Medical Mayhem And Every Schoolboy's Dream

I have far more contact with hospitals than I am entirely comfortable with. When I was young, I avoided them like - forgive the poor pun - the plague. I can think of two times before my accident where I was forced into those hallowed halls of healing. Once when I went into Animal Control and needed to be vaccinated for rabies and once when I blew out a spinal separator. Both trips were unpleasant, clinical and left me with a distaste of needles and mind altering pain medications.

Then came The Accident. I'm amazed I was even conscious to remember the trip to and first night in the hospital. I had two IVs pumping morphine into my system, which I was assured by various EMTs would dull my pain. They lied. They lied easily and they lied well, but they lied. I still felt everything - save for my legs which at the time I couldn't feel at all.

Two hours and more morphine later, I was still fully conscious and still very much in pain. In too much pain, even, to enjoy the fact that a pair of cute young nurses were cutting off my clothing. Generally, this is the stuff of which dreams are made. How often does one experience a buxom blond in a snug nurses uniform telling them they have 'adorable panties' before cutting said adorable panties off? The fact that an improperly placed catheter came next will be ignored. I will cling to the memory of the buxom young blond and her stainless steel scissors.

The rest of the night was something of a blur. Being wheeled from one end of the hospital to another for various tests and X-rays, demanding something that would actually stop the bowel melting pain that wracked my body, a young X-ray technician struggling to move me by herself without causing strain to my spine....

All in all, it was a hellish experience. I was told I was 'fine' and my 'minimal fractures' would heal on their own. If I could walk, they told me, I could go home. I was still in more pain than I thought it possible to experience and live. And the nurse - a large, smoke-smelling old broad now - was very insistent that I could, indeed walk. I took two steps before collapsing and grabbing the bed in pain. I could walk! she announced. I was being discharged. With a two month prescription of oxycodiene.

It's the next two months I don't remember much of. But once the drug induced hazed cleared, I realized there had been none of this natural healing I was promised. In fact, I felt worse than when I left the hospital. Maybe it was my imagination. Maybe it was that the drugs that kept me asleep and in the magical land of daydreams had made me forget what my level of pain had been. Or maybe, just maybe, the hospital had screwed up.

The answer would be C) The Hospital Screwed Up. A few months and one out of court settlement later I was in another hospital with giant needles in my spine. A treatment I would need for the rest of my life, at varying intervals. Did I mention already how much I hate needles? The little ones to draw blood were bad enough, but here I was stretched out beneath needles the size of baseball bats. Local anesthesia? Screw that, knock me out!

To this day, I will not go to the hospital without a fight. Something horrible always happens to me. Whether it be needles, having things shoved in orifices that shouldn't have foreign objects shoved up them, or malpractice, I have no luck with modern medicine.

I can only hope that one day, one glorious day, shall find myself again in the hands of a buxom young blond nurse. And maybe, if I'm very lucky, she'll cut my panties off in private.

I'm Not Cranky Because I'm a Gimp, I'm Cranky Because You Suck

I have always been a cranky person. I was bitter and jaded long before I ever landed myself in a wheelchair. I watched the news, I looked around me. Even from the seat of Small Whitebread Town, I realized pretty early on that there's a whole hell of a lot wrong with the world. It doesn't take a genius to see that if a major news network spends more time discussing some celebrity clothing snafu or Oprah's weight than the latest genocide, there's a problem. A big one.

The thing that got to me was that everyone would always question my outlook. 'Why are you so bitter?'. 'Don't be such a pessimist!". Pessimist? Bitter? I was a realist! I looked around me and saw nothing but small minded people with no awareness of anything outside their own bubble. I was just pointing out the truth. But apparently that wasn't 'cool' back when I was in high school. This was before the trend of political outrage, black T-shirts and bad haircuts. I found my solace in MTV cartoons and the writing of angry feminists. Crankiness calls to crankiness. I was 'weird'. I was 'morbid'. I read big long books that no one else had ever heard of. Forget that I was a lesbian, that was no big deal. But I read too much and I didn't smile enough and I cared about politics and global issues. Clearly, I was a freak of the highest degree.

These days, it's normal for teenagers to be screaming balls of vaguely politically aware anger. They don't always understand what they're angry about, but by god are they angry! My own age group, however, still retains much of their High School attitudes. There's the occasional sympathetic nod and 'those poor people' whenever tragedy strikes, and the generic rhetoric either for or against Bush. But really, it's still all about the latest fashion and what sport team is going to the big game and whether or not Suri Cruise is a robot or not.

The difference now? I'm disabled. It's okay for me to be cranky these days. Apparently I've earned it or something. I'm still a freak, but now I'm a freak to be pitied, not feared. Poor, poor me, cut down so young, my life it is over.... it's no wonder I'm cranky and angry at the world!

I call bullshit, but no one ever listens. Their heads are too far up their media papered asses to really actually care what I have to say. I'm just the angry dyke in the wheelchair. I'm pissed off at the world because the world screwed me over.

Correction there. Some doctors who couldn't tell their elbow from their ass screwed me over. I'm not pissed off at the world, and it isn't because I'm disabled. I'm pissed off at the people in positions of power who can't seem to get their acts together.

The world's more a mess now than it was when I first looked beyond my own nose. I think we've all earned the right to be cranky.

And The Floodgates Open....

Life? Is hard.

There are no arguments against that statement. There is no one claim that can be made to the contrary. No one can dispute this fact. Life is hard.

This doesn't mean life is bad. Nowhere am I claiming life is bad, or horrible, or that we should all just resign ourselves to an existence of self loathing. Hell, one of the things that makes life the wonderful thing that it is is the fact that it's hard.

We all have it rough. It doesn't matter who we are or where we live or who are parents are. We've all got our hurdles and our challenges and our downs. We all face adversaries. This isn't going to be some diatribe about how much harder I have it than anyone else. This isn't some pissing contest about who's life is worse than who's. Let's not play those silly little games.

But this is going to be full of complaints. Who doesn't love a good complaint? I'm a dyke with a disability, I've got a lot to complain about. But keep in mind, please, that much of what you read here will be tongue-in-cheek.

After all, what good is posting to the masses unless it's entertaining?