Category Archives: Personal stories

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Health update; the good, the bad and the ugly

How to Be a Serial Killer

How to Be a Serial Killer (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I promised to post updates on my health situation so here is the next one.Before I get to that, a note to my friends and family:  Some of what you read here may seem scary and it is but there is no reason to worry because I am really fine.

The good:  I haven’t had any more grand mal seizures since the last one I wrote about here.  The bad:  I have had a number of much smaller seizures — they are super short and I remain conscious.  The ugly:  why does the media insist on continuing to give Donald Trump a platform?  No, he has nothing to do with my medical issues but he really annoys me.

My real problem, however, is from the time the seizures hit until later in the day it becomes really hard for me to speak.  Now, I can still understand everything and know what I want to say, I just can’t say it.  It wears off eventually but if you see me and I am super quiet, you know why.

The universe really wants me to be quiet.    Since last year, I have lost my voice to laryngitis more times than I can count.  And mean lost it completely.  When that gets bad, I sound like a sick dolphin.  I have even written comedy about it — one night when this was happening, my mother called and said, “I just hope you don’t have to call 911.”  Oh, thanks, she knows one of my biggest fears in the world is being killed (and probably tortured) by a serial killer.  That night I had friends text me every few hours to make sure I was still alive. (Side note: I knew someone in high school who was killed by a serial killer.  I hate to admit this but when her brother told me my second thought after I am so sorry for your loss, can I do anything, call me anytime was if I know someone killed by a serial killer, the odds are greatly reduced that I will be.)

For some reason these posts about what I am dealing with now are much harder to write than when they are about past events.  That brings me to why I do it; the support I have received here has been really helpful.  It also means I don’t have to explain everything to everyone who asks.  I am truly ok but my reality is a little different and it is taking some getting used to.

And now I have a favor to ask of you.  As much as I appreciate the support everyone has given, the concern I hear in people’s voices when they call is a little overwhelming.  I have great doctors and everything is being done to get the situation under control. This may seem odd as I have told you all everything here but I cannot talk about my health all the time.

Thanks for reading, being there and helping me deal with this.  Once again, I promise, I am really, really, really ok.

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Can someone explain this to me?

English: In January 2009, President of the Uni...

English: In January 2009, President of the United States of America, George W. Bush invited then President-Elect Barack Obama and former Presidents George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and Jimmy Carter for a Meeting and Lunch at The White House. Photo taken in the Oval Office at The White House. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Color me super confused.  President Obama won reelection this week (yay!) and the GOP is running around claiming things like voter suppression, trickery and basic malfeasance.  This after he won most swing states.  This is coming from the party of George W. Bush.

Let me see if I get this right.  Republicans win and it is democracy while if Democrats win, it’s blasphemy.  They didn’t “win an election” they ushered in the “end of days” from the bible. (Can I point out the wins for same sex marriage? Kind of proves the point that the electorate wants Barack Obama to be in the White House.)

Good lord this is tiring.  And I am not kidding about that bible stuff.  I know people who think that.  And none of them are Donald “I cannot let the birth certificate thing go” Trump.  Nor are they Ben “JFK stole the 1960 election” Stein.  And no, they aren’t even Karl “Megyn Kelly has to school me on my crappy math and remind me that the president won because I just hate that maybe I suck” Rove.  Yeah, Karl, you do kind of suck.  Good luck with the super pac, how’d that work for you this year?

In 2000, I worked on the Gore campaign.  By the time election day rolled around, I had been on it for nearly two years.  In my life I have called my mother crying once.  It was when the initial reports were that Gore had conceded and I called sobbing, How did people vote for him?  

I was, in a word, devastated.  DEVASTATED.  Yet, irony alert her — Karl Rove talked about Teddy Roosevelt‘s comments about getting into the arena.  The thing about getting in to that arena is sometimes you lose.  It sucks.  It sucks a lot.  My one consolation was that this is what happened.  I worked for Gore but the country wanted W.  It was years before I would even entertain the idea that the election was stolen and I am not convinced either way.  I never, not for a moment, questioned George W. Bush’s legitimacy as president.  Even if Al Gore should have fought harder with the recount, at the end of the day, he didn’t.  Oh, while I am at it, I didn’t protest the beginning of the Iraq war, which I think was a terrible thing for our country to do (fight the war, I mean). But I didn’t because I don’t believe a, a decision like that should be dependent on current public opinion (Twilight remains popular, do we want that mentality deciding our military decisions?), b, the president has access to more info than me so if he thinks we need to go to war, we do (think FDR in WWII, that wasn’t popular either) and c, I support the president of the United States.  (No, I am not a DINO.)

Note to GOP:  It’s just an election.  There will be another one in four years — though I wish we could wait until after the holidays to talk about it.  You need to focus on better candidate recruitment, get that we are no longer a “Mad Men” country (we are so much more “Modern Family”), and deal with the fact that pissing off big parts of the electorate (women, Latinos, gays) is bad for winning elections.  You lost because you didn’t think that, not because of random conspiracies or anything else.

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You are beautiful, Susie Salmon

Cover of "The Lovely Bones"

Cover of The Lovely Bones

Yeah, I still have insomnia and sometimes when I can’t sleep I watch the movie ‘The Lovely Bones.”  I am watching it right now.

It’s funny.  I loved the movie but hated the book and the reason for both feelings are almost identical.  I will explain.

I hated Alice Sebold‘s book because I related so much to the father.  I know, I know, my father is a dick who beat me mercilessly but I still loved him desperately.  The father in the book works tirelessly to get the murderer of his child.  He never succeeds but he never stops trying.  That upset me terribly.

I loved Peter Jackson’s movie for similar reasons. Take a look at Saoirse Una Ronan in this film.  Take a look at photos of me when I was that age.  We could be the same person.  And I find I relate to her (the character, not the person) in ways that make my heart hurt.

I dunno, maybe it’s a combination of an actress looking like me, some residual love I have for my abusive father and my intense fear of serial killers but this movie has it all.

So, you are still beautiful, Susie Salmon.

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The GOP’s rape confusion

Recently, I have heard a lot from the GOP about rape.  Apparently, women cannot become pregnant if they are raped.  This information would have been very useful to me when I was younger.  When I was 18 to be exact.  That’s the year I was raped and then went four months without having my period.  Not knowing it was impossible for me to be pregnant as the rape I experienced was very forcible, I panicked and went to my doctor.  I was too embarrassed to admit what had happened so I just let her think I had irresponsible sex.  It seemed less embarrassing at the time (now, too).  Silly me!  If I had just told her I had been raped, she probably would have not even given me the pregnancy test!

(Side note: if you read my blog regularly, you know I write a lot about my life and from what you read here, it probably looks like it sucks.  It doesn’t though.  Really.)

Stephen Colbert had it right; anytime any GOP politician thinks they should talk about rape, they should stab themselves in the eye with a pencil.

You’d think the party of Paul Ryan would know better than to stick its head into these conversations.  I thought they were all about facts and figures.  I guess not.  If they were, they would know that one in four women is raped.  That’s right; one in four.  Take a look around you. See four women? One of them has been or will be raped.  True story.

Since I brought it up, I’ll tell you my story.  I was 18.  I had been drinking.  I was at West Meadow beach with a friend.  I met someone whose sister had gone to high school with me.  Irony:  I never remember the names of people I dislike but I remember his.  No, I am not going to call him out here as much as I want to.  Maybe he’s a decent guy now.  He was a jackass then.

Anyway, I met these two guys.  They said they wanted to see if I was a “real redhead.”  Side note:  I am, and yes the drapes match the carpet.  One held me down while the other raped me.  I cried.  For years I felt better about them because they said, “We’re sorry, we didn’t mean to make you cry.” Right.

I grew up at the beach.  It was one of my favorite places on earth.  Looking back, I see that I stopped going to the beach when that happened.  That sucks.

Positives that came from that:  In college I got the SUNY Stony Brook campus to install  a blue light phone system (seriously, you’d think with all the murders at Stony Brook that would have been a no brainer but it took some doing, you’re welcome Stony Brook students) and got a support group together for rape victims. I took survival seriously and I wanted to help others get through that.  I like to think that I made a difference for some people because it took a lot to make a difference for me.

I am not “over” what happened to me.  I am not of the school of thought that thinks rape is worse than murder. If I had been murdered, I never would have any of the cool things I have been able to do.  I am a different person than before that happened.  Not better nor worse, just different.  It bothers me when people discount rape in the way the GOP has been.  Had I become pregnant, it would have possibly killed me.  Despite the GOP hype, no one is “pro abortion.”  I am pro-choice but if I had become pregnant, that decision would have been horrible.  It is horrible.  I don’t know what I would have done.  My pro-choice side thinks I would have had an abortion but I don’t think I would have.

I am pro-choice because there is one piece of real estate that I want to always be able to control.  That real estate is my own body.  No, right wing, you don’t get to lease my uterus. I don’t like abortion.  In the years since this has happened I have become pregnant and miscarried (it happens more often than you might think, and yes, I am trying to justify what I think it a basic failure on my part as a woman — if I cannot bear children, what’s the point of me?) and that’s why I am not sure if that event would have resulted in an abortion.  I just don’t know.

What I do know is that I should make that decision.  Not Mitt Romney (or Paul Ryan).  Not Todd Aiken.  Not anyone who doesn’t answer to the name Alyson Hillary Chadwick (how crazy will I feel if there is another person with that name?)

So, GOP, you want me to think there is no “war on women.” You want me to think you care about things I care about.  Maybe you do.  Talking the way you do about rape does nothing to make me believe you.  Stop.