The Root of the Problem

Posted on July 11, 2010 by Arizela

So the tooth that started it all – the one that needed the root canal procedure all the way back on Sept 4, 2009… For those of you who don’t know, that root canal procedure led to a severe heart episode that eventually led to my diagnosis with IST. I had symptoms of IST before the tooth problem, but they were very mild by comparison and had been brushed off by myself and doctors alike as asthma and respiratory infections. But even though the tooth didn’t really cause my IST, it is very much the cause of my diagnosis and the current worsening of my symptoms.

It is, in my mind at least, the root of all my problems. I was supposed to have the permanent crown placed this coming week, but it turns out that the crack runs deeper than expected and the tooth is still pretty painful with the temporary crown in place. Which means a permanent crown won’t make things better. The tooth has got to go.

So basically, this one tooth has cost me over $2,000 for the original root canal. $460 for my portion of the initial work on the crown. My good health. My career. My volunteer work. My ability to drive a car. And on my current meds, the reliability of my memory and my ability to concentrate. Now it’ll cost me several hundred dollars for the extraction, and another ~$800 for a replacement tooth implant. And that’s with pretty good dental insurance.

Despite all that, I’m sort of looking forward to having it over with. Wish me luck.

Posted in Broken Heart | Tagged | 2 Comments

From Bad to Better

Posted on July 7, 2010 by Arizela

So a stressful job led to a cracked tooth, the solution of which led to my heart problem. My heart problem led to my rib problem, still on-going and moderately painful. And now the medications for my ribs has led to a serious infection called MRSA – an antibiotic resistant staph infection. It’s a bacterial infection which is curable by antibiotics, but resistant to most antibiotics. It is a very powerful bacteria that spreads easily from person to person, colonizes people symptom free for years at a time, and is presently rampaging through the long-term hospital population and is found spread throughout the community. Most people who come into contact with it have immune systems healthy enough to keep them from getting sick. Healthcare workers are exposed to such massive doses of the bacteria that sometimes we get sick even if we’re otherwise healthy. Once infected, the risk of having it crop up again is pretty significant – so much so that doctors typically recommend that any scar tissue left over from the infection be surgically removed.

When I first got MRSA in 2007, 5 other nurses in my unit at work, and several patients, also became ill with the bacteria. Unlike several of my co-workers, I didn’t require hospitalization. Within 48 hours of the appearance of a small ingrown hair, I saw a doctor. Sunday morning just past, I woke up with what appeared to be a small bruise a few inches from the site of my original MRSA infection. Throughout the day, I noticed it becoming more painful, and by evening, a patch of my skin that was ~2 inches x 3 inches was burnt-red looking. Monday morning, I called my doctor and got antibiotics started ~24 hours after the infection began. It’s clearing up nicely, despite having grown to a size of ~4 inches in diameter.

MRSA is becoming a wide-spread community illness in our modern world. Theories say it was originally caused by the inappropriate use of antibiotic medications, but however they got here, these bugs are here to stay. There are a number of other serious “super bugs” in the community as well these days, including very virulent, drug-resistant forms of HIV and tuberculosis.

Why am I telling you all this?

Because unlike most of the posts on Muse Medicine, this one is meant as health care advice.

As with most pests, getting on top of the problem before it grows too big is the key. Delaying treatment on these types of infections could leave you with an infection so bad that it requires weeks in the hospital on IV antibiotics, or worse, dead.

If you have a wound, a bruise, even a pimple that appears to be infected and rapidly becoming worse, DO NOT WAIT. See a doctor, even if it means going to the local ER. Signs of a severe infection include: bright red discoloration of the skin around the wound (more than a finger-width), pus or foul odor, noticeably warmer skin over the reddened area, pain that is more severe than the wound should produce, or a wound that is eroding and growing larger. If you notice any wound becoming rapidly worse, get help as soon as possible. When in doubt, see a doctor.

Posted in life | Tagged | Leave a comment

Creative Hiatus

Posted on June 25, 2010 by Arizela

I’ve been on an unintentional writing hiatus for a while now. Between the rib pain that won’t seem to go away, and life otherwise just catching up with me after a long spell of nothing going right, I think the creative well just sort of dried up for a while.

No big deal.

No, really. I mean it.

Creative pursuits require a certain amount of creative energy, and unlike most forms of energy, creative energy just doesn’t follow the rules of science. It’s not measurable and objective. It isn’t predictable and stable. Sometimes it hits you out of the blue and throws you into a project so hard you lose track of everything else around you. You get behind on the bills because you forgot to pay them. You run late for work every day for a week because you were trying to get those few more words down. Your spouse and children begin to think you’ve forgotten they exist. McDonald’s cooks dinner at your house more often than you do.

Other times, without a reason at all, it just sort of dries up. You go through a drought. A lot of artists, and writers in particular, greet these droughts with angst and wailing and gnashing of teeth. I suspect that for many people, it hurts to suddenly be without the thing that makes us special, unique, and talented. It’s like being abandoned by a lover or snubbed by a friend. We fear that we will never again catch the muse. We fear that we’ve used up all the magic.

My theory on the whole situation is… eh. Let it ride.

Whatever it was inside me that brought me to the place where I am, where I consider myself to be a creative person and a writer… it’s still inside me. It’s still part of who I am. Maybe it just needs a break, like sometimes my maternal nature needs a break when my son is driving me up a wall. Like sometimes my nursing nature needed a break despite how fulfilling and enjoyable I found my job to be. My creative nature needs a break, too, and unlike the rest of my nature, my creative side is unwilling to function on the modern society timetable that says breaks should happen on vacation days, weekends, and when my son goes to Grandma’s house.

It’ll take as much time as it takes, I guess. It always has. And when that creative nature has had its break and the well is full again, I’ll get that idea that won’t let me go. My husband and son will wonder if I’ve forgotten them, and love me anyway because that’s what makes them so perfect for me. My mail will go unopened for weeks on end. And I’ll produce another story that sweeps me away.

Until then, please enjoy the new Snippets page, where I’ll be posting little chunks of some of the stories I’ve worked on or imagined over the years.

Posted in writing | Tagged , | Leave a comment

On my recent absence and The Mists of Avalon

Posted on June 9, 2010 by Arizela

For the last couple of weeks, I haven’t been writing, or moving, very much. Costochondritis is inflammation in the cartilage of the ribcage, where the ribs attach to the breastbone, and brother let me tell you, it’s a real bitch. I spent most of the last two weeks humped over like someone’s 90 year old granny, trying very hard not to do anything that would move my chest – like breathing.

Given those parameters, my daily activities boiled down to watching television (OMnG, who picks that stuff they put on during the day?) or reading. Marion Zimmer Bradley can be credited with having saved my questionable sanity from the likes of “Real Housewives” and Rachel Ray *shudder*.

The Mists of Avalon is a book I’ve been meaning to get around to for years and never quite managed. It’s a weighty tome, reminding me of the days when hubris and having read just about everything else in the school library led me to carrying War and Peace around my Jr. High. Tucked into my husband’s reclining chair with pillows and a lap blanket, like any respectable debilitatee, I found The Mists of Avalon to be the perfect size to rest on my lap and require no movement out of me other than the turning of pages.

All together, I’d say that it was a very well-crafted story, but not at all what I was expecting. There was a gentleness to the narrative, told from the perspective of numerous female characters, that allowed even murder and violence to be sort of melancholy rather than mortifying. While this is certainly counter to my own style, where the women’s points of view tend to be, if anything, more direct and practical than the men’s, I felt that it was a very effective style for the story being told. Particularly because while the women narrators presented the world in a softer light, perhaps than most war-torn lands would reveal, they were not passive in the story. The women in this story shaped their world, though often by manipulation rather than direct action, and not always to the ends that they desired. The women were both strong and weak, both pawns and directors of fate, and in the end I believe that Ms. Bradley achieved a level of humanity that many writers today miss in their characters.

A worthy read, though perhaps a shade too genteel for today’s market, where readers relish being flung headlong into the gritty reality of worlds like those of Martin, Morgan, and Abercrombie, or so the book marketers would have us believe. One has to wonder, though, how much the audience and the tastes of the audience has really changed in the last couple of decades, and if those readers who are buying today are buying in hopes of finding something they can’t name and can’t seem to find. I know I am.

Posted in Book review, life | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Mini Book Review: The Magicians

Posted on May 25, 2010 by Arizela

The Magicians by Lev Grossman was one of the few books recommended to me recently that I picked up and didn’t shortly put back down. I downloaded the sample chapters for iPhone Kindle, and while I didn’t feel exactly swept away by the narrative, it seemed well written and like it might actually contain some elements of the sort of escapist fantasy I used to enjoy as a kid.

Yeah.

SPOILERS AHEAD (not that most of you will mind, I imagine)

So turns out the teenage protag who gets swept off to magic school ala Hogwarts crossed with a snooty Ivy League college isn’t much of a hero. I don’t really have a problem with this, as a reader, having read and loved some serious anti-heroes in my day. Turns out he’s not really an anti-hero, either. He’s just a grumpy, alcoholic, drugged out idiot who isn’t good for much through the majority of the story and in the end still isn’t good for much.

WTF?

SPOILERS over

This was a vastly disappointing read, with an ending that was not so much bittersweet as… well, just plainly bitter. The good guys don’t win, because you never meet anyone who’d really qualify. You don’t escape to the reality of a fantastical world, because the entire theme of the book is that fantasy is EVIL and will kill you and the people you care about.

It feels like the author’s entire intent was to seduce readers of fantasy with a story that started out looking kind of promising only so he could lecture them about what utter fucking failures they were as human beings for reading fantasy.

Not my cuppa, thanks.

Posted in Book review | Tagged | 2 Comments