the old-school guestbook archives
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believing in something better... (phase three) ~ March 27, 2006 - 11:16 p.m. So this is what I'm reading about Pelvic Inflammatory disease: * The clinical diagnosis of PID can be difficult and imprecise due to the nonspecific nature of the presenting signs and symptoms. o Diagnosis also is complicated because a subset of women with PID appear to exhibit subtle symptoms that often are undiagnosed by a health care provider or are unappreciated by the patient. ...when I melt down. of course, I've been melting down all night. I melted down when I decided to make it an emergency, when I decided to take myself to the hospital and make them tell me what was wrong. melted down again in the ER room when they tried to shunt me away and I had to insist, had to make them check me out. I had to make it matter. I had to let myself make it matter. I had to let myself make it matter that I haven't felt right in my body for at least three years now. a number of doctors have had their hands on me in that time. any one of them could have done what this one finally did: moved my cervix and asked does this hurt? yes, I would have answered, and yes, is what I answered tonight, when he asked. and now I'm home, and reading that that one thing is the primary simple criterion for PID. I'm reading that one million women in the US have been diagnosed with this, and that an estimated one million more are going undiagnosed because their symptoms are low-key, like mine; because their healthcare practicioners aren't looking for it (does this hurt? yes.) and because women don't trust themselves, or don't know how to understand what they're feeling, or don't let themselves make it important enough to matter, or don't have the energy to make diagnoses and treatments happen or all of these things and more. and at the same time as I'm being outraged at the state of health care in a country that claims to be the most powerful in the world, I'm melting down, I'm at my computer weeping because I'm feeling connected to all of the women who have been experiencing the same thing I have, who live for years with discomfort nonspecific and low-key enough to make them feel almost a little crazy, carrying the weight of a fear they can't even speak of. and I breathe in for them, for all of the women walking this path of pain and fear with me, I breath in the suffering of it, the isolation, the crazy-making doubts and distrust of self, all of it, and I'm feeling it on so many levels at once. feeling it for all these other women lets me feel it for myself in a way I haven't been able to before and at the same time I feel so held, so connected, so whole, because I can feel all these other women here with me in a place where I had felt so very much alone. and my heart cracked open so very wide. I breathe out relief for all of us. wholeness, healing, light and air. releaf from the weight of fear, connection against the aloneness. I breathe us here, together, whole and healed. and I'm gonna breathe us a new healthcare system while I'm at it. let's believe in something better. clap your hands if you believe. make some noise. I BELIEVE IN SOMETHING BETTER! we've got to make it matter enough. we've got to let ourselves make it matter enough. we have to insist. (and remember to breathe.)
(((rings))) |