Lamia

I watched an incredible movie the other day, “Drag me to Hell”.  It was the kind of gross movie my dad and I used to love to watch together: a hilarious premise, rampant with a ridiculously disgusting level of gore AND replete with dirty gypsies.  Think maggots, gummy (mouth) attacks, projectile everything.  Imagine!  Well, you don’t have to, just download it and watch it immediately. 

In many ways, I saw myself mirrored in the main character, a girl, suddenly and unreasonably afflicted by a series of terrible events, in her case, a gypsy curse- the lamia.  It’s really the only feasible explanation for the accursed events that have befallen me, although in my case I fear that I might have been accursed by a crazy ex boyfriend rather than any Roma types.  

According to the film, the curse is not placed directly on the individual cursee, but rather, on an object owned by the cursee. The only way to rid oneself of a lamia is for the cursee to make a formal gift of the accursed object to another, thereby sentencing that person to an eternity vomiting maggots in hell. 

I need to find my accursed object.  Everyone, y’all be nice to me.

And another Post Script

By the way, I'm no longer just a portal for infection... I am infection.  Well, my face is anyway.  I have to take yet another course of antibiotics. Just another piece of evidence to support my conclusion really.

Portal... & P.S How to Subscribe

I always loved the word portal, it sounds so wizarding doesn't it?! Unfortunately not this time, not in my case anyhow.  My face is falling off, it's peeling away, and according to my surgeon, it is literally, a portal for infection.  While I've spent some time rolling those words around in my mouth delighting in each unctuous syllable, the outcome's actually rather rotten.  The fact that I’m a portal means that that I'm precluded from undergoing further traumatic surgical procedures until the cessation of any and all facial peeling, also, it's jolly unsightly, and jolly painful.

And yes, in case you were wondering, as I wrote the above I was speaking the words to myself as if I were an aged well to do British gent, mustying about in an old man's club surrounded by pipes, tomes and cries of "Balderdash!".

So, in true me, disaster always strikes all the time, the nausea is gone, yet my face is hideous, and is rather sore. The plan going forward is to await the facial healing so that they may proceed to implant what should be the final electrode, (that which they failed to implant in the last chapter), and then miraculously I will be cured, and then I will be delighting in all manner of things the likes of which you've never seen within mere months!  Imagine if it were true.  If only I weren't a portal.

Post Script

Some lovely readers have asked for instruction on how they might subscribe to this blog.  All you need to do is fill our your email address in the box just to the to the left of the very top post.  At the top of the box it says, "Follow Chronically Stimulated by email".   Do that and you'll have me forever, you lucky devils!

Oh, and one more thing, I know of course that portal was used in the Harry Potter books, but I rather meant wizarding in an Enid Blyton kind of way, rather than truly wizarding... hmmm perhaps next post I'll write in a different voice...

Let art represent

I was in Tasmania recently. Partly it was wonderful, I laughed like I hadn't in a long time, and I saw one of my best friends whom I hadn't seen in such a long time.  But partly it was awful, I cried a lot.  I cried because of the pain. I cried because of the things I could no longer do. I cried because of the things I could not hope to do.  The weight of such realisation sure produces fat tears.

We visited my friend and her beautiful family, and despite how I was feeling, we had two jolly evenings together, and it was wonderful.   We visited the Salamanca Markets too, and found an amazing artist named Sarah Millicent Elliot who produces a fantastic range of whimsical art based products- prints, brooches, hair ties and the like. I was drawn to this picture like a magnet, I think because it feels like me... slightly odd, and hanging on by a thread.

Up all night

Sometimes I dream in poetry, rolling verse riding the crest of emotion, and the shadows of hope lost and memories fading. I’m on a rollercoaster, a one track ride without control, dipping in and out of other people’s reality, vitality, normality. I’m screaming inside, and desperately out of focus.  It’s exhausting you know, in its lyricism, and relentlessness.  Even when I'm dreaming, I'm aware, and almost awake, total recall. There’s no respite, be it day or night. 

I’ve had an infection in the incision sites, just to add to my misery, and I've been really nauseous since I got out of hospital.  I’m returning this afternoon for a follow up appointment, and I hope to glean some more information about when and how they might attempt the placement of the last electrode, and snaffle some strong anti-emetics so that the vomitus maximus may finally cease… sorry TMI.  Updates soon I’m sure.  In the meantime, I’m distracting myself with Scandi-noir- I'm a Great Dane.

Never smile at an....

Lights, theatre, action! No, I’ve not been on the stage myself, certainly in the theatre though, you see  I’ve been back under.  I’ve been back under and it didn’t go so well. Despite the attestations, the protestations, the affitmations, it hasn’t gone well at all. The operation, sorry proceduralists, pro-cee-dure, was intended to be a one shot shop, a cure all in a final call theatre session where they brought my base stimulator device up to maximum capacity by implanting an additional three electrodes. That troublesome area would be shot right in its, ahem foot, before it was even able to send out any more of those nasty pain emissaries ( I imagine the signals being carried by miniature giants in my body, riding on great woolly mammoths - like in that amazing battle scene at the Wall in GoT).

There was one in particular that I was hankering for, just one electrode that would correspond with the ol’ nerves along my ribs at T3.   I was certainly encouraging  the other two as well, one electrode to cover the top region at T1, and another to try and attack the dastardly pain from the right hand side. Things did not go to plan.  I AWOKE ON THE OPERATING TABLE! I awoke on the operating table while they were still stitching my incisions, needless to say I am not a fan of the anaesthetist, who tried to laugh the matter away, and then proceeded to prescribe analgesia without any regard for my history.  Instead of waking groggily in the recovery room sometime after the procedure, I left the theatre sobbing with pain, and the trauma of the very event.

Later that day, my programmer came to visit me in my room, in disbelief of the negligence of the anaethetist. Ahh, it wasn’t just in my head.  She also dropped into conversation they’d been unable to place the last electrode, the lower one, at T3.  Apparently the operation had gone overtime, and they couldn’t keep me on the table any longer as I was moving around.. hhhmm , perhaps because I wasn’t ANAESTHETISED?  I’m so crushed, I have no words, oh except those. 

La Mer

It’s been a hiatus alright , of hippopotamus proportions.  Everything seemed to climb right on top of me and squish me flat, not flat enough to squeeze the air right out, but just so that I rather felt like that was happening. There’s been a move, and a holiday, and the thought of another holiday, and the prospect of so many other things, and a series of disappointments.  What was it I said about expectations?  Oh yes, I must read that bit again.  It’s my own fault.  My stupid brain.  Stupid, stupid brain.  The stimulator works, and then it doesn’t, and then it does, and then I get so confused as to what’s happening, I wonder if it finally is in my head, that it wasn’t then, but maybe that it is now. That’s possible isn’t it?  How am I ever going to get back to work? What if I go back, and then I can’t and then I’m stuck, in income protection limbo/ purgatory.. it really will be over, which will be a shame, because we finally have such a beautiful apartment.

Why can’t my chest just get better?  Why can’t it just be like it was in the trial, just the thought of that injustice kills me. But let this not just be a whaleboat of wallow, Let me speak to you of a cruiseliner.  I’m lucky to have a mater who’s a believer in the healing power of the rolling seas.  Yes, I’ve been cruising, with the grey army. Surprisingly, the food, as long as one stayed in the dining room, was remarkably good.  The waiters were adorable, the forced conversation at each meal at times delightful, at times trying, at times downright awful.  But, it was quite the cross section of society, so I suppose that’s to be expected.  I’ve learned that old men just love to bail up young girls and talk about themselves interminably, and that some old people are awfully rude.  I’ve also learned that one should never, ever dare to enter a buffet, and that those people who do gravitate to buffets often don’t know how to use cutlery.  Quelle horreure!  What is happening to the world?  Also, apparently people from Queensland do not own formal clothing.  Ok, judgment session over.  Apart from those obvious glitches, it was a relaxing time, and I had one marvelous morning with the pool all to myself during a torrential storm.  The waves pitched and heaved, as I did with them, and it was an amazing moment in time.  Until the sun came out, the people came out, and the peace was over.  I’m having another surgery tomorrow, I’m having another three electrodes implanted to try and get this dastardly, relentless pain… please let this be the one that works.  I still have to write about all things Tasmania.  More post op!