the hospital acquired colitis, but that was it. Within two weeks I began to have severe back pain and stomach pain. I admit that I wasn't drinking as much as I should have been, but I was exhausted. I went to the surgeon's office and explained the pain etc. He told me that since I didn't have a raging fever and redness around the incision area that I was not infected. Basically he said to walk it out.

The week after this visit the pain was so intense, kind of a searing heat of a pain through my abdomen and back, I went back to the doc. He was very rough with me and told me once again that there was nothing wrong. He insisted that I was depressed and proceeded to prescribe me an anti-depressant. I refused to take it, as he was a surgeon not a psych. Plus there was absolutely nothing going on in my life at that moment to make me depressed. Well, other than a pain in my ass with the initials of MD and the pain in my belly.

Within a week the incision area came open. Only in a small area, but open nonetheless. I went into the ER at the hospital where the surgery was performed and they said that there was nothing wrong. I went back to see him the days following the ER visit and he said that it was just a simple problem. Deal with it.

A week later I had a fever of over 102. I went to the other hospital in town and they performed a CT scan of the abdomen. Sure enough there was a pretty large abcess. They discharged me and told me to see the surgeon the next day. I went back to him like the fool I am and he admitted me. When up on the surgical floor of the hospital he refused any meds, and since I was crying like a baby, curled up in the fetal position, he "allowed" me to have a tylenol. He repeated the CT scan and well, I'll be damned. There was that abcess again. By that night I was in surgery again, on a morphine drip and had a big gaping hole in my abdomen.

This surgery caused more infection and problems with healing. The results: 5 surgeries over a 4 month period of time. One blood clot. 6 episodes of anti-biotic induced colitis and a partridge in a pear tree.

Yep, depression is a bitch. Especially when it causes peritonitis and other infections.

So listen up kids. Just because they have more degrees than you and I could ever imagine getting or spending our money on, doesn't mean that they necessarily know what they are doing.

Unfortunately I have a similar scenario going on at the moment with my present health issues. No, they are not surgical in nature. Thank God. But, the docs are screwing around with the what-if's and not really doing a whole lot by way of figuring out what the problem is. But, hopefully the specialist will start to figure things out. I just hope it is in time. Last time I almost didn't make it due to the infections.

Yes I am young. Yes I am too young to have all of this shit going on. But in reality it is the only body I have and if I am not going to advocate for my health than who will?

Please, please, please...do not take everything your physician says as the absolute truth. If I would have listened to the quack surgeon and taken the anti-depressants instead of persisting about my treatments I would be dead.

Listen to your bodies. I know that this sounds cliche' but it is the most certain truth you have. You know your body better than anyone else.

I hope you all have learned something.

Yours in Bodies, Banter and Becoming Who I Have Always Wanted to Be,

Cicily