The Pulse of Two Cities

It was the best of times, it was 8 PM on a Tuesday and already felt like a real long week. Things are all over.

Last week I had some intermittent tachycardia. I noticed it because I’m logging pulse and O2 levels at night, and later correlated that with a couple of dizzy moments over the previous couple of days. I emailed my physician asking if it was likely to be related to a drug ¹This drug does not list increased heart rate as a common symptom. It is a diuretic but I was not sufficiently dehydrated to cause tachycardia, and I know what that feels like well enough to rule it out. I had just started. But my physician was out, and the one who read their email won’t stop harassing me about it. I’ve gotten 9 emails and 6 phone calls about it since then, including one today.

Eventually I agreed to go in, only to have them refuse to see me when I got there ²I’m so glad I rented a car instead of taking the bus. I mean, I’m annoyed to have wasted $40 and all the driving, but if I would have had to take the bus home I would have lost it.. I was righteously frustrated.

I am fine, to be clear. I stopped the drug and my heart rate returned to normal as quickly as it deviated. I was never worried about needing urgent care. I used a communication tool where I specifically had to disclaim urgency. I answered questions the staff had and they didn’t send me to the ER. But they also didn’t stop harassing me, even after I showed up and was turned away.

I try to be compliant with medical staff. I try to forgive their lack of insight into my well being. They’re used to treating normal people. They’re used to people not having good data or perception. They’re used to people who feel helped by urgent attention.

But I feel threatened by attention I did not invite, particularly when the level of urgency imposed doesn’t match mine. I feel ignored when my evaluation of the issue isn’t treated as one of the best available sources information. And I feel fucked around when my efforts to comply are met with procedural barriers.

I am trying to be a person who uses professional medical care. The lesson I learned here was that I shouldn’t engage with the medical institution outside of things I am either willing to go to the ER about or to wait for my next scheduled appointment to resolve.

I would like to have not been told to appear in person and then told I could only do a Zoom meeting when I got there. I would have liked for someone to ask about my assessment of the urgency, and why it differed from theirs.

But honestly I’m pretty sure if they had seen me I’d be just as annoyed. They would have asked the same questions I’d answered 9 times, harassed me with an EKG and pressure cuff and maybe a blood draw. And then they would have seen nothing, because it’s intermittent, and said something patronizing about being fat before sending me home with no new advise or information.

So the lesson is: I’m still mostly incompatible with the medical industry, and should reconsider my recent attempts to be more open to their recommendations.

2 days later I got called in for the COVID vaccine wait list and got the last dose of the day. Since I was there after close I got to schedule for the next one right away, and I should be fully immunized before May.

That was a much better experience. I had to sit in an uncomfortably bright room for 2 hours and wait for… something… before getting slightly stabbed and injected with an irritant, but it was still a vastly superior interaction with the medical industry.

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It sounds like Shanda is ready for a dog again. We’ve been mostly ready from grieving standpoint for a while, but there were other dog things to work through. Things we’d like to change before finding another dog. Old triggers that make it hard to cope with a whining toddler. Things about managing ourselves to be better for and with dogs, and being better able to work with each other when it’s tough.

But it’s now also a point of obsession, where any delay is deemed unacceptable, as if we cannot be clam until dog is here and settled. For schedule reasons I’d like to wait until June. I’m excited to get a dog, but I will be away for several weeks in May, and I’d rather not get a dog just before I leave. I’d rather not leave Shanda alone with a new dog, I’d rather not leave Dog alone with a sad and stressed Shanda, and I’d rather not leave my new dog just after getting them – that went poorly last time. So while I’m eager and would love a dog again, I would also like that to happen after I’m back.

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I will be gone in May because I’ll be living in Cleveland again for a few weeks. This time around it’s not an emergency and I have a more definite return date and probably I’ll even get to arrange housing before I go. But it is somehow still happening at the same time I’m getting a dog.

M will be moving and driving and getting a car and I’m really excited to be able to go and help. We have often only been able to be together in the face of crisis, and apart even before it’s resolved, and it will be nice to have enough time to be human for a minute. It makes me weepy to be picked.

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Being in Ohio will of course be challenging. The weeks of not having my bed or my spouse or all my usual supports and tools. The logistics and hassle and cost of moving and buying a car. The drudgery of travel and living from a suitcase, the household projects that will continue to need doing while I’m away. And it will be hard on Shanda while I’m gone, even though you get to stay at home.

It won’t be like last time. There’s a plan and no one is homeless and the schedules known. We actually know each other now and there won’t be spectators to manage or supervisors to appease. I won’t be so triggered about my own past or so unsure what help is wanted or how to safely give it. Shanda won’t be so triggered about me leaving or so upset when I return. I won’t have to shuttle back and forth for months. I won’t be unprepared for judgements about our relationship.

But it will be like last time, for our brains. Hopefully not too much, but enough that we should be prepared. Last time was traumatic and unbearable and probably not something we’ve processed all the pieces of. In week 2 or 3 it might start to feel a lot like it did last time, even if all the circumstances now are better. So we should be prepared to cope if brains take us back, and we should be kind to ourselves and each other when it happens.

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Ben poked me again. They want me to be closer. They are currently very bad at making that seem attractive. To protect myself I haven’t read their last communication. Shanda did, but I’m told it’s not urgent, so I’m going to wait until there’s more space in my life for such things.

We have many disagreements, and while many are important most are not a barrier to closeness. But the one where my different experience of our past isn’t seen as valid is a problem. I’m unwilling to subscribe to their perspectives on my past, and our agreement seems to be required. I’d be willing to pretend we didn’t meet until 2016 and take it from there, but that’s not currently satisfactory to Ben.

I never know what to do about this. I will always help if they ask, but I’m not sure I want to be close. The fact that they want to keep Pete and Joni in their lives is hard enough by itself, and it’s very difficult to stay out of each other’s trauma.

I could complain about lots of minor shitty treatment in the present, but the real issue is maybe just that I’m unconvinced there’s any value. Even if we avoided the manifold harms we might cause, wouldn’t I be able to do as much good – for me or others – with the same energy in a different relationship? It doesn’t feel like there’s much we could ever safely share, but it’s hard to tell the difference between the barriers I used to free myself and the actual truth.

My goal was always to teach people to not need me, so they’d be okay when I left ³It’s still a worthy goal, though I would never use my old methods. I still want everyone who depends on me to eventually be safe without me, but I no longer imagine that means I must leave.. This was infeasible when Ben was 11, but so was staying, so I left anyway. And it was mostly okay. Mostly things were better after I left, at least until Ben was almost ready to go themselves. So I guess part of my pain is just the belief that I didn’t do a good enough job relieving Ben of their attachment to me.

But even when I put all that down, even when I set aside my hate for the patriarchy and my guilt and all the buttons Ben pushed when they are stressed, I’m not sure I can ever match what they want, or that I want to.

ZiB

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Sent from a phone.

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