the other kind of social disease

The Meriam Webster Dictionary defines the term “social disease” as the following:

Main Entry:  social disease

Function: noun

Date: 1891

1: venereal disease.

I’d like to respectfully submit a second meaning:

2:any disease or condition that significantly impacts ones social life, friendships, relationships, and general interaction with society…

I was recently diagnosed with CFIDS or Chronic Fatigue Immune Deficiency Syndrome.  I have seen doctor after doctor after doctor.  I take medication for anxiety disorder and an inability to manufacture enough GABA (the stuff your brain makes that allows you to physically relax) and have for more than ten years.  These are realities I’ve come to deal with and are, for me, not terribly debilitating.  Sure, I don’t sleep well, but I’m I don’t have agoraphobia or claustrophobia or any other phobia that keeps me from fully enjoying my life- having several large circles of friends, enjoying the blessing of living in NYC and all that it brings, traveling the world over for business and pleasure, finding absolute nirvana being a stranger in a strange land.

I have been sick and tired over the years, suffering bouts of exhaustion and increased pain that left me cranky, sleepless and with an intense desire to hibernate.  Some attributed this to a latent depression or the aftermath of being hit by a van whilst crossing the street almost 20 years ago.  The accident did a good bit of damage to my body, the effects of which are felt more intensely and impact my life more acutely at times.  Spoken or not, most people assume the former, not having been in my life for the accident and all that followed. 

By people, I mean my friends and acquaintances.

I’m not going to lie.  I found this to be frustrating.  I have seen internists, orthopedists, physiatrists, therapists (physical and emotional), psychiatrists, neurologists, accupuncturists, every kind of “-ist” one can think of.  I’m very proactive about my health.  I don’t despair.  I have rare moments of sadness over the some of the tougher aspects of my childhood/ young adulthood.  I always pull through and I’m always OK. 

The last six months, however, have been out of control.  I was out of work for months, for what I thought was some crazy-mutant evil sinus infection.  I’ve had surgery, taken steroids, exhausted supplies of anti-biotics, changed my diet, everything.  I just couldn’t get better.  And I didn’t know what to do.  Staying home all the time because I was too tired or dizzy or fuzzy to go out didn’t leave me with much to talk about other than what was wrong with me.   Naturally, this affected my relationships with people.  I mean, how many times can a person listen to someone complain about the awful smell or electric mucus or fatigue or headaches, or whatever.  It’s a drag. 

You see, just because you’re anxious or tired doesn’t mean you’re depressed.  And even if one IS depressed, it doesn’t mean you’re not physically ill.  My affect has always been positive, regardless of my circumstances, and I’ve yet to meet any one of the “ists” that felt differently.

stab! bang! aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhh

well, kiddies, it’s happened.  i’ve finally gotten over the first hump: i acutally feel better.  my physical therapy has begun to have a lasting, measurable effect.

i noticed this going in to stab therapy on thursday.  i was walking in, and while not pain free, the pain was less pervasive and less severe than normal.  despite the utter teddy bear debacle that rained down on monday and all the associated stress that came with it, i wasn’t a complete wreck. 

i mean, you can only imagine.  i have my most important brand in my most important territory rocking, rolling and generally kicking aussie ass when my local agency goes bankrupt.  with a whole lotta my dough in the bank.  bucks that have already been spent to make the most amazing program- something i was planning on wowing my company and the industry with.  and bam!  lockdown.  and here i am on the other side of the world, holding the bills and not much else.  to top it off, try explaining to anyone that you’re staying up past midnight and feeling severely pressured because the freaking teddy bears are in crisis.  you don’t exactly engender a lot of sympathy.  or credibility, for that matter.

anyway.  i won’t go into detail because it just sounds more and more ridiculous.  the point is, people, that i feel the difference.  despite the stress and the travel and the irregular schedules and all of it.  i feel better.  i’ve been going to stab therapy for nearly nine months and was beginning to lose hope.

little by little, i’ve been healing.  i guess i just got to the point that it was appreciable enough for me to notice. 

or maybe it’s just due to all the sex.  whatever.  i’ll take it.

(total aside: spinal tap is on.  it’s the mini-bread scene.  christopher guest is genius.  i don’t know how they even get through the takes without losing it)

ricky nelson, i salute you

enough of the brain problems, back to the fun.

we went back to the temple bar again the last night.  we’d gone to see casa mila (la pedrera) late in the afternoon and hadn’t accomplished much else that day.  because, as i explained to cs, that we had a problem.  we couldn’t leave our hovel because the sun was out there.  despite all this and our well-laid plans to go to bed early for our early flights, cs declared that it we had to go out that night.  it was our last night.  no fighting that logic.

we met up with the hilarious irish girl we’d seen the previous two nights and her cohorts.  she’d gathered some boys from roscommon and they asked us to join their group.  they twisted our arms by buying us a couple of pints of fat frogs and then two baby guinness shots.  i have since determined they were evil plants from the planet of teaching responsibility through reverse psychology.  just when i thought i was doomed to sink into an irish hole of drunk, maurizio showed up!  huzzah!  david was not with him.  boo!

maurizio came because he thought david might show- they have a very informal friendship and just meet up there sometimes.  he and cs bonded about italy, amongst other things, i’m sure, while i pined and wished for my imaginary boyfriend* to show.  alas, he never did.  to buoy my spirits, maurizio told cs a secret: david thought i was cute and tried to call me the previous night.  unfortunately, he only had my office number and not my blackberry.  curs-ed fates!

we all went off to find a disco and with maurizio’s guidance, found one on las ramblas, relieving us of a long cab ride to porto olympico and an 18 euro cover.  he couldn’t join us because he had serious research work to do in the morning.  we bid him a warm adieu and followed the irish upstairs.  of course there were many swirling, twirling lights on the dance floor, so cs and i hung at the bar.  it was hot.  i turn my head for one second and when i look back, cs is talking to three fine looking, but barely post adolescent, boys: jose uno, jose dos and alex.  and they were from?  tenerife.  seriously. we had to fly 2247 km (1,396 miles for those of you on the SI system) to find natives of tenerife.  it was no hoax.  they showed me their papers.

though they were all cute, and cs had her weary eyes on jose uno, we realized we didn’t want to be there.  we didn’t want another drink.  we were tired of sweating and breathing in the musty air.  we were tired period.  we decided to head home. 

on the way, we passed the slightly unhinged israeli girl we’d ditched on the way to the disco (mostly at the irish’s urging.  but they were right.  she was kind of crazy.  and very intense).  she was talking to a nigerian man selling trinkets on las ramblas.  we trudged up to our hole for the final time so i could pass out for a few hours and cs could shower in time for her flight to roma.

i left the next day and had smooth, uneventful flights home.  on a lark, i checked my email.  god is good, folks, because i had an email from the catalan waiting.  he wanted to know if i was going back to the bar that night- he’d run into maurizio who told him he’d seen us the night before and he wanted to see me (sniffle).   he wrote that he’d wanted to spend the night with me the other night and tried to follow us to the disco (sob).

unfortunately, i was now back at home, 6169 km away (hysterics).

i wrote him back and told him all this.  he said he was leaving on holiday that day, but would be on messenger at 22h on 2nd september.

sigh.  a girl has to have dreams, i guess.

so now, i’ve decided my immediate life goal is to emulate ricky nelson and have a man in every port.  this trip was a good start towards that end.

 oh, and BMW came over the day after i got home.  a girl has to eat.  more than once a month, too. 

*he’s an actual person of course, just not my boyfriend.  not yet, people, not yet. mwahaha mwahaha (curling imaginary** handlebar mustache). 

** the mustache is not real.  not since we went to el corte ingles, anyway.  zing!

Protected: names have been changed to protect the clinically insane

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the boss of me

i’m totally having one of those “dancing in the dark” moments.  you know, “i wanna change my clothes, my hair, my face…”

i’m not sure if bruce meant that expression of ennui to extend to your job, friends, family, name, home furnishings, country of residence… but i think he did.  and man, was he singing my tune.

you know that girl who has a great, fun job, an incredible apartment, many and good friends, is (relatively) financially solvent, blah, blah, blah and has no apparent reason to complain?  well here i am, and i’m doing it anyway.

i’m just exhausted.  i have to tell you (whoever you are, dear reader) that chronic pain really can put a damper on all the other stuff you’ve got going for you.  for years and years, i thought it was something i just had to live with and i was tough about it, and didn’t complain.  hell, my gimped out leg, banged up brain and creaky, crackly neck were not going to be the boss of me.  i laughed at their petty attempts to slow me down, to make me uncomfortable, to turn the world and my stomach upside down.  and i wasn’t going to take no pain killers or sleeping pills neither.  it just was.  me against them.  and i knew who was going to win that war.

 so then, a couple of years ago, i go to a new doctor and i hear this new whispering on the wind: you don’t have to hurt, you can be healed!  you can be saved!  you can be whole again!  it was like a tent revival with the elders speaking via the tongues of acupuncture needles, electronic stimulation and lidocaine injections (among other fun for the whole family).

there was this totally weird side effect: a begrudging hope.  i might wake up one day and not be hurting?  hell, that’s putting the cart before the horse.  i might be able to fall asleep one day, and not have the pain and tension keep me up and wake me up and wear me out the whole night through?  at first it seemed crazy talk.  but the more people i saw, the more my impending recovery was touted, the more i believed.

so, i go.  i get injected with syringes full of lidocaine in my neck, shoulder, hip, head and face twice a week.  about forty to fifty shots in all.  i get cracked and realigned and twisted and pushed and stretched at least once a week. i am coached to make my body relax to ease the pain in the name of rest and sleep for a couple hundred a month.  i spend seventy percent of my disposable income on copays, treatments not covered, prescriptions, you name it. 

 now comes the next weird side effect: defeat. 

 i’m not saying i don’t feel a bit better.  i do. a bit.  after treatment, usually the next day and maybe the day after that.  better, not good.  but the raised expectations have made the reality that much more demoralizing by comparison.

now, don’t get me wrong.  i know in the grand scheme of things, i’m floating on air.  nothing fatal, nothing debilitating, nothing acute.  it’s hard to articulate.  sometimes i think the worst part is that people are understanding, but they don’t understand.  get vertigo and have to will yourself not to wretch in glass building? i know.  trust me. pull a muscle?  that’s my daily condition.  tear a rotator cuff, arthritis stinging, strain a ligament?  i know.  i live it.  all the time. 

people don’t really want to hear it.  and you know what, guys, neither do i.  seriously.  i’d love not to talk about it, or think about it, or complain about it.  i feel like a heel right now.  a totally selfish, self-sorry jerk.

so what do i do now?  i keep trying.  i take the painkillers.  get the sleeping pills.  and if that doesn’t work, i think i might want to go back to my roots: telling the pain to fuck off and pretending it did.  it may not get better, but it will stop ruling my world. 

 just needed to get that off my chest.  thanks for listening.  i’ll go back to writing about inanity and pop culture and digital etiquette.

i promise.

ah, the power of cheese

i don’t mean the literal foodstuff, cheese, though that clearly has it’s wonders and its merits.  no, kids, i refer to the sociological type of cheese.  and the creme de la creme of this cultural curd is, of course, B horror movies.

i have been traveling to and from cleveland almost non stop for the past three weeks, following a two week sojourn abroad for successive, long trade shows.  i have had almost no time to eat well, exercise or even relax.  i have been working my tail off (lo, only figuratively.  the midwest spread is apparently contagious).  i have been in back to back meetings whether in new york or the cleve.  spend most of my meal times in meetings or airports.  putting out fires, struggling with the inconsistencies and holes in communication flow that a new company has in spades.

the upshot is:  i’m exhausted.  drained.  knackered.  fried.  broke down. jacked up. sleepy, add your synonym here.

quick examples:

last week i excused myself to go to the restroom at a local , well-patronized bar and opened the door to the bathroom.  for a good twenty seconds i stood staring at the urinal, knowing it signaled that something was off, but unable to process what, exactly, the issue was.  as i slowly backed up, i noticed the ubiquitous stick figure representing the male of the species next to (oddly enough) the word “Mens.”  this prompted an epiphany to which the only response was to sidle five feet to the left and enter the more accomodating “Ladies” room.

i wrote a poll on my fantasy baseball team website in which i spelled the word “threw” as “t-h-r-o-u-g-h.”  for those you who know my fastidiousness when it comes to spelling and proper usage of english (including being seriously uptight about their, there and they’re as well as to, too, and two, you’re and your. it’s and its), you know this is not a favorable indicator of my personal mental health.

finally, i was offered the opportunity to be part of two things that would normally bring me untold joy: a subway series baseball game with best friends and a ricky gervais show with other close and wonderful friends.  i have bailed on both to lay in my bed, exhausted, in physical pain strong enough to make me cry, feeling quite sorry for myself.

there is only one thing that can take my mind off this pathetic personal failing:  a well spent $3.95 for a grisly,sufficiently acted, clever death scenes B horror movie.  My nirvana, my escape, my personal Calgon.

to which, friends, i must return as the peace it gives me is quickly fading. 

so please, don’t mock, but embrace the so-bad-it’s-good gen x philosophy; it is a salve to soothe the shattered soul.**

ok, that’s somewhat melodramatic, but i was going for alliteration and my options were limited

working from home

I think it’s more stressful to work from home.  Trying to juggle Law and Order and product development for Lite Brite…Actually, it’s claustrophobia inducing.  Thank god the pain distracts me from the boredom and restlessness. 

This new “pain management” treatment has thus far provided more pain than managment, but I’m hopeful.  I go for my second session tomorrow- 16 or so more injections, plus the massage (or ‘beating the lidocaine in’- perspective is a funny thing, innit?).  I can definitely feel a difference in my neck, so it’s doing something.  Here’s hoping that what that something is, is healing.

Like I have room to complain. A good friend lost her baby more than halfway along.  She and her husband are the best couple I know.  They’re defeated now, but they’re determined to go on.  So when you’re praying, or thinking, or meditating or whatever, keep them and all their future kids in your thoughts.