The End Has No End...

...so the saying goes.
We're still not home yet. Phil was surprised, and not pleasantly so, when I confessed yesterday that I'm in no special hurry to be home--I've been gone so long, it doesn't seem to matter how long the 'end' lasts.

Phil's triceps tendon is under the surgeon's knife as I type this, and his patienthood and upcoming reduction in activity have been the main focus of attention.

However, I--or we-- meet with my therapist tomorrow, and my patienthood, which has been comfortably stealth for at least the past couple of weeks, is about to receive some scrutiny again.
Darn it!

End without end--wasn't I gone all that time in order to get over all this?

Why am I so triggered by long and perseverating jokes about weight/weight gain/weight loss, directed at someone else--this isn't all about me, do I know?
Why do I get so upset when it's mealtime and someone else doesn't want to eat yet: what would be so bad about eating alone?
Why, after a seven-mile hike, do I focus on convenience and my post-exertion lack of appetite to the point of being affected the next day by yesterday's deficit?


Of course, none of these scenarios were covered in treatment. Of course, right up until we flew into Anchorage Saturday night, most meals were communal (at the residency and at the farm) and happily so. This aspect of 'the end' wasn't covered in the manual.
A more important 'of course': all this seems to me to be normal operating conditions. Getting out of treatment is not the end, I still roll the way I roll; but now I have better mechanisms in place to correct for foibles, behave more graciously, maintain my physical presence. My bottle of coconut cream/soymilk mixture is good insurance, although I'm going to have to phase out the soy; and when we hit a meal, I don't just eat lettuce and spirulina anymore. I'm no longer convinced that I can run on 300 calories a day with a maximum of 800. That whole concept seems such a long way away.

End without end, and the ends are tied together--but perhaps there's something of an upward spiral in there.

Homeward, Still Not Home

We're back in Anchorage, but still not home.

My apprehensiveness about being home remains beyond tangible to salient. All the way back to Odysseus, arrivals home and settlings in are even less smooth than the sailing that preceded. I know there awaits a veritable Odyssey--unpacking and dealing with reams of paperwork from two treatment centers and a writing program, taking care of the garden where slugs will be going gangbusters, getting my linguistics course into shape for the start of term, preparing for my mum's visit, writing and reading lots like I can't wait to do... Oh, and taking seriously my appointments and therapy sessions and meds; preparing meals, and otherwise maintaining my physical/mental/emotional health. Meds notwithstanding, low blood sugar and/or sleep deprivation in the evenings do seem to see me reliably monsterfied, and despite all my work and effort on communication these past few months, there are certain conversational ruts Phil and I get into that lead nowhere good. Awareness is the key, may it be so.

Right now, we're distracted by Phil's patienthood. His elbow was first cracked on ice then bashed on an outboard motor then slammed on an alder limb as another alder he was ripping out kicked back (doing his version of resting the arm)...and the kibosh delivered with a massive crushing bodyslam by his largest younger brother playing kickball at the farm a couple days ago. Torn tendon and who knows what else; surgery required. Depending on what we learn an hour from now, we may head home this afternoon or might stay in Anchorage a day or two more.

I have driven a car again--very briefly. I have touched a stove--just barely. I have done a few things for other people and, best of all, started to see our friends again. I still haven't taken a photograph or done any of normal-life things, but I'll be at one or other writers group within two weeks tops. I'll hope to post something about gardens and fresh produce next time.

Word Search, Word Find

No one's taken my vitals and tut-tutted over my low blood pressure, or drawn my blood, or pulled me in for a surprise weigh-in, for a week now.
No one's made me drink gatorade after my pulse jumped sixty points upon standing for over a month.
Now that I no longer need to be furtive about exercising, I'm finally too tired to do it, except for the eight flights of stairs to the dorm room and early morning walks.

Being at the residency is wonderful beyond telling, and yet there are still moments when the proximity of my recent abodes is more tangible than odor. I tumble into fear, or become convinced that I've 'lost all my spark'. Time really doesn't move directly forward; the impulse of those many weeks in treatment pushes and pulls. I take desperate comfort from this as the graduating cohort, containing several of my very favorite people in the program, move toward moving on: all I can trust is that we will come back around to each other; that there are reasons why I feel such connection with them. Meanwhile, for what should be no surprise, the new crowd is composed of wonderful people, as are my own cohort and the one above that. Stunning.

As always, my brain is full of ideas, anxieties, germs of poems and essays, and my plate is full of assignments, people I need to connect with, and the bar where everyone is hanging out right now and where I should be heading. Let me step away from the MFA residency and all thoughts of Sandwich Academy and Foie Gras Farm, and try this metaphor on for size.

In my last post, I told the story of my carefully planned trip to Whole Foods, which turned out to be a case of mistaken identity, leaving me unable to check off my carefully conceived shopping list. To assuage my annoyance over the whole thing, I bought a book of Word Finders for the long wait for the bus, and the long bus ride. I hadn't done one since I was a preteen kid, or even thought of one until--ok, I do mention it--people at the Foie Gras Farm used them as distractions.

Where I grew up, these puzzles were/are called Word Searches, not Word Finds. I like the more positive attitude symbolized by calling them 'find' rather than 'seek'.
For no big surprise, I was good at Word Searches as a kid. It turns out I'm very good at Word Finds now. I complete one in less than five minutes. Even the number ones, where there aren't words to jump out at you, I can do pretty swiftly. There are some 'techniques' that I didn't even realize I had. As a kid, I knew that big words were easy to spot and that any word with double letters in it would be easy to find. I realize now that in addition to those pointers, when I was a kid I already knew not just to look for the initial letter of a word, but to look for any interesting juxtapositions of letters anywhere in the word, which is why I often start circling the word from its middle outward. 
This is a case of learning to recognize something from its interior parts, perhaps even from its ending, and not to be overly focused on the first impression, the first letter. You can know something from the inside and work outward from there.
But when I was a kid, I was sometimes impatient to 'know the answer'. As quickly as I found words, there would occasionally be a word that remained elusive. There was nothing in particular that these 'hiding' words had in common, but there were times they simply didn't appear to my eyes. I would go through the whole grid in a frustrated letter-to-letter search, and when I still didn't see it, I would go look at the solution in the back, to get over my irritation at not knowing the answer, to validate to myself that the word was actually in the grid, which I had come to doubt.
Of course, I'm still very impatient. Of course, there are still times when a word doesn't pop out for me. However, when I get to the stage of disbelieving that the word is even in the grid, I slow down. I check the instinct to go frantically looking. I don't even consider looking in the back, even if I've gotten to the point of thinking they forgot to put the word in the grid. I let my focus soften, circle all the other words that inevitably pop out at me when I'm stalking the hidden one. I trust it is there. I do the letter-to-letter search casually. I usually find the hider pretty soon; the slower I go, the sooner I find it. 
And the majority of the time, the hard-to-find word is going diagonally backward from the initial letter, either up or down. It seems to me there's a metaphor there, that when the tail is behind the head, it's a little harder to process. When I'm trying to be perfect before I even have my parts together, it's hard to see the whole picture. 
Perhaps this is the perspective someone needs on something in their life. Perhaps it's the perspective I need as I worry about what I'll be working on next year, doubt my abilities as a poet, and wonder whether I've learned anything. Perhaps, dare I say, it's a metaphor for recovery--a word I dislike. Perhaps I need to look backward and a little to the side to find a new word.

So...Am I "Better"?

Sinking back into the bubble and bubbling awesomeness of the residency--how can it feel so familiar and comfortable when a whole year has passed since the last time? Welcoming the new cohort with equal delight to getting back together with my favorite people here, and getting to know better some other folks too; diving into workshops and classes: yes, we're getting into our writerly bubble, but it really is also a ferment of productivity and connection.

It's tempting just to submerge, immerse, forget and scar over my life experience of the past ten weeks. Additionally, my preference is generally to talk about things that pertain to more people than just to me. However, since family and friends are reading this blog and, no doubt, wondering; since there's a pretty horrendous price-tag attached to the experiences of the past ten weeks that places a burden of responsibility, I should briefly address the question: 

AM I BETTER?

Starting with the most superficial: I haven't weighed myself, but judging by how my clothes fit, I'm not a whole lot bigger than when I started at the Sandwich Academy, although that's still a very lot bigger than when I went to Foie Gras Farm. A bit smaller than I was at the residency last year, and some comments about that. I don't think this is a problem at all: my energy is great, my focus is good, I'm not obsessing or compulsing, my pulse stays steady if I sit up suddenly...everything feels good.

I carefully planned my raid on Whole Foods for when I arrived in Tacoma, scoping out which food items and non-food items I wanted to get, planning bus routes--all while still in Bellevue. I took the long bus ride and discovered that in Tacoma, "Whole Foods Market" is a tiny little hole in the wall 1980's-era healthfood store with a few ranks of supplements single file, and a few overpriced allergy-friendly products, some of which I bought out of sheer disappointment and mortification. There was a Fred Meyer close by too, but a ghetto Fred Meyer, half of the natural/allergy-friendly products of a normal one. Nonetheless, even with the smaller selection, I shopped.

I tell this story because it shows two significant ways in which I'm better. First off, I didn't totally freak out at the thwarting of my well-made plan. I did beat up on myself a bit for assuming that "Whole Foods Market" was the chain and not verifying it from their website, but I still went ahead and did my shopping as best I could under those circumstances, whereas many times before I'd have bought nothing out of sheer embarrassment and frustration. Second, and here's a way I'm likely considered "better": I bought products I'd never have dreamed of touching before these last ten weeks. Gluten free baked goods? Why yes. Whereas before I would read the ingredients list and find several reasons they were not 'healthy' enough or overly caloric, and would insist on buying only 'raw material' ingredients, which I then didn't eat; now, I've accepted that in situations like this, food that's easy both to eat and in terms of zero preparation are wise choices, even if they do contain some evaporated cane juice or safflower oil.

I'm better in the sense of keeping on my radar the need to be well fueled, and making plans to ensure that, even if I feel it's weird or awkward. So far, I've also avoided the burning the candle at both ends behavior that made the last residency so luminous but also so exhausting.

Best of all, a few people whom I trust have told me I don't seem to have lost my 'spark'. These stronger medications definitely allow me to be more even and less crazy, but I feared they might damp that spark down too, and was waiting to be around people who know me and can evaluate whether I'm 'altered'. This is a huge deal.

In summary, I'd say I'm not 100% cured and perfect, but who is? I am pretty sure I won't ever need to go back to treatment yet again: I've put a lot of thought into how to ensure I avoid that. I did meet some great people there whom I hope will continue to be my friends hereafter, but that's a very welcome side effect; not the stated goal of the exercise.

I'm still having some odd confusions--around the unmonitored bathrooms, the cafeteria sans latex gloves, the dinner buffets with no plate laid out showing the portion sizes in terms of grains and proteins, no mandate to plate the food wearing rubber gloves and display the plate to a monitor before proceeding; the ability to walk off down the hall without an escort and to sit in a workshop without suddenly being pulled out for a therapy appointment...These are welcome absences. People--these simple freedoms are so valuable!

Sound good? Any questions? If so, I'll edit to add...

No Longer a Patient--Aftershocks, Heartstrings and Playing with Food

This is the first day for almost ten weeks that I'm not in treatment. Today is many other things too, but it's hard for me not to see it mostly in terms of that milestone--except for the fact that it's also the day I head over to PLU for my MFA program residency! How's that for a transition? From Foie Gras Farm to Sandwich Academy direct to my beloved MFA program...


I confess, although I've been eagerly counting the days until the squeezing of this constricting experience plunge me into the light and sound and freedom of regular existence, I have some apprehension as well. When I arrived here, straight from the desert isolation of Foie Gras Farm, it was like emerging into the light after being down a mine. Streets with cars driving them, buildings, the experience of going into a store, a new program organization to get the hang of--all these were overwhelming. But even here, we're not quite on the loose, and I suspect that being on my own cognizance around food, medication compliance, and various other issues, will offer some similar overwhelm if only to a lesser degree. And that's without the glad ecstatic overwhelm of being at Residency.


Add to the ambivalence the fact that, as always, it's the people that make the program. Because we had evenings and weekends free, and many people went home at those times, we didn't get quite as intensely close as at Foie Gras Farm, where we were all squished up against each other 24/7. But for those of us out-of-towners who stayed at the Annex, there was the opportunity to get to know one another better, and there were a couple of wonderful people I got to share space with there, with whom I'm looking forward to continuing friendship, and whom I'll be missing right in my heart these next days.


Am I ready to be out on my own cognizance? I hope so. I certainly have 'treatment fatigue.' There's little danger that I'll fail to take my meds, because I don't want to be crazy at the Residency and it would be a bad time to play doctor. The food? Granted that's always a challenge for me in this kind of situation, my intention is to take better care of myself in that area, including smarter shopping later today in preparation. My metabolism is chugging along right now, so there's no way I'll go back to my previous patterns.


Just a couple random thoughts about the food thing. I haven't been very forthcoming in my descriptions of what went on in the institutions where I've spent basically my whole summer, partly because there are some folks who read this that might draw adverse conclusions from what I say. However, there are going to be communal meals at the Residency, so let me say something about the associations there. The hardwood floors and black tables at the Sandwich Academy represent excellent planning, as both of them make any of the throwing food on the floor/trying to hide it on the table-type efforts instantly obvious and thus futile. On my first day, there was such a mess all around me, very obviously around me, not blending into anything--just embarrassing. However, those hardwood floors are also an excellent acoustic device for amplifying the clomp-clomp-clomp of feet in heels as the 'meal monitor' patrols the tables, alert to pounce on someone to correct their behavior. Behaviors deemed worthy of correction were not only things like hiding nuts in your leggings or attempting to purloin plastic cutlery with ill intent; there was also a strong emphasis on 'normalizing' food behavior, both choice of food and how it was eaten.


So, don't eat that with silverware; eat that with silverware; don't eat the bits that fell out of your sandwich--eat the sandwich first; no, you can't eat that open-face, you have to put the whole thing together, even though gluten free bread doesn't stay together and what's in there isn't typical sandwich fare and the whole thing's going to implode as soon as you pick it up; don't take two bites off of the spoon; don't eat that with the spoon; no, you can't have sauce with that rubbery tofu and dried-out rice: that's not normalized... Very frustrating, very stressful. There were days I'd break out in a sweat every time I heard feet clomping; times when every time someone made a move toward me, I'd jump, wondering what I'd done this time. My thought, of course, was that if their main concern was to get me to put the food inside me, they should let me do so in whatever way worked for me. Looking back, though, why was it that the person getting corrected for trying to lose excess food was also the person doing the 'wrong' things with her food? It's hard to find dignity in one's 30's and being corrected for table manners and sneakery.


Where that leaves me, going into a situation where we eat together a lot, is very self-conscious indeed. Relieved that there will be no clomping around and embarrassing correction in front of everyone; anxious as ever about seeming weird/not normalized if I bring some different food to a meal because of my allergies; worried about making sure I don't play with my food in weird ways or put weird things together; mortified to think of some of the weird ways I ate at Residency last year--one favorite lunch that I recall was salad drenched in hot sauce, covered with spirulina I'd brought from home, which stayed powdery and painted my face green because there was no dressing to damp it down. My face is red now!

What Can Pass, and What Is Needful

It may not be surprising that over the past few weeks of semi-participation in regular life, I've been thinking a lot about what is essential in life and what can come to seem essential but may not be.

For two months I have NOT:

• Driven a car--or ridden a bike.
• Taken a photograph. True fact! The camera was in storage while I was inpatient, and its battery fared better than the computer battery, but now I have it with me, and have seen many beautiful plants and interesting buildings and scenes worth recording, but I simply haven't wanted to use it.
• Talked on the phone, except to Phil, my parents, or healthcare professionals. We had long-distance calling while inpatient, but very little time to do it, and I was happy to write letters.
• Paid a bill.
• Used my Vitamix, or made or drank a smoothie (some more thoughts on this in a post soon). Or my dehydrator.
• Fixed food for other people
• Watched TV--but then I never watch TV
• Eaten spirulina or other green powders--and I survived!
• Seen a movie, except one or two documentaries we were shown as part of treatment
• Been obsessive about what is/is not organic and whether it's in the "dirty dozen" or not
• Weighed myself--ooh, except for one whoopsie time early on in this phase of the adventure
• Taken a beach hike
• Stayed up all night working (although there were nights at foie gras farm that I didn't sleep hardly at all).
• Weighed my food
• Sat in our cabin and looked out at the ocean
• Slept in our bed with Phil
• Planted herbs or vegetables
• Been to one of my writing groups
• Participated actively and assiduously and daily in the blogging community
• Bounced on my beloved rebounder. They don't want us to think about exercising, or to exercise much at all, but I like to imagine they would make an exception for this wonderful, relaxing, fun form of exercise that I miss so much.

Some of these things seem pretty sad absences; some of them may be husks, discarded skins or exoskeletons, to be left aside and grown out of; some may be growth opportunities, offering the realization

that life can continue without certain rigidly held lifelines. I can go without spirulina and chlorella; I can even go without many vegetables or much fruit, and I'm still here! I managed without clinging desperately to the internet, one more page, one more page making time pass and keeping me here. I'm still here. I even survived having to drink the nasty Ensure Plus, which lacks lactose and whey, but does have some dairy-derived protein. I'm still hacking it out, still feeling its effects, but I'm still here. Thank goodness I'm having coconut cream rather than Ensure here--when I resent having to drink it, I just remind myself of Ensure. 

Another thread that comes across is the tendency to be busy busy busy. In this in-between life right now, I'm looking for ways to remind myself to pay attention, take a breath, slow down; to focus on what is really needful. "What is needful" is a phrase from the King James Bible version of the story of Mary and Martha, where Mary simply sits at Jesus' feet, while Martha fusses around getting everything ready. Jesus says Mary's choice is "what is needful." 

Religion, Christianity in particular, was a big thing at foie gras farm, whereas at this treatment center it's practically taboo because of its potential for division. But scripture, not religion itself, is periodically very useful to me as a word-based reminder of what's important. Anything can be a talisman to call us back to the moment--more thoughts on this soon also.

Staying in the moment, my body is asking for a shower and soon, sleep, as we prepare to greet Monday morning and a new week.

Coming out of Hibernation--A Few Facts

This little blog has been in hibernation. A curtain drawn over the chronicle of a time of confusion, frustration, attempts at remaking in a different image.

Now, in full-blown summer, with several eagerly anticipated events duly missed, and just two weeks until the MFA program residency: just two more weeks of foie gras farm, being stuffed and engorged, this blog is sniffing the air, peeking its head out of the burrow, pondering how to exist in the virtual world given all these changes.


After several weeks inpatient in Arizona, the Elamonster is now in a partial hospitalization program (PHP) in Bellevue, WA, perfectly poised for the much anticipated residency in Tacoma, just an hour or so away. After five weeks without any internet or computer whatsoever, finding the right balance and comfort level with computer time is a challenge, especially with all the internal changes being processed, and with the long, tiring days at the clinic.


So, let's keep this first post out of hibernation short. Here are a few points of information:

• If your laptop is going to be put away for five or six weeks, disconnect the battery! This netbook's battery was completely dead when it came back from lockdown
• Whole Foods is nicknamed "Whole Paycheck" for good reasons. But if you come from Alaska, you get sticker shock from Whole Foods in the other direction--"Wow! Everything's so much cheaper here!"
• Hospitals and clinics dealing with these kinds of disorders have many rules, for good reasons, that can seem ridiculous at times; the enforcers of these rules can appear to treat patients as if they are elementary school children
• The Elamonster doesn't stand for this very well, and is often to be found in the role of McMurphy in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
• If the Elamonster is McMurphy, then McMurphy was pretty genuinely crazy and generally disruptive quite often also
• Attempts to remake the Elamonster in a different image lead resistance
• Items considered contraband when inpatient: dental floss, Q-tips, pantyliners, make-up, curling and straightening hair stuff, other cosmetic stuff, anything in a glass container, plastic knives; many more
• Anti-anxiety medications: the minimum dose of the 'mildest' one sent Ela to sleep and then gave her hallucinations. The minimum dose of a relatively mild benzo made her pass out. The minimum dose of xanax, which is supposed to stay in the system the least amount of time, knocked her out and then left her drunk and seeing double for the best part of two days. Half of that minimum dose just sent her to sleep for two hours. What a productive week of groups and therapy with all that passing out!
• Biting the bullet and going on Lithium does not seem to have had terribly destructive effects on creativity. Its effects overall are still to be figured out
• Typing is somewhat like riding a bicycle: a five-plus week enforced break from typing has not caused fingers to forget how

The Elamonster? A snake that has grown legs, remembrance of the oceanic origin, looking forward to the terran convenience of legs.
To be continued soon.