content warning: chronic illness
Patient: 91-16-19
Age: 31
Date of Injury: Birth
Drug Use: Complicated
Goals: Anywhere but here
Social History: Traveled out of the country twice. Can no longer make it through a grocery store.
Work Status: Employed
Children: 0
Occupation: Chronic patient
Mental Health Update: There are a thousand different roads to insanity. Chronic illness might be the fastest route. I press palm against clay, tearing off pieces to make different shapes and patterns. I walked into the ceramics class not knowing what I would make, but here I am, kneading the gray matter into a slab of wood beneath me and thinking I’m going to make a mug . . . with a cactus . . . and maybe even a sunset . . . Should I add a mountain range?
It feels good to be creating in a form that isn’t words. I’ve spent so much time journaling this past year that I’ve dried each pen of its ink. There’s a sense of release with this new creation. I’m no longer confined to a page, to myself.
When class ends, I’ve finished the mug. I hold it up to the light, scanning for imperfections in this handmade desert: a few cacti, a mountain range with a sunset, a thin handle hugging its side. On the drive home, I realize that I haven’t
thought about the pain for the first time in over a year. Yes, it was spiking every so often to let me know it was there. Yet, it wasn’t all-consuming. I take a deep breath. I’m learning to live with it. The thought is both angering and a source of pride.
Past Medical History: Spina Bifida. Endometriosis. Neuropathy. Hysterectomy with a side of generalized pain. A list so long I wonder if I killed somebody important in my previous life.
History of Present Illness: Each new year brings a new diagnosis, or maybe they are merely a progression of ones that had already been there, dormant and waiting. I am torn between hope for better days and the hollow feeling that I will always need treatment, just another medical record to be filed away. In a word: unsalvageable.
Patient complains of: Fatigue, joint pain, overthinking, muscle spasms, hallucinations, a ghost.
Medications:
- Antibiotics to prevent infection.
- Stomach medication to soothe the effects of the antibiotic.
- Pain pills (various).
- A pill to decrease inflammation.
- A mouthwash to help with the dehydration caused by the pain pills.
- A sleeping pill to counteract insomnia caused by all of the above.
- A dog for when everything fails.
Previous Surgeries: I stopped counting at twenty-five. That was years ago. I stand in the mirror and poke at scars, trying to appreciate the beauty of resiliency. Adulthood has turned me into my mother. I no longer only look like her, but I am fighting the same way she once did before I developed a voice, anger. She fought when I was too young to fight for myself and had been there to oversee so many different things. In a word: protect. She’d fought for better coverage, a better doctor, or a change in medication so that she didn’t have to watch her daughter linger with the side effects again. She’s fought and fought and fought . . .
Hospital Stays: Enough that the repetition of monitors sounds more like a lullaby than any lullaby ever could. It is a song and a message: I am here. I am still alive. I close my eyes, and the weight of the dark room feels heavier. Sounds emanate from the nurses’ station just outside the door: the quick typing of nails against keys, a tired sigh, a sip of lukewarm coffee at midnight. Only the ceiling peers back as I open my eyes to the sound of footsteps. A nurse is hurrying to check on a patient. I try to follow the sound of her steps, eventually moving past them and down the hall. Here, it’s less quiet: the ding of an elevator, the squeak of wheels against the linoleum as another gurney is taken away. If you listen close enough, you might hear a nurse weeping as quietly as she can. Death is always personal.
Doctors involved in care: Dr. I still have ten patients ahead of you. Dr. It’s all in your head. Dr. I’d really love to help, but this isn’t my specialty. Dr. KnowAll. Dr. In it for the money. Dr. Has done everything they possibly could for you.
Plan of care: Continue to monitor. Send to specialists A, B, and C—all the way to Z. When tests come back inconclusive, increase pain medication, tell her she has “faulty wiring.”
Physician recommendations: Drink more water. Accept the pain. Try to de- stress. Yoga. Epsom Salts. Spiritual Bath. Have you tried turmeric?
Plan of Care: I go outside each morning to watch the sun rise over the valley. I turn on a meditation app and let my mind wander until that inevitable moment I’ll have to drag it, kicking and screaming, back to reality when the timer hits zero. This therapy outweighs all the others prescribed by my physicians. I take a deep breath, imagining sunlight filling my lungs, this body—every place wrecked with disease.
Sometimes patients go into what is called the anxiety spiral. Another word: catastrophize. Each problem swells like a balloon that never pops. One problem grows bigger than the last, all the what if ’s and when will it ever end’s expanding quicker than the worry can be released. These moments of rising with the sun are a treatment beyond medication, a shackle that keeps me from spiraling into the void. I’m in it for the long haul; no denying that. The plan: survive.
Summary: I’ve tried breathing away the pain for a while now. I’ve prayed so many times I wonder if God cringes at the arrival of my words to his inbox, each one louder and more persistent than the last, an all-caps response CAN YOU THROW ME A FREAKIN’ BONE HERE?! It’s merely another way of asking God, what has happened to my body? God, why won’t you give me an answer? Where are you—if you are here at all?
Rebecca Loggia has been writing stories since childhood, eventually earning a degree in creative writing at Arizona State University. Her work has been published in Allegory Ridge, Dogwood, Harmony Magazine, Open Minds Quarterly, and elsewhere. Her poem “Infirmary” also placed third in Phoenix Sister Cities 2017 Writers with Disabilities Competition. She is a reader for CRAFT and a Teaching Artist for the Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing. She lives in Arizona with her dog, Natasha, where they cherish each sunset and dream of other worlds.