Neevita posts

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Surgical consequence

I had the amazing opportunity to observe surgery last Friday. One of my clients is a foot and ankle surgeon and invited me to observe one of his operating days, when he had a set of cases that were varied and interesting. My day started at around 6am, scootering to the surgery center in the rain.

You can find videos of this stuff on youtube, so I wont’ get into the gory details of surgery much here. I’m only about 2 years out of Cadaver lab, and I still remember a lot about that experience. The layers, tissues, joints, that kind of thing. The surgeries themselves were compelling and interesting, though I found myself most struck by the simplistic humanity of what I witnessed.

How amazing is it that we can cut into living people, while they are awake, and perform excessively invasive procedures on them, chisel away hunks of bone, tie off and cauterize veins, snip through layer upon layer of tissue, not only without killing them, but in a manner that eventually leaves them more efficient than they were before? Watch someone perform a bunionectomy and let me know. I think it’s pretty fucking unreal.

The eventually part of all this is what hit home with me, once the dust settled and I had some time to integrate what I’d experienced. By about the 3rd surgery of the day, it struck me that I was witnessing a physical representation of what I do to myself every time I sit down in my therapists chair, or read about dismantling and remapping my psyche. I’ve lived my life expecting not to have to be in a cast after that, or in a walking boot, or to have to wait a year to get my mobility back. I expect to tear into myself and rip fused, vital parts of my structure apart and not be injured or have to pay my dues.

Over the years, I’ve started gaining trust in my body. Recently, when I realized my skin sensation was dulling, I chose to change my perception from being broken, weak, and hobbling on the brink of collapse to being resilient, strong and capable. Because, let’s face it, my body is amazing, weird tweaky things and all. I am able to do astounding things with it, even when not taking into account the damage I’ve done over the course of my life.

So what about my emotional body, then? I’ve gained compassion for my limbs, my digestive system, my aching muscles, my wrung out connective tissue – as inconvenient as all that is. I’m fast running out of reasons to resist having compassion for my aching, heavy little mind, too.

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Quiet moments (a work in progress)

I often think of things to write here and forget them before I get a chance to.

The hate is a lie.

I use the unsightly wrapping of a half eaten chocolate bar as an excuse to eat the whole thing.

I wonder how much time the average person spends impaled on the fine line between love and hate.

I wonder if there is a spiritual significance when tears only cry from one eye.

I curl up under my bath water, and pretend I’m in another world.

I sleep sounder by myself.

It’s hard to wake up alone.

I wonder if parents force their religion on their kids because they don’t think they can be influential enough on their own mortal merits.

I suspect I may be incapable of performing secret/cool handshakes, as I seem to just become bewildered when someone tries.

My elbow skin is very stretchy. Is yours?

I think if I learned I would die tomorrow, I would more than likely spend today alone, curled up in a ball, sobbing.

I’m glad no one has ever called me a role model.

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Vogue night: Sick and Twisted

I’ll be walking in up to 4 of my most creative, crowd pleasing outfits as a lifestyle model, and modeling Helene Hawthorne fashions. Lots of fun stuff from the designers being tried on when I left the fitting. Looks to be really cool.

Saturday, February 27, 2010 at 9:00pm
Club Vogue at Neigbours Underground
1509 Broadway (Broadway entrance)

Advanced discounted $13 tickets to the show can be purchased by emailing Roxy at: Vogue@clearwire.net

Tickets $15 at the door.

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PMS is ruining my life

I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve felt awful, crazy, confused, been plagued with violent thoughts, and found that in a week or two I start bleeding and immediately feel better – and been surprised. Surprised that I’d been PMSing for 13 days (isn’t it supposed to be, like, 3?), surprised at how awful I felt, surprised that all that awfulness could have possibly been dinky little insignificant PMS. I’ve been bleeding for 15 years and still, it sneaks up on me, more often than it doesn’t.

Even when I’ve been eating well, even when I’ve been sleeping, even when I haven’t had anything particularly stressful happening in my life – half my month has usually been spent in crazytown.

As a woman, I’ve come to this fork in the road before. It’s well beaten and I can tell many others have passed this direction too. If the road had a sign post, it would probably say something like “On to a different Level” in one direction, and “Play again” in the other.

I’ve passed the levels “Birth Control” and “Androgen inhibition”, I’ve passed the “Antibiotic” level to deal with the cysts I develop on my face and many other levels in addition to these – and yet somehow, I find that I end up in the “Play again” level again, over and over.

My cycles have been historically difficult. From being irregular and debilitatingly painful, to excessive and often uncontrollable feelings of anger and depression, I’ve generally learned that the one thing I can count on is not being able to expect how my cycle will effect me or when.

I get ovarian cysts as well, so I’ve tended to watch for physical symptoms which are sometimes absent completely. Meanwhile I’ll be walking around my life in a 10 day anxiety attack that I have no explanation for. Irritations and small inconsistencies become major, deal breaking issues. I stop wanting to work, I am tired constantly, I am angry, I am depressed, I withdraw, I lash out, I’m tense and uncomfortable, I pick fights. And eventually, I destroy my relationships.

I’ve thought myself crazy or otherwise deranged for half of my life, and/or that the world is a terrible place full of awfulness and the people close to me are raging fuckheads. Until I’ve, often seemingly randomly, bled and thought “What the fu— OH. … ….. Ooohhhh…”. Then I get about 12 days of solace.

As I age, the pattern is regulating, yet I’ve still been living as though I have no indication of what’s going on or why. Does that seem sane to ANYONE?

It’s seemed ridiculous to me to ‘blame’ my problems on something so stupid and inconvenient. And in a sense, it is stupid to do that, cause I’m gonna have problems like anyone else whether I PMS or not, and I’ll continue to have problems after I hit menopause or have someone rip my fucking junk out of me.

However, with that stance, I’ve easily forgotten how susceptible the emotional body is to hormone changes, and how little control I actually have over it.

Maybe looking at the emotional more like the physical issues is what to do next. I can’t just glare at my guts, say “Stop cramping and hurting, you stupid whining motherfucker” and expect that to change anything I’m experiencing. And it took a while, but I’ve learned not to do that. I can put a heating pad on my stomach, and I can take pain killers, and I can take a bath, and I can ask someone to rub me – and sometimes I even do! And that usually helps. What reason is there, really, that I can’t learn to do that with my emotions too?

I’ve spent a lot of time, effort and money trying to figure out the physical issues surrounding my period, mainly the cystic acne because I think it makes me look like a real dumbfuck. And I’ve spent a lot of time gaining skills in dealing with life’s little issues, fixing the problems in my life and generally getting my shit together – but not this. This, I still think I’m supposed to be bigger than for some reason.

Well, I’m pretty sure acting like a fucking psycho and alienating my strongest allies makes me look like a dumbfuck, too. And I’m not bigger than the mechanism that drives me. I’ve gotta figure out how to be a part of this process rather than the angsty, reluctant observer.

Does the focus in my life have to revolve around my PMS? Yeah, for a while, I think it really does.

First stop – Maca.

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