Dig In

A Day in the Year of Healing

I have been coughing all night. Before I slept, I texted Ashley to see what drugs I could mix with NyQuil. It turns out, not many. My ribs hurt and my body cracked and creaked. I'd slept all weekend, like my body was shoring up energy for the storm that is coming, the storm that sends out signals in between waves of coughs. Cough, tremble, inhale.

I slept for a good ten hours Sunday night, despite waking up at 4pm. I woke up and the dog was wild, licking my face, begging to go out and for food. I tried to ignore her and my bladder; here, I was unsuccessful. I fed her the banana I've been meaning to eat. Still, we were up early. Dogs are exhausting, and I don't even do all the stuff. 

My mom came back with Sadie in tow. I hadn't seen her in 12 days and she was happy to see me, though she grew happier with me as the day wore on. For lunch, I fed her broccoli and pasta and artichokes and spinach. She ate so much broccoli that I started humming a tune. Broccoli monster, Broccoli MONSTER!! I sang it at her and she started laughing. So hard I was worried she choke. Broccoli monster! I tried to take a video but she shakes her head at my camera now. She's 16 months old and she's starting to really interact. She listens to directions and brings me what I ask. She loves to play basketball, feed her baby doll Max, and climb up the stairs. Every age, I think it's the best. I'd like to capture her here for a little while, but she's already toddling off, leaving me behind in Gymboree class, in search of big kids and whatever toys they've got.

In between all the moments, I could not help but think of my friend Lauren. Her dad died yesterday. Her family has suffered two deaths in 14 months. A family of four, whittled down to two. You never want to believe that life is that precious, that fragile. We say it all the time: YOLO, hold on to this moment, live here now, but I know I often refuse to accept the fact that my family won't be whole forever. And it devastates me to see it happen to a family I love and care for. The whole thing reeks of unfairness, except isn't it just what life is? We live and then we die. But to lose a daughter and spouse in 14 months is still, still unfathomable. 

Sadie was wiped after Gymboree and Target and went down easy. Boom, lights out. I came up to the apartment to sleep but found I could not. There is so much I am failing at. I'm not taking it one day at a time. I'm not eating the fucking bone soup! I'm walking but not as long as I should. I'm getting up but only some days, the rest are spent asleep.

I'm trying to look at the big picture. It looks beautiful. Full of adventure and extra pages in a passport. It looks so full. I'm not tired, I'm not sick. Everything is a little bit easier. But I'm not entirely on my way there, no matter what I say. I keep thinking: I'll do better later, later. But later is stupid. Later is not now. Later will come and I will be here, the same. 

And I don't want that. I know life is this precious, this fleeting, this fragile. It's fast. It's toddling away from me.

What I guess I am saying is this:

It's time to dig in.

Hospitalized Again: What Being Back Means for My Year of Healing

In this oh holy year of healing, I expected setbacks on my attempt to achieve healing. I recognize that it will take baby steps, and not gigantic leaps into suddenly transforming myself into a new, healthy person. This became apparent to me when I was hospitalized just 9 days into Kelly's Year Of Healing (trademark to come.)

Why am I back here for the 3rd time in 3 months? Well, much of this has to do with weaning off steroids, which I did at the start of the year. I was immediately rewarded with a sore throat and mouth sores worse than the ones I encountered at Christmas. 

I have also been feeling very confused and dizzy, not always sure of what movement I was making or what words I was typing. (So if this makese no sense, contact me or a mental health professional.) This was attributed to my low blood sugar. I consider myself self-aware, for better or for worse. So to wake up screaming for my mom and being surely it was 6am in July and I was in a hotel somewhere was odd because really, it was 11pm, I'd just woken from an ill-timed nap, and I was in the apartment I've lived in for a year.

It's absolutely terrifying, this run of diabetes I've had. I'm afraid to go to sleep sometimes because my sugar crashes are so bad that threats of a seizure or worse, a coma, are very real. My numbers also spike so high that my kidneys are in danger of real and permanet damage.

I went to see my lupus doctor yesterday and my limbs and body were so achy that I lay facedown on the table, waiting for him to come in. My face and ears burned. And surprisingly, I had a temperature. I rarely have a fever over 99, so to spike from 99 to 101 to 102 was reason enough for my doctors to want me hospitalized. It's best if I'm back on the steroids (argh) and get antibiotics for an infection, all by IV.

And so I am back here again, in the hospital beds that feel so familiar to me, tethered to a machine pumping me full of incredibly strong and scary drugs, wondering what's next.

I want to get better on my own, without the help of drugs. I want to get better by utilizing nature's cures. I want to travel and seek out the value of Eastern Medicine.

I am expecting too much of myself and I'm losing sight of the goal, which is to feel better.

It's NOT to suddenly become normal like my friends, to suddenly slip into the life I've wanted since I was a terribly sick 12 year old.

I'm hopeful I'll get better, but I cannot change how illness has shaped me, no matter how much kale I eat.

I'll likely be here for another night or two. I'm hoping to read and think and rest, and give my body the replenishment it apparently needs. Next week I'll see my Eastern Medicine Healer Chris in NYC, and along with my Western medicine docs, we will build a plan for a better 2014.

As always, thank you for the love and support.

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Oh! An essay I wrote about culture in 2013 was published last night on Thought Catalog. I do hope you'll read it here: My Year of Cultural Abstinence. If that doesn't work, just click here: http://thoughtcatalog.com/kelly-bergin/2014/01/my-year-of-cultural-abstinence/