They Operated on Two Different Discs in My Neck
This week I am recovering from a massive cervical spine fusion surgery
I am recovering from a huge surgery… and writing a bit about it below.
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This week I am recovering from a massive cervical disc replacement surgery, that operated on two different discs in my neck.
I tried to prep for this (and your potential patience and kindness at letting me having this week “off”, despite my Every Weekday Writing Promise) as an on going memoirist by doing as much as possible the last couple of weeks to say thank you:
I wrote 2 posts a couple of Mondays ago like a paragraph-psycho… I wrote and prepped posts throughout my long hospistal stay and recovery (gross neck drains included)… And I have a special update coming mid-week, so that it’s not dead silent this rare week off….
But I also wanted to THANK YOU in advance for a few days off, because I can never stop being thankful that I’m not dead silent as a person (morbid but true) and that I somehow keep surviving multiple surgeries per year.
This one was cancelled TWICE- which deserves to be written in all caps- and that truly wrecked parts of my life, and my partner’s working life, in ways these flimsy words can’t facillitate.
I’ve even had new complications abound (like a newly numb foot again) that could mean more questions and considerations to address…. but which I had to decide to mentally push to the side until I could complete this operation first.
Pick and choose what hurts the most, what risks the least.
Pick and choose which version of myself I might be.
Thinking about how completely dichotomous these dalliances in life can be makes me think about how truly polarizing being a person who happens to be sick can be.
I can go from announcing I have an agent to continue my performing, modeling and professional dance career outside of being a more —-centered director and choreographer….
…. To being bloody, catheterized and pretending I haven’t lost all autonomy and social dignity in a life that is built upon what facade we offer the world; Which filter we’ve chosen that day to pretend defines us.
Because I am taking this week to “heal” (typing is one of the most painful things I could do write now as we are waiting for two cervical neck discs to fuse properly), here are a few more dichotomous visuals to serve as a This or That. A photograpic diary of what just a few years can look like in the life of someone dealing with a progressive, terminal, or incurable disease.
Does it matter what we call it?
I don’t think of myself as someone with a “terminal illness” at all, and can even remember when the very mention of that word during a filming of a TV-episode for the CW network in front of my students led to a Momma bear moment in which I talked about how that “ugly world” holds no place in our life (unless there is some power in it for someone else).
I like to say the term in-curable, because that’s true….but still leaves a window open for new medicine to change the viability of our future and how long they last.
I am a mother, so using words carefully is everything… but it’s somehow also nothing at the same time.
“Don’t say fart around Mimi,” I tell them growing up, still feeling that or “this sucks” are R-rated verbiage, “She prefers toot”… But I also know that things can only be as dirty as we make them feel.
We say “Disability isn’t a dirty word,” for example, and I think that’s increasingly true- but it’s taken me years to grow into it; Once ducking and dodging with ferocity.
“We don’t say hearing impaired,” many in the Deaf community try to share, capatilizing the word we prefer with pride… But other terms feel too harsh for me still. I long for something softer, wrapped in Laura Ashely prints and paisleys.
“Never curse around the elderly or the young,” I used to say as a mother, glaring every so subtly if I spotted someone not abiding that in public spaces
I took forever to let my own discover that their mother, unbeknownst to them, has the worst mouth of anyone they know. Worse then their Papa or friends. I always have. I’ve always “cursed like a man” (with pride)- even more so in my preferred American Sign Language- but you have to Know me with a capital letter to know that, because I hid it from my own offspring until their pre-teen and teen years, when I finally gave up.
Once the lid was off, however, there was no going back on how much my own kiddo began to curse at home, for example- because you can’t be two people at once. You CAN teach the power of choosing when you use words, and how carefully, and around whom, but once the words are out there… They’re out there.
We all choose different words for ourselves to describe the things that hurt us…
But for me, Deafness is a flag, disability is a lower case puzzle, and mother is the only certainty I once knew, certaintly, and now find is a pain puzzle I’ll never be able to control… Just like we can’t control what our kids say (just when they say them).
Life and people and words can mean and be two things at once, all at once, all the time…
And that’s the only thing I can ever understand, in all its misunderstanding.
“Pick and choose which version of myself I might be”.
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When are the medical professionals going to realise that delaying surgeries or treatments only makes symptoms and problems worse, and can affect other problems in the person by delaying their treatment also. Thank you for that bit of knowledge on the Deaf community as I never knew Deaf was the preferred term. I always thought hearing impaired was a good community definition, because hearing is impaired on a scale from mild to profound just as blindness is so I thought it was quite accurate and literal. The dichotomy of chronic (and terminal at least until a cure is found) illnesses is quite profound. That's why all chronic illnesses (terminal or not) are considered dynamic disabilities as our abilities change frequently and rapidly. This does not make us have any less worth, and in fact the skills we learn because of our illnesses actually make us more valuable. I'm sorry to hear it took you so long to accept disability is not a dirty word. It was the same way for me too, and that has to do with the stigma around it and this mistaken belief we are somehow lesser because of our disability. Don't ever be ashamed of your use of foul language. I have a bad enough mouth to make a sailor blush. This is not as much a sign of intelligence as was once claimed, but more a sign of someone who has profoundly deep emotions and even a sign of empathy. Things strike people like us differently than others, because we can feel the emotions before they're actually emotions, we feel others emotions like our own, and we can actually feel emotions within words. This is a blessing, and is why you are such a wonderful teacher, choreographer, and mother. That being said we are also able to censor ourselves quite well in select company out of our abundance of respect for others. I love the way you tie language into who you are as in different verbiage appropriate for different times, and different you for different times. I hope you can always find an acceptable balance in the version of yourself that's both appropriate for the moment, and still represents your as a whole (and doesn't require you to make yourself extremely physically uncomfortable).
Luv u…