I sat down to write a blog post a few days ago updating my sinus situation and as I wrote, all I could think was I’m sitting down to write an update on my sinus situation? It made me poof-haired crazy. Has it come to this? Writing about the clogged tunnelage in my little melon of a head? I decided several things.
1. I’m a deficient CF blogger. I write about CF, the daily huff and puff and the corollary emotions. But I prefer to keep a comfortable distance from the uglier aspects for everyone’s sake. There are several CF bloggers who have more guts and less vanity than I do and who are able to write about the ravages of the disease in a sensitive yet honest way. I praise them and I thank them, because many of those blogs lifted me out of the cystic fibrosis quicksands with information and the comfort of knowing I’m not alone. But I realize I am unable to write a “CF blog”. I get shrill. I get teary. I get grossed out. I hate myself a little bit extra. And anyway, it becomes difficult to write a CF Blog when I refuse under penalty of self-inflicted death to never ever use the word p.h.l.e.g.m. in a sentence, so help me God.
2. My sinuses do not require an entire post. Surgeon Number 1 swaggered into every appointment wearing scrubs and the musky scent of egotistical pride for having developed a less invasive method for sinus surgery (balloon sinuplasty). He began every appointment with genuine amazement to see me standing there (still alive!) and ignored me when my insurance refused to cover the surgery. For once in my life, I actually felt thankful for coverage denial, because it forced me to get a second opinion.
I went to meet Surgeon Number 2 armed with a sinus battle plan courtesy of Noan. Surgeon Number 2′s exam was thorough (did I mention the first surgeon didn’t bother to look in my nose a single time?); he took over an hour and a half, but spent most of the time listening and creating a mutually agreeable plan of action. He agreed I was in need of surgery, but felt the conventional method of sinus surgery was the only method which would actually benefit my small and inflamed sinus passages (balloon sinuplasty would have lasted a few months at best). The good doctor gave me several weeks of treatment with oral antibiotics, steroids, and nasal spray. All of this occurred a few months ago and the treatments helped a lot. Unfortunately, it seems the improvement was temporary because soon after the therapies ended, I returned to a stuffy nose and burning cinder headaches. I have an appointment next week to reassess.
The story has not ended yet, but I’d say the moral is to trust yourself if you have a bad feeling about a doctor. Find a better one. There’s no reason to seek treatment from a doctor you don’t trust, or worse, dislike. Medical treatment consists of medicine and treatment– human interaction and relationship. The most important lesson I learned though is that if I must have an eight inch metal scope pushed down my nostrils, it helps so much when the young medical fellow who is learning how to properly scope has coffee colored skin, green eyes, and a delightful English accent. I asked ten times, Is it in? Is it in? Not quite yet, you’re doing great, just lovely. Just lovely indeed. I think of scopes now and I smile.
3. Illness is not a muse. While I was reflecting on the foot-dragging resistance I felt against writing a medical update, I realized CF is not a topic I explore in poetry. Not one single poem is about CF. Lungs make occasional appearances, but the disease? Never. I’m sure it’s there in the spaces, between the lines, or casting a shadow over the words. Maybe CF is the dirt from which the words grow. But I don’t find the disease inspiring or worthy of ink on my page. As Rafael Campo writes in his fascinating article about illness as muse:
The only way we can defy our own mortality is through acts of the imagination, by creating the stories and sculptures and paintings and poems that will outlast us, but that will always be animated by our will to have created them. Even our greatest scientific discoveries can be understood in this way: they are not truly ends in themselves, by which we can ever hope to explicate away our suffering, but are rather part of the same process of dreaming and desiring, wishing and wondering.
Illness is simply a means of transportation. It’s a vehicle which drives me closer to the precipice of life and death, the greatest show on earth. The swizzle of life and death, mingling and steaming and frothing, constantly and simultaneously unfolding within every living thing (yes! in your body too! this very instant!). I’m not interested in the means of transportation; I’m interested in the view: the thin little string that keeps us here, inhaling, exhaling, multiplying, decaying, swinging back and forth, swinging swinging like a pendulum, maybe amazed and maybe not by the wild cacophony.
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Today’s poem is for knowing nothing.
Looking West from Laguna Beach at Night by Charles Wright
I’ve always liked the view from my mother-in-law’s house at night,
Oil rigs off Long Beach….
