Needles and the damage done.

So! I went to an acupuncturist. All the goodness and the excitement has been a bit too much for my delicate constitution. There are papers to sign and papers we can’t find that we need to find and enormous life changes to freak out over. Accordingly, I have spent the last week either shaking, crying, or hyperventilating. Or all of the above! Together! Which was quite alarming for Henry, although I did my best to hide from him while I was freaking out or convince him that I was either a) having an allergy attack, b) exercising, or c) crying out of sheer joy. He didn’t buy it. “But you cry when you’re not happy,” he said, and then he grabbed my face and said. “I love you. I. Love. You. Alice.” I didn’t know whether to cry or laugh so I did a little of both.

This acupuncturist came highly recommended, so I thought it couldn’t hurt to try, although my one and only other acupuncture experience had been traumatic. That time, the acupuncturist covered me from head to toe in needles, set a timer for fifteen minutes, turned the lights off, and left the room. I was wearing only a paper gown and I was so covered in needles that if I moved any part of my body, strange crampy pains washed over me. I couldn’t even move my face. Eventually I managed to relax. But then! The timer went off. And no one came to get me.

I waited. And waited. And waited. I tried not to panic, because when I panicked I tensed up, and then the pain started. I tried to relax. I was cold, and I was shivering, and the shivering was making everything hurt. I began emitting a noise like a dying yak. I could hear movement outside the door, but I was sure they had forgotten me. My dying-yak sounds grew louder. And louder. Eeeeeerrrrrr. EEERRRRRRR.

Finally, the door opened (TWENTY MINUTES LATER) and the light was turned on. And it was a horror show, my friends: the paper gown covering my chest was covered in blood. I have friends who get acupunctured all the time and one friend who practices it and they all say sometimes there’s a tiny bit of blood, but this was not that. This was like the bucker of pig’s blood had tipped over my head and I just wanted to be liked and AIIIEEEE! Now everyone will die!

It wasn’t good. The only good thing was that I didn’t have to pay.

I told this new acupuncturist about my last experience and she shrieked a little and clapped her hand over her mouth. I approved of her reaction. And then she assured me that she would only insert a few needles hither and yon, and that I was her only patient so she definitely wouldn’t forget about me. So far, so good.

But then while she’s sticking me, she’s asking questions about our apartment selling. And I tell her how we had all these bids on our apartment, which is great, but it also meant crushing the hopes of many nice people who had told us in no uncertain terms that ours was the apartment of their dreams. And the acupuncturist murmurs, “Let the agent deal with that,” and I tell her that we’re selling it ourselves because we can’t afford the agent’s 6% take, boo hoo, we have no money.

And here, kids, is her reply, in the same soothing murmur: “That’s a common misconception, as agents are more experienced with the market and can accurately price your home. You may not have to pay the six percent but all that means is that you probably priced your home too low and now you’ll get less for your home than you would have with an agent. I’m all done with the needles, “ she breathily concludes, “and I’ll check on you in a few minutes.”

Then she leaves, and I’m lying there, in the dark, wondering: did I find the one acupuncturist/real estate broker in Park Slope? And at what point can I call her back in and tell her we priced it just fine, and anyway we got more than the asking price, and also, shut the fuck up?

You wanted me to post more, so this is what you get.

I woke up this morning to pain. Pain rolled over and gazed into my eyes and whispered, “Hey, baby.”

“Jesus Christ,” I whimpered, “What did you do to me?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know,” Pain chuckled. “Now get up and make me some goddamn French toast.”

Let’s try this again.

I kept waking up throughout the night wondering what was hurting, was it me or the bedside table or the dog?, and then I’d fall back into a fitful sleep in which ghosts were trying to steal my blueberries. Bloooberries, each one would cry, wafting toward me with their ghostly hands outstretched, and I would throw them out the church doors and scream, Enjoy some fucking blueberries in hell!

When I finally woke up, my first thought was what was with all the ghosts and the blueberries? And my second was holy crap what is wrong with me?

It seems that I have a muscle spasm in every muscle in my neck and upper back. And shoulders. The pain is radiating down my arms, and up into my head, and down my spine. My god, how it hurts. I can’t turn my head in any direction or pick up anything or breathe.

Because experience has taught me that Sarno is wise and wonderful, or at least on the right path in such matters, my first thought was, who am I mad at? Or, um, what do I not want to do? I don’t want to read more Star Wars books, came to mind, and I am mad at George Lucas and want to kill kill kill him, but you all know that already. I expressed my rage! There’s nothing pent up in here! So what else? I went to the dentist yesterday, and although I had a cavity filled, it was not altogether unpleasant. Sadly, I now anticipate with great joy the peace and mental freedom I will experience while my teeth are being drilled. I was a little pissed at my dentist for the way he was manhandling my mouth as if there weren’t a face attached to it. You know when dentists lean their hands up against your nose and eyes while they’re working? Or when they continue to pull at your upper lip way past the point when it could reasonably help them see what they’re doing? Yeah. So there was that.

You know what else hurts? Sneezing. Coughing. And moving. And reading books. (And typing.) And lifting Henry, but of course I have to do that. I’ve tried ice, which hurts, and heat, which hurts as well. I’ve tried gentle stretches, which cause the kind of breathtaking pain that just has to be productive, but afterward everything remains the same. When my husband comes home, I will try beer.

It can now be revealed.

Now that my father is safely returned to the homestead, being lovingly tended to by his devoted family, I can make fun of him.

But first, a word or two for those of you who might soon have a parent in the hospital. If your parent is over 65, no matter how vigorous or youthful they may appear, they will be described by the hospital staff as “elderly.” You may scoff at this. My parent is not some addled 90-year-old gumming his tapioca pudding! you may say to the doctors, as I did, and they will smile indulgently at you and continue to refer to your vigorous youthful parent as Elderly. Breathe and let it go. Whoooosh. There!

Okay, so the “elderly”—well, they’re a colorful bunch. Apparently they are prone to developing something called ICU delirium. Which means that the blinky-blinkiness of the lights and the constant beeping of the monitors and the nurses prodding them 24/7 seriously messes with their sleep/waking cycles, and they go (and I’m going to use a technical term here), completely fucking nuts. Now, I’m telling you this because when my father began to behave, ahem, colorfully!, our doctors did not clue us into this. They didn’t explain that this happens all the time. They cheerfully referred to my father as “psychotic” and when we asked, “But why, doctors? Why?” they shrugged and said, damned if we know! Whoops!

I don’t know what led them to do this, except some sadistic streak running through the staff of Mt. Sinai. They watched us as we scurried about, wringing our hands and knitting our brows, and they chortled darkly. Luckily I have a good friend in the medical profession (hi, Mike! Hi!) and he kindly took my 8 a.m. phone calls and explained the matter to me as if I were not, in fact, an idiot. Thanks, Mike!

At the time, when my dad had just woken up only to reveal that he was batshit insane, my mom kept prodding me to write about it in my blog. “Hey, you should write how he said [insert hilarity that could only be concocted by the insane here]! That’s some funny stuff, what he said!”

“Well, mother, I suppose, but wouldn’t that be disrespectful of our poor ailing patriarch?”

“What could he say about it? He’s so nuts, he believes that [insert witty delusion here]. Haw, haw!”

[Note: the above conversation was edited to make me sound good and my mother sound bad. Also, my mother never once said “Haw, haw” in her life. No one says that, except the heathens in Jack Chick publications. Please alert me if you have evidence to the contrary.]

[But she did want me to make fun of him. Just for the record. Because crazy people is funny.]

After a few days of wacky nuttiness, the Father regained his mental clarity, and we rejoiced. And then he said some things that made me laugh with him, and not at him. Because he is a funny man, even when sane. At one point he asked my mom to shave him. “But it looks like the nurse has been shaving you already,” my mom observed. To which my father rolled his eyes and responded, “Do you know how they shave you, here? They dump ice water over your head, and when you stop screaming, they start shaving.”

At another point, he was mocking a roommate he had suffered for a few days—a whiner who had to loudly regale anyone in his presence with the details of his aches and pains. I guess over the course of a day or two, the whiner had also revealed himself to be an idiot. And my father said, “It boggles the mind, how such a person can be smart enough to live. How does he have the mental capacity to get through the day? To simply leave the house and find a sandwich?”

I am glad you're no longer with the idiots, Dad. Or at least, now you're with the idiots you know.

I seem to be rather angry these days.

For various reasons, my dad is now in the Cardiac Care Unit of Nassau Medical Center, the ugliest hospital I have ever had the misfortune to visit. This monstrosity is the worst example of 1960s architecture—huge and ramshackle, like a suburban high school but with curious summer-camp touches. Not only is it ugly, but it’s obvious that there are forces working diligently to make it smell terrible and be as unwelcoming, cold, and grim as it can possibly be. Because it’s a hospital! Where people are sick! So why would anyone want to make them happy?

My dad is stuck in a corridor, basically. The Cardiac Care Unit is a corridor. A dank corridor with no windows and unsmiling attendants who only interact with him when they have to perform unpleasant procedures. And even then they’re not nice about it. Oh! And there are teaching doctors who approach him with their gaggles of med students so they can treat my dad like a circus monkey while they, say, use the temporary pacemaker to lower his heart rate to almost nothing and then turn it waaay up and watch him twitch. I asked my dad why everyone seemed to be so unfriendly and he said, “It’s because most people here are going to die soon*. They don’t want to get attached.”

Does this not boggle the mind?

Dear dying person,

You say you're going to die soon! So why should we be nice to you? Won’t you take our feelings into consideration? How about thinking about someone besides yourself for a change, jerk?

Since these might be your last days on earth, we thought we’d put you in a dimly lit hallway without a single window or any indication that the sun even exists anymore.** We’ll serve only the most unappetizing of food, too! Mmm, unsalted meat sludge. Eat it and shut up. Also, you’ll never get a television. Or a telephone. Even after you ask several times for both these items. And while we’re at it, we won’t give your loved ones any number or human being to contact when they have questions. So that when we wheel you in for surgery, no one will know! And then while you recover you’ll be alone! Listen: our hospital is the best and doesn’t at all deserve to be destroyed. So shut your trap.

Love,

Nassau Medical Center.

Next up: idiot people who sneer at “Park Slope Mommies” on their idiot blogs. Ha, ha! Because all mothers are stupid! Stupid mothers! It’s a good thing the rest of us were created asexually so that we can be disgusted by the disgusting women who have progeny! Ick, ick, ick!

* Not my dad--he’s just fine, I’m happy to say. He will soon be out of this hellhole.

**When I was there yesterday, another patient called out to me, “Please, what is it like outside? Is the sun shining?” I’m not making this up.