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"I'm mentally ill, guys!" Why Carrie Fisher kicked ass

Neither of the videos I did on this subject were wholly satisfying to me, as I kept leaving out important stuff. I have no capacity to edit, and it's unscripted, so it goes down the way it goes down.

A lot of the stuff Carrie Fisher talked about was my stuff, too. I found aspects of her life history alarming, but she got through it all and would have kept on going, if she could. And she would have done a lot more good with her honesty and no-holds-barred approach. The thing is - and I have even said this to a psychiatrist - as far as mental health issues are concerned, we have not even had our Stonewall yet. We're in about 1970 now and have a lot of catching up to do. There are signs of it just starting, but I still get irritated at the way it is unfolding. No one has any imagination about this at all. Everyone still thinks in straight lines and stereotypes.

I try to hope. I saw a PBS documentary on Stonewall. An archival interview with the head of the Mattachine Society was most revealing. He defended gay rights, but insisted he wasn't gay himself: "no, I tried it once, but it's not my cup of tea." He also said, "society shouldn't feel threatened. Homosexuals will never want to marry or attempt to adopt children." He said it as if the very idea was preposterous. Which, I guess, it was.

I've written of all this before, and now I am tired of it because of the energy it takes to write, and the way it has to be "good", damn it, I mean not a mess. So now I make videos, and those aren't perfect either, but I know they come closer to expressing how I really feel. It's important that I do that, because Carrie Fisher proved to us all that life is a lot shorter than we think.

Why are doctors such a bunch of assholes?

This is the last day of November, which really should be the "cruellest month":  T. S. Eliot was obviously out of his poetic little mind to say it was April. This day is sort of special, and sort of not, because it has now been 22 years since I had a drink. I have to confess I was afraid to write about this before because I thought that, by some far-flung chance, a publisher might see this and conclude I was a drunken sot and completely unreliable. You can't write about your triumphs because they will do you in ever time.

But on to the topic of the day: otorhinolaryngology, or something like that. My problem goes back many months and still isn't resolved. In June of this year we had a very enjoyable week of holidays in San Francisco, but on the last day I started to feel not-so-good, achy and weak, as if I was about to get the flu.

On the plane home I didn't feel so hot either, but as we started to land, oh God. Both my ears began to shriek with pain, as if someone was driving screwdrivers into my head from both sides. It takes about 35 minutes to land a plane, from that first subtle feeling that you're dropping in altitude to the reassuring thud of wheels on the ground. So the agony went on and on and even increased. "Try swallowing," my husband said, as if it hadn't even occurred to me.  Try to patch a gaping war wound with a bandaid.

The really distressing thing is that I never did have that "pop" that indicates the pressure has been relieved. The pain went on for at least an hour after we landed. There is something truly excruciating about an earache, like a whistling icy wind blowing across a bad tooth. L'angoisse, as the French call it.

Feeling rotten and weak and sure I had the flu, I dragged myself into my doctor's office and left about a minute and a half later. She took out one of those ear thingies, looked in both ears and said, "They look fine." I mentioned flu and she said, "Oh, no, it's not flu (with a patronizing smile). It's just a summer cold."

Months went by. I was completely over my "summer cold", but alarming symptoms remained: every time I yawned or swallowed, there was a noise in my left ear, not the "crackle" described by medical web sites but cannon fire on the side of my head. I could not imagine going back to the doc and having her tell me "well, don't yawn or swallow then" (like the old joke: "Doctor, doctor, I have a terrible pain when I do this." "Well, don't DO that!"). Worse than that was a new symptom: whenever I talked, which I can hardly give up altogether, I heard a buzzy, distorted sound on the left side of my head, like an old speaker with a loose wire or a radio not tuned in quite right. This wasn't from the outside, obviously. It was the sound of my own voice feeding back inside my head. It was also very loud.

Months went by. It wasn't going away in spite of my doctor's instructions to hold my nose and blow. It was worse, in fact. I went to a walk-in clinic and saw another doctor who took out the ear thingie, looked in my ears and said, "They look fine." Then she sat there impassively until I left.

More months, more annoying racket in my head. I was SURE something was wrong in there, this COULD NOT be normal! I went back to that second doctor and she told me to hold my nose and blow, then  finally, with considerable arm-twisting from me, referred me to an ENT specialist in New Westminster, about an hour and a half drive from here.

After still more months of discomfort and cannon-fire, my appointment finally came up. I did not have a good feeling about it. I was pretty sure I would be dismissed again. When I entered the office, I was in a time warp. All the medical equipment seemed to go back to the 1950s, antiquated, as if it should be in the Smithsonian. I had to fill out one of those forms, and one question was about medication, so I wrote down what I was taking. It never occurred to me not to.

 

The doctor, an old impassive Iranian guy who looked like he never smiled, never once made eye contact with me and seemed both bored and annoyed. I told him about my symptoms. He looked inside my ears with that little ear thingie and said "they look fine". His assistant stuck a little rubber probe into each ear. The right side was OK; the left side was just excruciating. I tried to tell him about it and there was no response.

The hearing test was normal, which was both a relief (I don't want to be one of those "EH?" people) and distressing: I knew that if I could still hear, he would soon dismiss me.  As a matter of fact, I had better hearing than almost anyone else in my age group. I was not really surprised: when I'm under stress my hearing becomes so hypersensitive, I can hear a watch ticking across the room, loud enough to keep me awake at night.

Fine,  I have better-than-normal hearing. That means I can hear the cannons and buzzes much more clearly!

The doctor's bored look had hardened: his impassive face had turned to stone. With one last gasp, I tried to tell the doc about my annoying, even infuriating symptoms. He said I should hold my nose and blow, then sat there not looking at me. I kind of went, "Ummmm. . ." In an irritable tone, he said, "Everything is fine. You can go."

I had some thoughts after this big letdown. One, I am not a woman of childbearing years. Older women usually get short shrift because subconsciously, they are not perceived as being "productive" in their natural, God-given function of spewing out babies. Two, I made a terrible mistake in filling out the form: I was honest about the medications I am on.

I am not saying this is conscious - or maybe it is - but when he saw the word "lithium", I think he just crossed me off the list of people to be taken seriously. Lithium equals manic-depressive equals fruitcake/hypochondriac/delusional old bag.

Do you think I exaggerate? My first impulse is to be honest in almost every case. Of course there are a few exceptions, but mainly to spare people's feelings.

But have you ever noticed that with most people, a lie goes down much better than the truth? For one thing, a lie can be tailored any way you want. You can unmake and remake reality, bend it and soften it and take the sting out of it, or - best of all - make it so that it flatters the person you're lying to, even if he's a total asshole.  So , yes, yes, yes, we believe you because it's easier on us, the lie is much more palatable.  There are many advantages to this policy, and much more of it goes on than we consciously realize.

There are sub-categories, of course, including the lie of withholding information. This is the one I definitely should learn to practice, particularly with doctors, who are some of the most heartless human beings I have ever encountered. Don't tell me it's because *I* am being difficult. I bend over backwards to accomodate these bastards and they let me down almost every time.

Result: after 5 1/2 months, I still have the cannon-fire and the loose speaker-wire buzzing inside my head, and it's quite possible I will have this for the rest of my life. If you go from doctor to doctor, well, guess what that makes you? One of "those": meaning those crazy old ladies who are so lonely that they will feign illness to get any sort of attention.

I have no idea what to do now.

I deleted the last paragraph of this post because it was just too angry and bitter, though in my mind it contained some truths that badly need to be told. Trouble is, they're pretty unpalatable the way they are and need to be dressed up.  And I'm not too good at that. My attempts to be honest have gained me exactly nothing except a one-way ticket to that prominently-marked door in every medical office. The one with the four-letter word.

Nephrologist: say it three times, backwards

The surprising thing about being, so help me, 57 years old (as of yesterday: happy birthday to me!), is that your insides age just like your outsides. Or maybe a bit more.

You can't see in there, and if you're not having any obvious problems, you can (wrongly) conclude that everything is chugging away normally.

I seemed to be chugging away normally, except that my doctor (not the one I complained about a few posts ago) noticed an elevation in something called creatinine. Oh dear. Creatinine isn't a good thing if it's elevated. It was, in fact, elevated just a tiny bit, but this particular doctor, being a specialist and a nitpicker, decided to refer me to another specialist who turned out to be an even bigger nitpicker.

This was Dr. Schachter, the nephrologist.

Nowadays, instead of doctoring the whole person, most docs choose one part of the body and study it furiously. There are advantages and disadvantages to this approach.

The advantage is, these guys really know their stuff. Though I didn't know Dr. Schachter and didn't at all know what to expect, I was amazed at how thorough the exam was: far more thorough than the cursory open-the-mouth-and-look-at-the-horse's-teeth thing I have come to expect once a year from my family doctor.

The not-so-good thing is that, in focusing on only one body part, you can forget about all the rest, or not put it in the context of the whole person.

This guy, the nephrologist, had done a dizzying battery of tests on my blood and urine, stuff I'd never even heard of, but that didn't matter because he knew what it was. And he knew all the right questions to ask. He asked a lot of them. This might have got my back up, since some of it was pretty personal (I'm kind of attached to my kidneys), but for some reason it didn't.

Maybe it was bedside manner, a kind of professional concern that is missing from most medical care these days. It's as if doctors are afraid their patients will get attached to them or, even worse, trust them. This is why I often have that shoo'ed-out feeling with certain of my doctors. When you're feeling anxious about something and have it brushed off as hypochondria or sheer foolishness, it hurts.

When you hear horror stories of blatant misdiagnosis or doctors who overlook serious disease completely, it makes your hair stand on end.

This guy, however, well, for some reason I felt completely comfortable, and who knows why. For one thing, he was very (very very very) young. I swear these guys get younger every year. It could be that med schools are finally telling these guys and dolls to please, please consider the whole person while you're focusing so fiercely on those kidney-shaped organs on either side of the torso.

I noticed several other things about my visit. One was that the office, almost brand new, had been built so close to the exit of the Skytrain station that I blew right past it and couldn't find it. The hidden message seemed to be: don't rely on your cars so much, folks, it ain't healthy. Or maybe the property was cheaper, I don't know

Another thing: the waiting room was full, and the average age of the patients must have ranged from 85 - 90. Most of them looked in rough shape, as if they spent most of their time in waiting rooms. One very elderly woman had one of those oxygen thingies on a pole, and she had to wheel it around with her.

I was the blushing young flower of the group at 57. It was strange. Yet, in spite of how ill everyone looked, there was lots of joking and laughing going on, mostly about the indignities of the procedures. I saw this as a form of valour, of not just enduring serious illness but finding a way to transcend it.

After poking, prodding, listening to this and that, and tapping me all over, Dr. Schacter talked to me about my kidneys. They were in pretty good shape at this point, but pretty good didn't mean perfect. I was surprised to learn my blood pressure is somewhat elevated. Ye gods! My body is ageing. So what's happening to this piece of meat inside my skull?

Looks like I will be returning to this oddly-located office at intervals, but I don't mind. Dr. S. is a real sweetheart, the kind of person who makes older women proudly exclaim, "My son, the doctor!".

And the place has one other advantage. It makes me feel so young.

Pie are square (whoops, round!)

I'm not much when I first wake up in the morning, but I had to be up today. My daughter-in-law was stopping by this morning to pick up a newspaper flyer so she can buy one-o'-dem-dar hot water machines (the Keurig type, which we were recently given and couldn't figure out, except that now we're addicted to it, to that little sucking sound as coffee instantly, effortlessly fills your cup).

When I started noodling around this morning trying to find news sites, I hit on the New York Times. I follow Dick Cavett's blog, always backward-looking and dropping names with audible clunks, but somehow as compulsive as celebrity-watching itself.

But on the same page, I saw the link to the food section: "Pies to Die For".

I wonder if anyone else gets the irony.

We hear, constantly, about how unhealthy it is to be obese, about how it strains the health care system almost beyond the breaking point, and about how it's still escalating. It has oozed into the lives of innocent children, kids raised on McDonald's and almost complete inactivity until their arteries are plaqued-up as severely as a 75-year-old's.

Cheek-by-jowl (pun intended) with these alarms are blaring ads for family restaurants serving ever more grotesque portions of really-bad-for-you food. Fast food chains keep upping the ante, with KFC serving up these horrible things made of two deep-fried chicken patties instead of bread (and who knows what the filling is. A pound of deep-fried peanut butter?)

Blecccchhhh! But people are buying it. People are eating it.

Fat is the new thin.

I can't remember a time when the culture wasn't obsessed with thinness. Models and actresses have that translucent look, as if they'd disappear if they turned sideways. Their pictures are splashed all over the women's magazines, their bony chests sticking out like a chicken's, often with weird globular bolted-on breasts that clearly display the join. These space-alien versions of womanhood appear cheek-by-quivering-jowl with recipes for mouthwatering, saliva-gushing, quintuple-chocolate indulgence cake (the recipe always containing at least a cup of butter) and other scrumptious heart-attacks-waiting-to-happen.

Maybe that pie really is to die for.

Oh, I'm a great one to lecture. I've been a shape shifter all my life. Recently, after a major weight loss, I've begun to creep upward again. I'm just hungry all the time. There are certain intractible family stresses that take a constant toll. Or so I tell myself.

The thing is, all that scrumptiousness won't particularly appeal to a naturally thin person. They will take one taste and go, "mmmmmmmmmm!" - meaning, "bleccccccchhhhhhh". It's kind of like a non-drinker trying to get through a cocktail, finally leaving 2/3 of it sitting on top of the piano. (Sick, eh?) So how come so many people have seemingly had their "blecccccchhhhh" mechanism disabled?

It's NOT heredity, folks. You don't "inherit" fat in a couple of decades. Heredity doesn't suddenly jump out at you like a jack-in-the-box, no matter how convenient it is as an excuse.

It's not just the ready availability of four-patty cheeseburgers (Faster! Higher! Greasier! There's a recession on, and we need those obese people's bucks!). Who actually does anything any more? Who walks? Men drop their wives off at the door of the mall, thinking they are doing them a favor so they don't have to walk the one minute or so from the car.

I walk all the time, and quite frankly, I'm a freak. People stare at me strangely, constantly offer me rides because they assume I'm too impoverished or too weird to drive (maybe so!), or offer false congratulations. "Good for you! I should be doing the same thing" (but I'm not, because I don't want to be stared at and considered weird).

When my daughter-in-law, a keen observer of social trends, was looking through her Home Outfitters flyer, she saw an ad for an egg cracker. "So we don't even crack our own eggs any more?" What next, I wonder - some sort of device you attach to the toilet paper roll?

I have tried to swear off those super-hyper-morbidly-obese shows on TLC, because it's hard to look at anyone whose body has become that grotesquely misshapen. They hardly look like a human bodies any more. Like the gargantuan Mr. Creosote of Monty Python, these patients (usually in for bariatric surgery) look like they're on the verge of exploding. They usually say they don't eat very much, and have "feeders" (often wives, though husbands will do) bringing food to them all the time. What kind of food, and how much, we can only imagine, but like a stash of porn, it's kept secret.

For a while, there was a ludicrous series about an obesity clinic in the States which allowed its patients to order in pizza which was delivered right to their rooms.

There's a certain strange term that has cropped up on these shows, and it sounds like the evil scientist in some low-budget 1950s horror flick: panniculus. What happens is, when a person exceeds, say, 500 pounds and keeps gaining, the fat gets confused and doesn't know where to go. Everything is maxed out, so to speak. So, instead of exploding, the body provides a sanctuary for the excess fat: a sort of circular blob, often attached to the abdomen or inner thigh. It lives there, expanding 'til it's full-up and another one pops out somewhere. Dr. Panniculus, the evil wizard of fat, has taken over the body completely.

People in this situation sometimes do lose weight, but they end up looking like deflated balloons, the stretched skin flopping around and making life miserable. It's usually removed, but we often hear that over 90% of people with major weight loss gain it back again, and more.

What would happen then? Would you become a sort of living Mr. Creosote? How much can skin stretch, anyway?

More to the point: where did this plague come from? When I was growing up, we had a neighbor who weighed, maybe, 280 pounds. She was socially shunned and had very few friends, so my mother took her on as a project. (She had caseloads, not friends.) Though it reeked of pity, this at least got her out a little. Otherwise she would have stayed in the house, hidden from sight.

Dick Cavett posted a blog about obesity, and wondered if the circus fat lady of his youth might be considered relatively thin now, or at least unremarkable, not even large enough to qualify for something like gastric bypass.

Will this just keep on going? Where does it stop? I think obesity is affecting about a third of the population now. If something becomes that prevalent, it gradually becomes more acceptable. Or maybe we just don't see it any more.

I recently tried on some clothes, just cheap little tops, grabbing for a Size Large because my ass is so big right now (and the store so tacky). They nearly fell off me. But the Medium slid all over me too. Finally I resorted to a Small, and it was still pretty generous. I wasn't in the Women's(i.e., "plus") section either, just the average range.

I'm not huge, but no way am I small either. I just have a big butt. It has always been a fitting problem. Until now.

Is this size manipulation just an adjustment to the burgeoning bodies of consumers, or a way to make women feel better about themselves? Or just buy more? Is all this a sort of weird rebellion against the imperative to be thin, thinner, thinnest? (If so, the boomerang is about to smack us all on the back of the head.)

Years ago, it used to be considered bizarre and daring for women to wear pants. In the early '60s, long hair meant that you were a pansy. When I was a kid, nobody but sailors wore tattoos, and women never did unless they were in the circus.

We get used to things. They become normal, or at least standard and unremarkable.

Type II diabetes is so common now, people almost expect it. You manage it, but don't try to cure it. Just take your meds, and go on eating.

Food as a cheap, ready drug? Escalating stress levels? Environmental chaos, pessimism and doom? Economic recession? Nature's way of tipping the board and sending us the way of the dinosaurs, as yet another experiment that either failed or just ran its disastrous course?