how to score pain pills, and how to spot a druggie

Doctors, please pay attention.

It's really simple actually, to spot a liar. You're not as bad as you think you are.

Here's one clue: lies never hold water for long.... people's memories generally last about three months. Ask anyone who has to deal with liars long enough. You keep their close company for a month, and you'll see the lie, easily.

However, I know all y'all get scant contact with effing patients these days, so here's what you do. You use those notes you have to keep, by law, and you ask the patient questions which you already know the right answer too. If you don't like the explanation, well, no medical lawyer would fault you (I'm not one, so best consult with them first ;). I know a few though, so if you need any names.... just ask ;)

I can't spit in my family without hitting a lawyer. Not that I'd spit....

No seriously....

So I realize as I have been neglectful here, so have I been neglected... 38 followers? What, no one has time for more than a sound byte these days?! As well, consider if you are actually reading this blog, you are among the 38 most loyal, most refined.... I dare say I bet you call me a friend! So friends gather 'round, because I'm about to take you on the reading journey of your life.....


It all started, I believe, on a Valentine's day in 1973. Fourty weeks is about right... I was an induced labor, so maybe not so auspicious and romantic a beginning.... or maybe so. Who knows.

My mother, ripe crazy bitch that she is (evry sexy woman is a little crazy, otherwise they wouldn't sleep with you ;) Just when you find out they're *really* crazy? For god sake don't marry it!!! (Hi, John, thanks for stopping in ;)

So my cat is blind, and so am I (nearly.... no seriously, they have to reinforce the little lenses in the "glasses" I get because...... effing blind!



So here's the thing.... todays problems are the jokes of tomorrow, out pain should be spoken, it should be shouted as loud as you can, grab people by the throat and say, now Ducky, you will pay attention to ME!!!!

I knew a man once with a secret. And dead men tell no tales. His name was Jeff of House of Gord, and I did some ehh..... let's call it "modeling" back in the day. If you want to know me at my sexual "peak" (because everyone knows women get more skilled with age... and more forgiving of foibles too, boys, that's why you love older women, lol!)

Anyway.... so I was doing this modeling gig because I was young, dying, broke and had no SSDI yet.... no nothing. So what are a few dirty pictures? It's the new millenium, right?

Well....yeah...anyway. My stage name was the old formula: your first pet's first name (Sugar) and your middle name (Wilson). My real first name, Pamela, means the honey elf, sweetness, or other such deritivatives. So it was fitting.

Wilson is an old family name for my great-great-aunt (all the best relatives are your parent's siblings because they know how nutty your parents were/are, so they have ALL the dirt, and know you well enough to think you deserve the Really REAL story instead of the carefully crafted lie your parents made in hopes of protecting you (and their wounded egos ;)

So.....rambling, yeah, seem to be good at that.

here's my promise. I will try, every day, as best I can to send out some message somewhere to let you know I'm alive and well. Well, if not well, alive lol.

YOU promise to check in on me for as long as I'm alive, and keep me in your hearts afterwards. Sound like a deal? I will answer any and ALL QUESTIONS on the most sensitive topics EVAR.

you get me an audince, and I will tell stories.... some of them may even be true, lol

cya on da flip side

Why comedy?

When I was younger, all I ever wanted to be was cute & funny. When I was sick, any time I could laugh was another reason to live. The situation was never so bad that I couldn't laugh at it. Anytime I was overwhelmed at work, I knew all I had to do was wait. Pretty soon things would get so absurd that I couldn't help but laugh. It helped me cope with my pain and helped others cope with my pain, too. Nothing was ever so terrible that wasn't also funny.

So when I heard this comedian just come out on stage and announce, "Good evening, I have caner! How are you. I have cancer. Great to be here. Cancer!" and everyone laughed and applauded, I was floored. This was new. I have lost friends and family over my illness, ruined a marriage, imploded my career, left me childless, homeless, hopeless... and here she was parading it on stage and people loved it?!? Sign me up!

I seriously can't wait. I know the adrenaline is going to make me sicker than a dog, and the second I get off stage I'm going to need an emergency shot, but WOW. If I can make all of this funny, the nights hugging the toilet praying for death, the terror when death agreed to take you up on the offer, the humiliation and shame about wanting to die and not wanting to die at the same time... you mean... that's funny? That's not a drawback but an asset??? You mean the worse my life gets the more it's comedy gold?

I'm RICH!!!!!!

I just found an effing winning lottery ticket for billions. If tragedy + time = comedy, I've got both in spades. I could start this tonight!

But I also know that it's going to be brutal and ruthless and I am a frail and delicate flower. But it can't be any worse than what I've already been through! I know my disease is going to kill me and cause horrendous pain. How much worse could it be to shine a spotlight on it? It's not like I've been shy....

So I'm really looking forward to this. Be sure to stay tunes for the launch of Denver's new Comedy Production Company, Gräfenberg Productions. We're going to put Denver on the map!!!

No More Fear

Having just discovered @AdamsLisa's "struggle" over the ethics of intimite blogging, I have realized one huge thing: I am no longer afraid. I used to have this constant fear that everything was going to come to ruin and it would be all my fault. Call it a hold-over from childhood, call it a realistic realization of the human condition, whatever. Doesn't matter. I had it, and it DROVE me. I pre-emptively made amends so no one could be mad at me, or at least to soften the blow (you were warned...). But when I woke up this morning, having slept through my alarm and missed jury duty (where I'd already missed the first deadline 6 days ago) and I finally realized what my mother told me years ago, and I was at peace... with my shortcomings. I finally realized I have always done everything in my power. That's never a question. My motives are pure. But whether or not that works is an entirely different matter!

Back when my mother was an Officer in the Navy, she lost her orders. Now, the one thing they told you to Never, EVER do was lose your orders. But what could she do? They were gone and she needed to be somewhere. Of course, when she went to go get a copy she got chewed out and fed a bunch of shoulda/coulda/wouldas.... that didn't phase her. She looked at the official and said without emotion, "Look, this can't be the first time this has happened in the history of the Navy. Certainly you have some process in place to handle this. Can we please start that now?" 

Truth is, most of us are so goddamn busy beating outselves up in our own head thar we LOVE an opportunity to feel better than THAT guy. So of course your gonna get a hard time. Suck it up, Princess. Easily avoided in the future, no use crying now. Get on with it... you still got needs to fill.

Which is why the whole idea of a blog about surviving cancer raising ethical questions just seems so laughable to me. So what your saying is.... we can have campaigns, ribbons, awareness, movies about, human quests for, and all that other crap we have swirling around cancer, but when one woman chooses to tell what she's experiencing herself, that's what's "over the line"?!? Wow... 

I think this must be the sense of liberation that combat troops feel... You're so worryied about whether or not you're going to live or die that you can't do your job. But you've overlooked one simple fact: you're already dead. That's going to happen. There is already a bullet with your name on it. The thing to ask is what are you going to do until then?

There is no way for me to avoid screwing up. Mistake areg onna happen [sic], and sometimes it's my poor judgement, and sometimes not. Blame doesn't matter. However "THIS" happened doesn't matter. It's already happened. What am I going to do now? It's very straight-forward, it's very matter of fact. There's nothing special about it. So why one earth invest the time, energy, and worry? Why get worked up about it? What does that help? 

I know I can get a job done. I know what I'm capable of, and what I'm not capable of. I can be honest about that. The only surprises here are things that surprise me too... I'm not tring to hide, cajole, influence, manipulate or anything else, unless I am, and then you'll clearly know about it. I can live with who I am today, meet my gaze in the mirror, and hold my head high even as I'm pointing out my faults to you. That is an incredible feeling, I cannot tell you. 

There are no "ethical questions" raised by blogging your slow death from cancer. If we can make fiction about the same thing (Bucket List anyone?) why does the real thing scare us so much? It's not like it will go away if we stop talking about it!! Last I checked, everyone living dies of something, and we talk about that all the time without thinking we're raising "ethical questions." You cannot say: "Thou shall not..." This is her life! 

You might as well ask her cancer if it's ethical for it to create disease. You might even get an answer.

If you do, tell me.

Joy from Nothingness

In Loving Memory of my dear friend, Cate Manzo, aka Cate the Great (and she was...)
I had a really early memory come flooding back to me a few days ago and it's taken me a while to figure out why. When I was little, before I understood language, I was marveling at how keys made noise when they struck a surface, when my mother started talking with another woman. They made noises back and forth until they both laughed, and I was stunned. They'd made happiness from nothing! I didn't know that was possible... I though some event had to occur, some item given, some gain had to be had in order for happiness to occur. It blew my mind that it could be made for free.

Woody Allen said tragedy plus time equals comedy, and Tig Naturo proved it. But what's not so easy is finding the comedy when you're still in it... and that's just what I'm trying to do. Just because it seems impossible doesn't make it impossible. There are stranger things in heaven and earth, and more than a few are labratory proven. Who am I to say this or that can't be done? Who is anyone else? 

So this is me, swearing an oath to you. I know your suffering and I've been there too. I will not let your pleas for mercy go unheard. I will find a way to tell our story in a way that people will want to hear. I will find a way to make happiness for all of us. You may be sick, alone, stranded in your house away from all friends and family, and I promise you: your life is not over. You know what you could do, who you could be, if these health problems weren't an issue... so why not start now? 

Why not assume that eventually you'll get better, no matter how far-fetched that may seem? If somehow, someday this all became manageable, what would you do? Now, what do you think you would have wish you had done with this time you have now? Or to put it another way, what can you do now in preparation for that future moment when you're symptoms are managed? If you know what you would do once you're well, what can you still do now to help you be your best when that moment arrives? Do those things, and you'll start to remember what the pain tried to make you forget - that life is worth living despite the darkness that comes into our lives. And we can make our own happiness out of nothing at all, for free. What greater gift in the world is there? 

Cate, I love you and will miss you always. I will not let this darkness diminish the light that's in me, I promise. You were amazing, and I hope I can be half as lucky as you at finding the joy in life. You are still an inspiration, and you truly were The Great. I'm blessed to have know you. 

The Grinch Has Nothin' on Chronic Illness

It will happen when dealing with a debilitating chronic illness---your disease will do something that scares you. There's one symptom I know to watch for that means Really Bad Things for me: orthostatic hypotention, a.k.a. blacking out upon standing. It's how I knew my disease had left remission in 2009. It should not be happening now; I'm on corrective medication. That it is happening is Bad News. So rightfully, I'm frightened. Add to this one of my pain meds has quit, with the new one not scheduled to be available until the first of next year and the holidays aren't so jolly.

I have to remind myself to care about the holidays because I know other people care, and bigger still, they can't tell that my indifference to the holidays is because I'm so preoccupied with much bigger issues. I become hyper-focused on daily survival (because that's what it takes) and I lose what month it is. Time becomes a blur---either I'm dealing with symptoms, or dealing with what I had to put off because I was dealing with symptoms. I learned a long time ago in times like these, I have to limit my outings to once every few days... I need at least 2 days to recover from the last 2 hours I left the house. I get about 3 hours of normal activity a day. The rest is in battle with my own body, and it's exhausting! It was just Halloween last week, right?

To cope, I watch a LOT of Netflix. My current escape is anything Anime, as long as it's not about giant robots. The Japanese are very understanding of ignorance, seeing it as an opportunity for giving the gift of education, rather than something to necessarily be ashamed about. I grew up under the rule that if you didn't know, you were ridiculed, so it's a refreshing change of pace. So they use their cartoons to educate kids on manners, how to resolve conflicts, how to deal with bullies, and all without being condescending like those After-School Specials you and I grew up with. And it also reminds me of when I worked at Nintendo of America in Seattle, when I was one of the few people who wasn't bilingual. I remember the sound of Japanese going on around me as business was conducted. I remember how much I struggled to learn phrases like "Thank you for the food, let's eat!" and "Thank you, it was very good'" Those were happy times...

Because I get sucked into that microcosm of surviving moment-to-moment, just trying to claw my way back to normal, I forget what my strength is... that I get back up again. I can't keep up with normal folk, but normal folk don't know how I do what I do.

From my point of view, it's like I'm weathering a storm and just hoping this time, the house doesn't come down around my ears. But that's not what others see. They're not in it, so they don't know that I get scared every time, that I despair every time. All they see is that I go through something like that, and when it's over, I get back up again, like it never happened. They don't understand how it's possible to be so old-hat at suffering that it becomes more of a nuisance and a bore. I know that mystified me when I first got sick. But I saw it happen through the movie Frida, and now I'm finally at that magical place--I'm bored with these health crises. I'm tired of it. It's no longer scary, until it is (and then it's really scary), but that too, has become old and stale.

The difference between then and now is, I actually get tastes of real life between the suffering. If it was all suffering, I don't know how long I'd last. I really don't. But now that I've had moments of life again, all this suffering is just an interruption. I know it's just b.s. I have to push through until I can wake back up to life again. I don't have time to despair when the sun is shining. I don't know how long it's going to last. I've got to take advantage of it, the second I become able to, otherwise I'm wasting very precious time.

Other people see that as strength... my new roommate doesn't understand how I do it. But it's easier than you'd think when you don't really have any other choice. I've been forgotten before and had people stop inviting me out. They thought I'd left. I had... kinda. Not by choice. But how do they know that? Hear it enough, and it sounds like an excuse, no matter how true it is. "Call me in January!" I ask, knowing that no one's memory lasts that long.

So I've decided to start throwing "Still Alive & Kicking!" parties, to let people know when it's cool to start calling again. People want to be polite, but we have no etiquette book on chronic illness, much as I want to write one! lol Seriously, though... we have parties to let people know about weddings, babies, product launches... why not one to let folks know I'm back in the game? And it would be a great way to sweep away those post-trauma blues.

So while my illness may have stolen Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's Eve... I'll throw my own festivities just as soon as I'm able. Coming to a Friday Night in 2014! Just you wait & see! I'll be back, baby...

How about you? Ever had a "Get Out of Hospital" party? What did you do? How do you cope when your chronic illness steals holidays from you?

Perspectives on Heroes

What a lot of people don't realize about chronic illness is it's often a sign of a medical success rather than failure. After all, we're still above ground. My disease should have killed me 11 years ago. I'm living a life a should not have been able to. And now that I've got enough pain control to allow me to enjoy that life, I, too, can finally call it #epicwinning.

Oh sure, my life is nowhere near what I thought it would be when I reached this age. Nowhere near. I was in a house yesterday that felt like where I aught to be rather than where I am, and it made me sad. But then I have to put things in perspective: I have a chronic illness. I'm a not a victim, and my life was not cut short, but it sure got close! So is it any surprise that where I though I'd be doesn't match reality? Not really. Who plans on getting deathly ill?

"Then after college I though I'd get a chronic illness, because you know, Paris in the spring just can't compare! And you're never too young to have a major surgery!"

At some point we've just gotta laugh because you realize we're doomed no matter what. It's just what flavor off doom do you want to have? Sometimes it's just gonna suck no matter what. At which time, it becomes pointless to focus on the fact that it's gonna suck. You've got to look at what else you've got.

I was playing chess with a friend of mine, and he was sure he had me beat. He had put me in check a number of times and was closing in for the kill. It was hopeless. I was trapped. There was nothing I could do. So I took a deep breath and I pulled my eyes from the conflict. There wasn't anything I could do there, but perhaps elsewhere there was something I could do to slow him down. And then I saw it. He'd left himself completely open! In that turn I was able to put him in check, and two moves later it was checkmate. I'd won! He was so surprised and upset, he started yelling in the middle of the coffeehouse! It was priceless.

Success isn't a destination far in the distance in front of you... it's what you leave behind you. It's what you're able to build up over time to reach your goal. The goal doesn't hang there in the air. It stands on everything you have built up to it. And every part of your life counts, even the parts you think don't matter. Sometimes especially the parts you think don't matter. Or the parts you're ashamed of and think you have to hide... those most often are the parts that make you awesome.

Think about it---we don't love our heroes because they had an easy path and waltzed carelessly through life, winning every battle. We love our heroes because they have fought and struggled and overcome great difficulties. We value the struggle, even if we don't like that we're going through it at the time. We appreciate hard work, our own and the work of others, because it's work. When we're struggling it's easy to get so focused on the battle we're in, we forget the other side of things. It's easy to get so lost in the doom that is approaching, that we don't look for opportunities elsewhere. But if we're lucky enough, we catch one in time to save our @$$. And that makes the best hero's story: snatching victory from the jaws of defeat.

The fact that I'm sick isn't what's important. Everyone has something with which they struggle. Mine just happened to take this shape. That my life isn't what I though it should be should come as no surprise. When these kinds of things happen, of course life is turned topsy-turvy. I can't expect to have the same kind of life my peers have. But that doesn't mean my life hasn't been successful. I've been plenty successful with what I have had to deal with, and my past is my proof.

I cannot compare what I've been able to do with that of someone who hasn't had my struggles---it just isn't a fair comparison. And if you were to look at my life in full perspective, I'm a hero on a mighty quest: struggle is the name of the game. I cannot say that just because I see my doom barreling down upon me, that then means I am doomed. Victory can come from the most unexpected places, in the most unexpected ways. I haven't lost at life because I've got a chronic illness... I've won against death! That's the most we can ask of any hero.

Paws Off My LOLcats!!!

I watch a lot of TED talks as inspiration for my research. And I was impressed by Clay Shirky's introduction of idea that we've been couch potatoes not because we want to be consumers, but because we didn't have many other options. But then he had to call my beloved LOLcats as "throw-away creationism." Excuse me, sir, but I think you have vastly underestimated the importance of spontaneous and surprising humor in one of the most democratic memes of the Interwebs, which has itself spawned its own form of spelling, grammar and (pardon the pun) copy-cat memes! Take it back! ;)

What saddens me the most, however, is your total disregard for the life-giving force that is humor. Humility is most easy to gain when we are able to laugh at ourselves, and humor---particularly free humor on the Internet---has kept me going through the worst of chronic pain. It helped me survive. And we can't forget personal favorites like #chronicillnesscat! Tell me you can now see the real human good that can come from seeing the most trivial of memes! It may not be saving people from violence, but at the very least it provides hope in the darkest times: "Ah, I can still laugh... I'm not dead yet!"

I wish more people got my deadpan humor... I'm the dark-dry humor type who doesn't like laughing at her own jokes. What sounds like exacerbation is supposed to be a punchline, but not many people get me. The few who do I adore. I'm lucky enough to have an Aunt who really does, and she's a chronic illness gal herself. We have some real zingers, let me tell you!

And please, let me poke fun at being sick! Let me make something good out of this mess! Don't be so quick to think that be cause it has no value to you that it isn't invaluable to someone else.

Yes, even icanhascheezburger.com

Thank you.

Invisible Disabilities Movement

Oh no! Blogger ate this post somehow! I'll have to see if I can find an archived version somewhere. #sadface... At least the image is still saved...