TPN

I feel mildly accomplished today. I’ve been studying for several hours. I showered. I went to wally world (and 20 minutes after taking two aleve, I am pain free. *rolls eyes*). I rescheduled my therapy appt for Tuesday instead of Wednesday. I picked up milk for M. I even ate a bowl of cereal. Go me. heh.

I also randomed across a diary entry about Terry Shiavo or however you spell her name. It makes me angry, the fuss that’s being made. I don’t even care about the outcome as much as I care that….that hundreds and thousands of people die every day. People are raped and killed. Shot. Stabbed. They drown. Get hit by cars. Die on the operating table. They take their own lives or sacrifice their life to save another. We don’t hear about them. We don’t hear about the 100 other families that are deciding whether or not to take out the feeding tube this very moment. We no longer hear much about the significant others who aren’t even allowed to SEE their dying partner because some bitter mother deems it wrong. Think about that. Imagine your 40 year old daughter is laying in a hospital bed breathing her last breath. And you won’t let the woman that she loved, the woman that she lived with, the woman that she struggled to make a life with, despite all adversity and social stigma….you won’t let the light of her life even SEE her. WTF? HELLO! If your daughter weren’t dying, she’d sit up and punch you in the frigging mouth. Because at that point, the ONLY ‘best interest’ you’re interested in is YOUR OWN.

I have a hard time believing that this God-thing meant for humans to be sustained by 4 feet of plastic tubing and 8oz of mush every 6 hours. What kind of a life is that? Tell me, would YOU want to sit in a glass room watching things pass in front of your eyes – not even being able to turn your head to see them – for 15 years, without being allowed to interact, to sing, to laugh, to cry, to scream out loud? At this point, I wouldn’t be praying to be kept alive, I’d be praying to please, for my sake, let me go. Just let me go.

If Heaven is supposed to be wonderful, if we go to meet God when we die, if that’s supposed to be the ultimate joy…..why must we hold on so long? Why are they strapping that poor woman to this ‘life’ where she can do nothing but lay on a bed, instead of letting her pass on to beauty and glory, on to a ‘body’ or whatnot that works, on to life everlasting or whatever you’d like to call it? Why do we force her to stay….because we’re selfish motherfuckers, that’s why.

Even if they keep that tube in and she ‘wakes up’ in 5 years….it’s not going to be the Terry that they knew. It’s going to be a body without strength. She’ll have to learn to walk again, to speak again, to feed herself. It’s not like she’s just been on Pause for all this time. Her body has been disintegrating, and her mind.

I’m not trying to be cynical. Or cruel. What kind of “life” would she have? One full of frustration. Probably of anger at having lost so much of her time on earth. Confusion- the world has changed a hell of a lot in the last decade. It’d be like….Nell…that movie with Jodie Foster…where the little girl was raised in the woods without contact to human society, and then they tote her off to the city. She was terrified. This is much the same.

And. You know. I’m not just babbling because I’m angry at the situation. I’m thinking about me, about my future. In many respects. For one, I’m thinking about what I would want people to do if it were me. I can see it now….Mum wanting me kept alive, M knowing I would just want to be let go…geesum. I would hate to know that I’d be the cause of such strife and ill feelings and battles. Gawd knows I hate to be in the middle.

And I look at it too in terms of my future career. I want to work with children. Possibly with cancer patients. Definately with more long-term patients, not just an ER or surgical floor where people are in and out in 2 days. I need more connection than that. So. Kids, cancer.

How many patients am I going to see in similar situations? Children in the last stages, screaming in pain, crying until they have no tears left to cry. Adults, begging begging begging for someone to just put them out of their misery. The law deems it unethical to just administer a few extra cc’s of morphine, ya know? To just tweak their meds enough to edge them quietly and painlessly out of this life and onto whatever is next. And I know this. And I know it will be one of the hardest things in my life to follow the law instead of my heart. Granted, it will be made easier by the fact that I technically won’t -really- know them well enough to know that that’s what they *truely* want, that it’s not just a in-the-moment type thing.

And yeah, I’ll follow the law, as fucked up as it is sometimes. Or I’ll find another job. Or…I don’t know. I guess it’ll have to wait and see, when I come to the situation.

And I think, perhaps I’m just pessimistic. I mean, I have spent the last several years trying to extricate myself from this existance. I’ve swallowed the pills and thrown them up again. I’ve sat with the blade on top of those crucial veins…up the interstate, not across the road- make it count….I’ve walked the dark streets at nite, waiting for trucks or maniacs to do what I never quite got up the guts to do. So. Yeah. Maybe I don’t have the clearest picture going on for me.

But. Like I said in an entry or so ago….Other than little snippets of “familiar uncomfortable comfort”….sure, I’ve wanted to cut and cut like crazy. But I’ve not wanted to kill myself.

I stood for a long time tonite, in front of the many, many analgesics in Wally World. I knew I wanted aleve. But. You have so many choices….24, 50, 100, 150 pills. Do I get the 150, just in case That feeling, That need, comes back? You know…always be prepared? Do I get the 100, just to test myself, to see if I’m as strong as I’m trying to be, to see if I can avoid temptation? What do I do, what do I do….

I settled on the 24. For several reasons. First, because I really don’t take pain releivers very often and so didn’t feel like spending money on things I didn’t really need. Second, because J and I have had the conversation several times, about how it’s so much easier for me to -not- cut when there aren’t razors in the house….why tempt myself, ya know? It’s not being weak to keep them out of the house, it’s just being logical. So, I didn’t need an extra 100 pills laying around waiting to grab on to those 3am scary-time thoughts.

My point is, I’m a lot more clear headed now than I have been for a pretty long while. And I may not adore life and all of its intricacies. But I’m relearning to appreciate the little things again. Slower than I’d like. But. Ya know. One bite at a time…

But still. If I’m ever laying on a hospital bed in a coma or whatnot…give me a couple months. Maybe a year. 18-24 months max. And then just let me go. It’s not that I don’t love you enough to want to stay. It’s just obviously my time to leave. And your time to stop worrying and wondering.

It’s ok, really.

Just let me go.