Jessicarrot

I have these really vivid dreams once in a while that I wake up still smelling, hearing or tasting. I’ve always “believed” in dreams… that they have some kind of mystical power in my life. I fell in love with India when I was in community college. My professor was an old hippie who was a brilliant story teller and a world traveler. One day in class he brought slides of India. They weren’t National Geographic–just a split second of reality there. Refined, explosive, colorful chaos. A million lives intertwined at once in the smallest space imaginable. I was so hooked. I dreamed of India, the color of the sun there. And when I eventually ended up there I noticed immediately that the light of the sun was indeed a different color. So I had this dream years later after returning from my world travels that I was back in India. Only I was back in time as well. What made the dream so vivid was the beating of drums. I have no internal rhythm, I’m totally challenged that way. I have no hope of ever blending in at an aerobics class. Something about me is just a-rhythmic enough to render me completely uncoordinated. Anyway, the dream was so real because there was a deep rhythmic drumming starting out distance and then getting closer. Elephants feet added to the rhythm and made it even more of a vibration to hit you at the core. And then, like some wild scene from a film gates flew open and Elephants and a procession burst into a makeshift graveyard. There were rows of shallow graves and bodies lightly dressed ready to be buried. The procession came in and these tribal gypsies started dancing through the rows, pausing in the music when appropriate to kiss each corpse. When the dead were kissed, they would fly up, unnaturally and start dancing. Nothing about the dream seemed morbid at the time. It could have been a film from Bollywood except that there was no singing. I woke up from that dream still hearing the drums beating. I don’t think it meant anything, it was just a gift from my brain. I’ve had plenty of dreams that I knew meant something when I woke up. Or days later I would discover what they meant. I think its too bad that there is no way of recording dreams. Its impossible to remember all the details. When you wake up they are just an echo.

The thing about honesty is that it sometimes gets you nowhere. I no longer have a thyroid which makes me dependant on synthetic thyroid hormone drugs. I had a heck of a time getting a Dr. to prescribe them to me. After my thyroidectomy the surgeon wouldn’t prescribe any to me because he is used to a very tight schedule of surgery and 6 weeks later radioactive iodine therapy. But that doesn’t work for me because I’m breastfeeding an infant. And I can’t have radioactive iodine until my breasts are completely dry or I run a much higher risk of getting breast cancer. None of my appeals worked on the surgeon’s student Dr the day after my surgery, poor thing I think I almost brought her to tears I was so frustrated. So I had to wait patiently until someone from my Endo’s office called back. Dr.s are very busy people, and I can appreciate that because I have a hard time returning phone calls myself. But I wonder if I would be better at it if I were getting paid to return calls… Anyway, two weeks after my surgery my Endo finally sent me a prescription for cytomel, which is for some reason an inferior replacement hormone and only seemed to make thing slightly better. Three weeks after my surgery I saw the Nuclear Medicine Dr. and he finally gave me the prescription for synthroid that I was looking for. I noticed that the Nuclear Med. Dr. neglected to circle on the sheet how many refills I get and I thought at that brief moment, maybe I should just circle one…hmmm. I decided not to or forgot, but now I’m cursing my honesty because I have run out of my synthroid and am back in the run-around trying to get a Dr. to call in the Rx for me. I feel like some junkie trying to score narcotics the way people are carelessly blowing me off. The pharmacist assistant who I originally explained my situation to is extremely rude every time I call to check and see if the Dr. has called it in yet. And the Nuclear guy who I finally got in touch with after talking to three different assistants and 2 Dr.s in the department (someone connected me to the “reading room” where I guess they hang out) said he’d call it in later tonight and then said that I need a blood draw to make sure I’m at the right dose… except that I’m not on anything at the moment so I don’t know how helpful that will be… WTH?? I’m considering ordering my drugs from Canada, just a couple of clicks and a cc# and I don’t have to watch my hair fall out trying to get someone to give me access to a drug I now can’t live without.

Today was one of those not-much-got-done Saturdays. It really affects my mood when not much happens on Saturday. And since its the first Saturday of the year I’m doubly annoyed. New Year is always such a downer to me. It always has been. I think I just wish we could stay in the sparkly buzz of Christmas a little longer. Every year it whooshes by faster and faster. One thing I did accomplish was putting all the Christmas decorations away. And I took the children for a walk. Getting outside is always helpful, and seeing my children run and play is always so fun. So in an effort to try and lift myself out of my New Year depression I think I’ll write a list of some of the things I have to look forward to this year… I like lists.

1. The conclusion of Masterpiece Theater’s Jane Eyre tomorrow! *Ahhhh, now they are doing a Jane Austin complete works series…I’ve died and gone to heaven!

2. Asher’s birthday this month, he’s turning 6!

3. Getting baseboards put back on our house.

4. Making something pink and sweet for Valentines Day.

5. Getting my new vacuum in the mail.

6. Having ceiling fans in all the rooms for summer.

7. That short period between winter and spring where the weather in NC is perfect.

8. Longer days.

9. All the sweet milestones Hannah will reach this year. First roll over, first tooth, crawling, maybe even walking!

10. Having all my kids home in the summer!

So some of the things I’ve been thinking of lately. One is a mediocre to crappy plot for a story which must be in the crappy category because when I thought of writing it down it made me just want to go back and delete. Its great how you can do that when you are writing. So many times I wish I could go back and delete things that I’ve said… instead they churn over in my mind, litanies of unpleasant words I’ve said. Blah. I am taking this opportunity to throw out a blanket apology for stupid things I might have said to people. People, I say stupid things sometimes. I’m in an introspective mood. This probably isn’t good.

So the past year brought me to the age of 30 and the seeming conclusion of my life as a “healthy” person. The only marked difference I can feel at the moment is something that is gone haywire with my heart. I guess that is a big deal. I don’t want to be a downer but I think the hardest part of getting cancer is that you become a person with cancer. In my case I might be a person with cancer and a heart condition. All of the sudden. I’ve never broken a bone, never had my tonsils or appendix out. I have had 4 easy, complication-free pregnancies and deliveries. Now, somehow I am inextricably diseased. Being categorized like that bothers me. For health insurance purposes I am a money-loser, a risk. The heart trouble came about, I believe as a result of the thyroid surgeries. At least that is the first time it ever registered. I spent an entire day with a young cardiologist who literally made me wait in the exam room for over 4 hours while he researched on the Internet possible conditions I could have. Which made me think that there must not be anything wrong with me. Since I have diagnosed myself with low-blood calcium which does affect the electrical function of the heart. But one thing that struck me when I was going through the long day with the young cardiologist was that he said that I had 2000 extra beats when they had me wear the holter monitor. (Now I’m not sure how you can really calculate “extra” beats…maybe premature beats is what he said?) I asked him how many heartbeats do you get in a lifetime? I don’t know if he didn’t hear me or didn’t know, but he didn’t answer my question. So good old google gave the answer, about 3 billion give or take a couple hundred million. So I was going to try to do the math to figure out how many days of my life 2000 beats extra would take off. Because did you know that all species get approximately the same number of heartbeats in a lifetime? Yeah, hummingbirds don’t live that long, but their hearts beat super fast. Elephants live a long time with slow heartbeats. So it seems to me that you get so many heartbeats a lifetime, there must be some mortal equation God has worked out. Some people live longer than others, so do their hearts just use up all their beats faster? They say that before an execution people’s heart-rates go insanely high. Is that the heart’s way of using up as many as it can before its prematurely extinguished? Hearts are associated with things other than pumping blood. Love, decision making. The heart is what makes us mortal. So I didn’t get very far with my calculation because for one, I don’t know how many zeros are in a billion. Hello google. Apparently, there is no solid answer for that. Did you know that it depends on where you are from? Seriously, a billion in America has 9 zeros and in Europe it has 12! So does that mean that Europeans live longer? Um, wikipedia? Yep. Now if you know me, you would wisely surmise that there is no way I could ever have figured out mathematically how many years are being shaved off of my life with 2000 extra beats per day. I have never been good at math. I literally have nightmares that my diplomas are being taken away from me because I didn’t pass that math class after all…college and high-school diplomas. And I have to go back and take high-school math. Nightmare. Anyway. I’m thinking that if I move to Europe now, the extra 3 zeros in a billion might somehow absorb the 2000 extra beats and I’ll live a normal, healthy lifetime.