The Bee's Knees
So everything is going along rather swimmingly. Plans are put in motion, fortified, approved via quorum. Prospect is trumping terror. I am feeling vital and bittersweet. The season has gone lush and the weather is compliant.... Winds of change are breathless in the eves, whispers of promise so languid I stamp my feet goodnaturedly and then WHAM.
WHAM.
Off the moving truck trussed in sunlight, arms empty, jumps for the joy of it. My friend's fantastic new apartment with the other side of the hill view from my own, life is good and I am feeling effervescent.
Skips off the truck and lands squarley, feels a hitch in her knee, disregards.
Pain, nagging, chomping pain builds through the assembling of chairs and the beers that I don't drink. But if I can be reformed about brussel sprouts I can change my mind about beer. It hurts to the point where I am driven to distraction, but I suck it up. Because I am a good soldier and a better mover. I suck it up.
I call the Monster at 8:30 the next morning, after I have stepped out of bed and buckled. After I have dragged myself bodily down the hallway in a cold sweat to the toilet, I don't know whether to puke or scream, all I can think is how the hell am I going to get back down the hallway to the phone. This when all the fears flick through my mind like a flip book, I am all alone, I am less than half clad, I need help, I am all alone and I am not even sure I can make it to my drawers for a nice pair of panties and shirt. I am going to keel midway from the toilet and it's all going to be terribly undignified, how the hell am I going to get a cab to the ER.
Funny who you think to call in crisis. I called my Monster, who came across town in a taxi and sat with me through the mild quotidien terror of the ER on a sunday morning. I in the wheel chair and the hallway littered with the sentient waiting on gurneys, waiting for someone to wheel them back somewhere where they will wait some more. Monster was impatient to whisk me somewhere, anywhere, but that hallway with that linoleum, when the toothless man launched in to the most fabulous/horrifying unpunctuated monologue, I thought surely the man is going to exhaust his very last breath. But he didn't stop, and a magical attendant appeared from behind a secret door to take him to the next weigh station he was still jawing. We looked at each other in slack-jawed amazement, I thought I might cry.
Bowels of hospitals are frightening places, there was an idle gurney waiting for no one before the elevators, smudged with not old traces of blood. I should be an old hat by now, since I realized I have been making biannual trips to the ER for awhile, holding dear friends captive while the docs assess what the hell I have done this time. This time it's a tear in my miniscus, that may or may not require surgery. Only 45 minutes and a couple of thousand dollars will tell as they parse the hums and clicks of the MRI. (god do I love digital imaging, nothing like being confronted by the starkness of your very own bones)
The doc said I had lovely bones.
I was parked across the hallway, wearing my ice pack as an amish cap. Monster saw my bones and went to quizz the doc and I had the strangest of pangs. Those are my bones. It was weirdest kind of intimacy, you have now seen my bones, the core of what lies beneath, I felt nakeder than naked. I felt protective of the femur and the tibia and the disenfranchised knee cap, back lit for scrutiny. At the same time, I wished I could have the films to frame. I am fascinated by my bones. And I like the MRI's even better. So colorful all those muscles and tendons and veins.
I've another brace to add to my menagerie of the horrid boot and the crutches and the ankle braces and the ace bandages. Now I have the Immobilizer. Clunks on to my upper thigh to my calf and slides down to my ankle after five hip rolling lurches. In other words the Immobilizer is totally useless.
So it's back to Dr. Ankle, rechristened as Dr. Knee, another fucking injury that I need like I need like a motherfucking hole in my head. Another injury to quash all my best laid plans and ruin my summer.
Internets I am moving. I am going to embrace adulthood and buy a house in Portland. I am planning on going in September. That is if my dumb body doesn't go into some kind of adolescent revolt and start shedding limbs just to be fucking contrary.
So everything is going along rather swimmingly. Plans are put in motion, fortified, approved via quorum. Prospect is trumping terror. I am feeling vital and bittersweet. The season has gone lush and the weather is compliant.... Winds of change are breathless in the eves, whispers of promise so languid I stamp my feet goodnaturedly and then WHAM.
WHAM.
Off the moving truck trussed in sunlight, arms empty, jumps for the joy of it. My friend's fantastic new apartment with the other side of the hill view from my own, life is good and I am feeling effervescent.
Skips off the truck and lands squarley, feels a hitch in her knee, disregards.
Pain, nagging, chomping pain builds through the assembling of chairs and the beers that I don't drink. But if I can be reformed about brussel sprouts I can change my mind about beer. It hurts to the point where I am driven to distraction, but I suck it up. Because I am a good soldier and a better mover. I suck it up.
I call the Monster at 8:30 the next morning, after I have stepped out of bed and buckled. After I have dragged myself bodily down the hallway in a cold sweat to the toilet, I don't know whether to puke or scream, all I can think is how the hell am I going to get back down the hallway to the phone. This when all the fears flick through my mind like a flip book, I am all alone, I am less than half clad, I need help, I am all alone and I am not even sure I can make it to my drawers for a nice pair of panties and shirt. I am going to keel midway from the toilet and it's all going to be terribly undignified, how the hell am I going to get a cab to the ER.
Funny who you think to call in crisis. I called my Monster, who came across town in a taxi and sat with me through the mild quotidien terror of the ER on a sunday morning. I in the wheel chair and the hallway littered with the sentient waiting on gurneys, waiting for someone to wheel them back somewhere where they will wait some more. Monster was impatient to whisk me somewhere, anywhere, but that hallway with that linoleum, when the toothless man launched in to the most fabulous/horrifying unpunctuated monologue, I thought surely the man is going to exhaust his very last breath. But he didn't stop, and a magical attendant appeared from behind a secret door to take him to the next weigh station he was still jawing. We looked at each other in slack-jawed amazement, I thought I might cry.
Bowels of hospitals are frightening places, there was an idle gurney waiting for no one before the elevators, smudged with not old traces of blood. I should be an old hat by now, since I realized I have been making biannual trips to the ER for awhile, holding dear friends captive while the docs assess what the hell I have done this time. This time it's a tear in my miniscus, that may or may not require surgery. Only 45 minutes and a couple of thousand dollars will tell as they parse the hums and clicks of the MRI. (god do I love digital imaging, nothing like being confronted by the starkness of your very own bones)
The doc said I had lovely bones.
I was parked across the hallway, wearing my ice pack as an amish cap. Monster saw my bones and went to quizz the doc and I had the strangest of pangs. Those are my bones. It was weirdest kind of intimacy, you have now seen my bones, the core of what lies beneath, I felt nakeder than naked. I felt protective of the femur and the tibia and the disenfranchised knee cap, back lit for scrutiny. At the same time, I wished I could have the films to frame. I am fascinated by my bones. And I like the MRI's even better. So colorful all those muscles and tendons and veins.
I've another brace to add to my menagerie of the horrid boot and the crutches and the ankle braces and the ace bandages. Now I have the Immobilizer. Clunks on to my upper thigh to my calf and slides down to my ankle after five hip rolling lurches. In other words the Immobilizer is totally useless.
So it's back to Dr. Ankle, rechristened as Dr. Knee, another fucking injury that I need like I need like a motherfucking hole in my head. Another injury to quash all my best laid plans and ruin my summer.
Internets I am moving. I am going to embrace adulthood and buy a house in Portland. I am planning on going in September. That is if my dumb body doesn't go into some kind of adolescent revolt and start shedding limbs just to be fucking contrary.
posted by emma at
9:01 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home