I dragged myself into the bathroom this morning to stare in the mirror, and thought what is that in the corner of my eye? I turned on more light and though I was crying blood – that can’t be good. In fact my illness befuddled brain went straight to Ebola, and other nasty terrible things, then I calmed down. I was still cocooned in dreams from last night and my dreams are not always the happiest. All you fans that say you’d love to live in my head for awhile, I wouldn’t advise it. My imaginings are often quite terrifying, like thinking I’m crying bright, red tears. What I had done was vomited so hard last night that I’d broken blood vessels in my eye just by the tear duct, so it does look as if I have shiny scarlet tears just waiting to be shed, but they aren’t wet and don’t come off on Kleenex. It’s a weird and nicely disturbing effect, look for me to use it in some story in the future. I’ve thrown up so much and been able to tolerate so little food during this illness that I’ve lost 9 pounds in a week, according to my doctor’s scale. I’d meant to lean down a little, but not like this, this has been pretty terrible.
I was in the emergency room earlier this week, which is how I got the rather gruesome picture of my arm bleeding in the shower. They told me I could shower, but I just didn’t realize The IV site would still be bleeding that much. I tell everyone that my veins are small, deep, and tend to roll, so pediatric needles work best, but no one ever believes it. They always think, they can get it, sometimes they can, but mostly not. They took blood, pushed drugs in, and basically did their job, but there was more blood than one hopes to loose during an IV, and even more to lose during a shower. Watching the reddish, orangish, blood trail down my body and entering the drain totally put me in the mood to write Anita. I know it’s a lot of blood when it goes from red, to orange, and only goes pink at the end. Usually the blood pinks-out much more quickly.
I feel purged and clean today like a shell washed up on the beach, as if I’ve survived the storm and now it is time to rest and figure out what I’ve lost and what remains. Like the debris of some treasure ship broken upon the rocks and now I get to pick through gold coins, sparkling crowns, rare spices and teas in their water tight bags, and mourn the things that burst open and were destroyed. Some things are gone, no salvage possible, but I will trust that I didn’t need them, that I had out grown them, and that what is left is mine – is me. I will gather my shiny pretties, my dangerous toys, my stocks and provisions from the edge of sea where we all washed up after the storm of this last month and I will rebuild. A tropical tree house, perhaps, with a waterfall trailing beside it, and only vines to climb up or down, so that everyday begins with effort and the reward of moving my body through the trees. Or perhaps a small cabin in a meadow full of exotic butterflies, and noises in the night of creatures far stranger than anything I could imagine.