Back to DHMC

Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center (DHMC) is a place I appreciate and hate, mostly the latter lately.
Being away for a month has not changed how I feel as I walk through the colorless halls. I needed to have blood tests done today and I thought back to my time in Italy as though it were a long ago memory.  Did I really run at dawn to Popolo Piazza just 7 days ago?

I am back to organizing my medical appts, the calendar is filling up fast.

  I had a talk with my former spouse today about finances and found myself telling him about medical issues.  I listened to myself and  felt thoroughly sorry for the poor woman, who was me.

Am I so removed from myself that I do not recognize all I am going through?  I recall saying to him, "I can't remember a day I haven't been in pain,"  and worse, it was true.

I know there are others out there who deal with pain.  I choose not to medicate.  I don't like how I feel on meds,  they don't ever take it all away anyway.

I have learned not to focus on the pain, I let it be.  Often I can get involved enough in something and it takes my mind off of it.

Having so much to do everyday in Italy, it was easier to put it on the back burner of my awareness.

I thought about resting for a while this afternoon and then thought, if I was in Italy I would be walking for hours.  I don't want to stop living!!  Illness takes so much from me, I don't want to give it an inch more.

It is a very private world, being ill.  After the initial shock wears off, everyone gets back to their lives.  Is reminds me of how I felt after my sister died 2 years ago,  a week later  and  people were talking to me and treating me like nothing had happened.  It is sad and lonely to have others not involved in your life.

i don't talk to many people about my illness, because honestly, no one wants to hear it.  I sure as hell couldn't have understood it if someone told me.  You have to experience it to understand.

Often when I am walking through the hospital I see people hurting, people struggling to walk, people who look exhausted, and I say quietly as I pass them "blessings".   It is my way on connecting to them. My way of reaching out.  I see them.  I understand suffering.

I suppose I could let it all go and become this illness, but I choose to be me.  There are times I want to scream "Make it stop!" or beg "Let me feel normal"  But this is my new normal.

So I show up for my appts.  I am nice to the people who work there.  I take it a breath at a time.

I know things could be worse...
I also know they could be better, and that's the rub.