I finally got off my lazy duff and posted the interview that another cool blogger did with me as part of the Great Interview Experiment. To see it at my writing blog, click here.

Technorati Tags: Citizen of the Month, It’s Just What I Do, The Great Interview Experiment

My inner blogger just could not quit taking notes during my recent illness and hospital stay. The people and facts duly noted include:

• The nurse’s aide who wore so much Axe cologne I began to wonder if it could double as anesthetic. It enveloped me, burning my nose all the way to the CAT scan room. I tried mouth-breathing, but then I swear I could taste the stuff in the air. That was worse.

• The way a properly prepared TB skin test looks — a very small disturbance of the skin surrounded by a black Sharpie marker’s circle and big ol’ scribbled letters. Looks like the nurses tagged me with a little hospital graffiti. (Negative on the test results, by the way.)

• A rueful look at my own errors. Before one discovers one is sick enough to go to the hospital and is still experimenting with over-the-counter care, it’s now duly noted that genuine abdominal illness should not be confused with extreme gas pains and treated with Gax-X and a series of butt-up gymnastic positions and writhing in bed at home to encourage the painful poot to escape. Apparently, I was trying to fart out an ovary.

Technorati Tags: hospital observations, gas pains, TB skin test, too much cologne

Photo by V@lentina, Creative Commons 2.0 license, some rights reserved

Note: This is one of those touchy-feely posts where I talk about body image, fat, fears, and other intensely private stuff. If it’s just too icky for you or if you think the notion of writing a letter to one’s own body is a bit too precious of a literary conceit, please just skip this post. I won’t mind a bit. :o) And thanks to SJ at Pseudotherapy for this post idea. It’s a letter long overdue.

Dear Carolyn’s Body,

For two who used to be so close, we sure have drifted apart. It’s been so long since we really talked that I hardly know what to say anymore. How long has it been — since 1987, when we were still doing those awful hour-long morning disco aerobics together? God, we were skinny then, and then you surprised me by finding that ugly lump on my throat that was the start of my thyroid problems. Then I was careless and burned your feet so badly in that chemical fire just a few months later it took you months to forgive me. And once we were back together again, I even hauled your ass to the other side of the state after my divorce. Still, we stuck together.

It hasn’t been close between us for years, though. I have tried to reason with you to stop letting your clinginess issues affect our fat cells, but you just laugh it off or get huffy and change the subject. You asked for my help more and more often, and I got so tired of giving you good advice and just watching you self-destruct that I just started letting your calls go to my answering machine. Yeah, I screened you. After all, we’d catch up at some point when we were both more together and had more time and it was all less of a pain, right? Funny how that time came so seldom.

After 46 years, we were still together, but only out of mutual indifference. You were the relative I loved but secretly was mortally embarrassed by. I was the nag who took all the fun out of everyday life when I paid attention to you.

There’s no wonder we had this big health crisis last week. A big blowup almost seems inevitable in retrospect.

You’ve been cool to me and have just shrugged off your illnesses in recent years without making me worry too much about them. You’ve been quiet since we had that big discussion when I said I was tired of all your bitching and moaning and you either needed to make some changes in your life or just shut the hell up about it and accept your life AS IT WAS because no one wanted to hear you complaining. Fine, you told me, and you slammed that door pretty hard. I felt like a heel, but you needed to hear it. But you didn’t get off your butt like I hoped. You just sat around and got sicker and didn’t say much. And what you had to say, I didn’t listen to because I was too mad at how you’d failed me.

We’d had our tiffs over the years, where I’d pinch way more than the Kellogg’s inch or slap your flabby thighs and look at you with disgust. And you’d respond in your passive-aggressive little way with excess stomach acid and headaches and the occasional way-too-literal pain in the ass of hemorrhoids. I endured your horrible sense of humor at sending me my period EVERY SINGLE FRIGGING Valentine’s Day. You cringed but didn’t say anything to make me quit joking about my obesity, even after people stopped correcting me when I made self-deprecating fat jokes.

We were like one of those couples you see squabbling in the supermarket who everyone just wants to tell to SHUT UP already.

But last week I came to realize just how important you are to me. When we were in the hospital and you’d gotten too many fluids and the nurses just were not understanding that you really COULD NOT BREATHE well, I was the one who stayed up with you all night, walking you around or helping you find good TV channels or making obsessive lists of chores due back at home until morning finally came and you were dealing better with that panicky breathless feeling. And then your doctor came and listened to us, really listened, and she agreed that you were right. You really DID know what was wrong with you. And I think you appreciated that I stood by you and stood up for you.

It feels like things are changing for us. I hope they are. I hope you can trust me again to treat you with respect and kindness. I hope you won’t lose your temper at me too much anymore. And maybe we can work through our issues and help each other.

I don’t want to lose you, old friend. Nearly five decades together should count for something, and anyway, I’m in it for the long haul with you. I hope you feel the same way and that it’s not too late. We just cannot go back to the way we were. What’s that they say about relationships — that they grow or die?

Let’s get back to well and then I want to be there for you, encouraging you to get healthier without being so mean to you about it. Will you forgive me and work with me?

I never want to be this out of touch with you again.

BFF, Carolyn

Technorati Tags: sick, health, obese, open letter to my body