Giving In Without Giving Up (or, Hey! Maybe I won't barf after all!)

I got a lovely email today from reader Jean Ping, who likes to make my life easier by summing up her message in the subject heading.  Hers read:  "Hey, are you OK?"

Seeing as how, she added with kind concern, I haven't posted to this blog in several weeks.

Jean is psychic, and has sworn to only use her powers for good.

I'm not OK at all, and I'm really glad she brought it up.

I've been doing the girl-macho thing.  These past several months, I've sort of faced up to my health problems; but still, as soon as my symptoms let up even a little, I go into heavy denial mode. I'm fine!  I'm great!  I'm busy!  Can't do that whole health thing right now!

Don't get me wrong -- I take care of myself.  I exercise when I'm well and even when I'm only halfway well; I'm mostly vegetarian, big on the whole grains and fruits and veggies.  I sleep.  Even shower sometimes.

This past week has been a not-so-gentle wake-up call, and I'm putting that out here mostly so I don't get arrogant again and decide that everything's fine and dandy and I can deal with this on my own.  Doctors?  I don't need no stinkin' doctors!

I've spent most of the last two months grappling with various fun symptoms. The past four days have been a torture session of gut-wrenching nausea, screaming headaches, and numbing exhaustion.  I spent most of Friday and Saturday bedridden, desperately trying not to puke my painkillers.

Okay.  I give.

I'm still wearing the eyeglasses of pain (my fellow migraine sufferers know what I'm talking about), and still feeling pretty swimmy; but it's all at a level I’ll laughingly call workable at this point.

I am now frantically trying to make up for a lot of time lost this summer -- lost partly to research for an article that will end up being in the issue after this one, but lost mostly to my own refusal to listen to my body's demands that I give it some damned attention, already.

We -- my husband, who has been an absolute rock through all this happy-happy-joy-joy, and I -- are currently working our patooties off on issue #4.  It's almost done, and then off to the speedy-quick printers.

I have also printed up labels for all the issues that have been ordered since the last time I did a mailing.  I'll be doing a big mailing tomorrow.

SHM is alive and well, and will continue to be so. I intend to follow its good example.

This is not an invitation to a pity party.  I just want people to know that I'm alive, on-duty, and this issue is in fact coming together beautifully.  I've even managed to sketch out a few ideas for theme issues for the upcoming year.  More about that soon.

For now -- thank you, Jean, for checking in, and for looking up endometriosis so I didn't have to explain.  You're right, it's a total yuck and it is surgery I'm looking at.  Surgery that may not even help, in the sense of treating my symptoms.  But I think that just knowing of a certainty what I'm dealing with will be a help.  I think it will be a help if I can make myself face the fact that there's a time to try and tough things out, and a time to sit down with the calendar and start marking out what are most likely to be days when I'll feel well enough to be a thinking creative person, and what are the days when I'd better count on only being able to do comparatively mindless work.

It's time for me to stop being tackled and surprised by this thing, whatever it is.  It's painful, it's exhausting and it's degrading; but it's also cyclic, and therefore to a certain extent predictable.  If I'm willing to admit it.

I've always been willing to work my ass off; now maybe it's time to use my head a bit instead. Time to start being just a bit of a practical grownup, even.  Not enough of one to kill off the creative kid in me that got this whole thing started, but enough to help her keep it going.