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| The Pocock Diaries:
Scripts From An Open Heart Installment II . . . Mary Pocock |
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The Pocock Diaries is a work in progress - this is the second installment. If you missed installment I., then begin here. Entries will be added each month. Some excerpts of e-mails will also be included. Some excerpts of e-mails will also be included. And please feel free to send along your thoughts or feedback to The Pocock Diaries
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Today I saw an endocrinologist. Sounds like a crime specialist, but actually they study kidney and other hormone functions. After a wait as lengthy as a government lunch hour, I was ushered into an examining room, where I finished a book on the painter Vermeer before the first doc arrived.
Smiling, she took my extensive cancer history. She winced when I told her I had had to lose both breasts to cancer. Then she put down her pen, looked me straight in the eye and asked me if I had any discharge from my nipples lately? My mouth fell open. I was speechless. Then, under her deadpan gaze, I replied "I don't know, I haven't seen them since 1996."
She blushed and said, "oh dear, you must think I wasn't paying attention." It is frightening to think my life could lie in these hands. She then told me I could go and likely wouldn't need further tests. Just then another doctor arrived and told me there were red flags and I would need more tests and an MRI, to rule out a pituitary tumor.
I came home exhausted, confused and worried, but my Samuel Beckett gene was laughing at the absurdity of it all. | | |
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Creation can take care of herself - it's bipeds i worry about..
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Our health care is such that my hospital ward had to close on the weekend. The thought of moving did not thrill me as I had eight inches of staples and several inches of tubing in me. But what really scared me for a while was they told me I would be moved into a room that had been occupied by a recipient of the flesh eating disease. They said I had to wait, while they properly scrubbed the room. I spent friday into the evening the only person left in a my old ward, wondering if my room predecessor had succumbed to the disease.
I had my own room for the weekend; usually I was in a ward, not having insurance coverage. The next night something beautiful happened. I was in much pain and believed that through my accepting this pain that all others experiencing discomfort would be spared theirs. Soon I found myself breathing their pain into mine and all being freed. I felt such love and joy. Soon I had no pain. When the morphine nurse arrived, I told her the person in the next bed had incredible pain; however I was fine. She told me there was no one else in the room - somehow I had separated from my own pain and felt compassion for the pain's owner. She gave me a shot and sat with me for a while, chatting about her native country, Scotland and telling me about training her new setter puppy. That was, I think, my favorite night spent in hospital.
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About four days after an operation I was on the phone, when a nurse came in to remove my drainage tubing. She was extremely officious and did not wait for me to remove myself from my call. Indicating what she was about to do, she took the tube and gave a yank. I let out a yelp and hung up the phone. Unlucky for me, the tube was 'stuck.'
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The nurse said "usually, it comes out easily." She was frustrated and yanking. I was concentrating too much on not allowing any critical organs to leave through the tubing hole to tell her that the tube came with a human on the end of it. She left and I never felt more like a single malt scotch in my life, but passed out quickly without one.
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I forget who said "Reach for the stars - if you don't get there, at least you won't end up with a pocketful of mud."
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I was scheduled for a liver ultrasound, one day post-op - full of surgical tubing and numerous stitches. But they came and got me, drugged as I was and wheeled me down to the 'ultra' waiting room. I guess I dozed off. When I came to, I saw the cover of a magazine, which showed people in horrible agony in a war torn environment. I identified so strongly that I became paranoid and rushed out, believing I was in grave danger. I decided to 'hurry' back to my room. My partner arrived in time to see me running with a limp from an elevator; two attendants in chase. |
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They caught and reprimanded me,
 strapping me into a wheel chair. |
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Back in ultrasound, they discovered it was impossible for me to lie on my left side and rescheduled. I did manage to get a few clean gowns from them, as our floor was out of new linens that day. I arrived back on my ward feeling like an ambassador, handing out clean gowns to each person. My wardmates decided that it was a bit like the slammer, in that we four had to look out for each other. Today, I experienced a reprieve from a painful test and fresh linen. |
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Thought
mainly lies in the realm
of the ridiculous
Here that, me this, not again.
Peace
lies in the meadow
of true existence
which can
only illume
one's thought
if we
can but embrace
silence.
*
The process of integration
can only begin
by first tiptoeing and then
absorbing
the seeming knife edge
that divides
outer and inner
the absolute and the relative
Jumping from one to the
other just
furthers the illusion
that they are
separate.
So stand on the edge
feel it fall
watch it gradually
melt away
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