a seam with staples

From today's poem at Poetry Daily:

Weird Hotel

When he says the word tumor
I'm noticing the doctor's hip new
minimalist glasses, green titanium
with non-reflective lenses,
which make him look worldly and kind.

I wake up in a weird hotel
tethered to various machines.
Pain is confined to a faraway pasture;
it gazes at me over the fence.
When it leans its huge body
against the spindly rails,
I push a button that shocks it,
and it backs off, but continues
to watch me, waiting for a chance
to come lie down with me
because my body is its one true home.

A seam with staples runs
from navel to pubis, sealing a body
now devoid of female parts. All gone!
Only the common human ones remain.

The dogs come to visit,
but they live with the wolves now,
and keep outside the circle of light
around the bed, in the snow,
their coats burdened,
and will not let me touch them.

I dream I lie in my slippery green
sleeping bag on a hard bunk
at the monastery, vowing
Desires are inexhaustible;
I vow to put an end to them.
And it's true, I have no desires here
among the chirring and chiming machines.

How strange, to have left the world
and returned to it
having taken nothing with me
and bringing nothing back.

Chase Twichell

Provincetown Arts
Annual Issue 2009/10

Also, I think DJ AM is a pretty neat human being. He took something he struggled with, he was open about it, and he was working with others to help them fight their battles with addiction. He did a lot of good. Plus everyone close to him said he was nice, compassionate--no one could say a bad thing about him. I hope this encourages others who do not know the horror of addiction to view it more compassionately, and less like something sinful or wrong. At McLean, they'd talk about addiction as a disease process, like cancer. I mean, I don't know one kid on that unit who was happy with the way things were when they used, and yet many in society will tell you just that.

So the tox results are in, and it appears that DJ AM, a celebrity who died last month, died from acute intoxication secondary to a combination of Ativan, Klonopin, coke, Benadryl, oxy, hydrocodone, Xanax and Levamisole (which is apparently a drug used to cut cocaine).

This kind of thing makes me so sad.

I can't tell you how many patients came in to detox after some PCP prescribed them benzos they didn't need. Hell, a pro athlete came to the unit after the team's shrink had prescribed him benzos to cut down the anxiety he felt that led him to use oxy...so then he came to us not only addicted to oxy, but to benzos, too. It's like, do these people think of what they are doing? How much power they have in being able to adversely impact someone's life forever?

I know that all of this has been the topic of controversy in recent years, what with the deaths of celebrities like Anna Nicole Smith and Michael Jackson making headlines. There is thought that while a person like Mr. Jackson may have doctor-shopped (going to someone who was going to prescribe meds to him, and not letting other docs in on what he was getting from someone else), it is the MD's responsibility ethically to protect the patient from harm. The healthcare system needs to be ameliorated so that doctors can access patient records in some sort of universal fashion. This would be costly, but the impact could be staggering...imagine, people coming into the ER, on the brink of death...you could pull up charts and see a patient's history, what medications they were allergic to, so that though they can't speak for themselves, they are out of harm's way. And the script shopping would be helped, I think. Doctors could catch the patients who needed counseling, not just allow them to fall through the cracks of the system and fuel the fire so to speak.

This is so sad to me. I saw so many older patients, patients who would tell me they didn't belong in detox, that they felt sorry "for the kids doing heroin and cocaine"--but that wasn't their issue. A Vietnam vet told me he made it through the war without touching anything, and yet when his doc prescribed oxy and other drugs for pain relief post-op and didn't question the continued scripts, the prelonged need for these drugs, the man found himself an addict. That is so sad to me. These people don't realize that prescription drug use is every bit as dangerous as illicit drug use. In this country, the sale of alcohol is legalized. I can't tell you how frustrated I could be at BC, when I would see these kids partying till they puked three, four nights a week, and then these same kids would look down on heroin addicts and coke heads. It's all the same, it's the same struggle, and it can have an equally horrifying, sad outcome.

I needed something to do with my hands (so I can stop picking compulsively and let my sores heal), so I recently took up origami. I walked down to an art supply store and purchased gorgeous paper ($4 for 50 sheets--that's a lot of practice for your buck). When I arrived back at the apartment, I started to work. I like the quiet of it, being able to create and be still inside even if my hands are busying themselves with folds and creases.

I miss Cassie.

Sometimes I wish I could talk to her, or be still next to her, listen to her soft, deep breathing as she sleeps. Watch as her paws curl all at once, the eyes roll back and flicker like a bulb about to burn out--she's running in dreams. I miss that bond that is stronger than anything I have ever known.

I don't miss the father or the sister. I still have nightmares about the father, I don't know when they'll cease. I have some part of a deep peace just knowing I'm rivers away from him, that I'm safer in an urban city, alone, than I am in the suburbs with him close by. I feel sorry for my mother, and I do not know the depths of the pain she feels, what that kind of loss could feel like.

I have a lot of growing up to do, a lot of work to do before I can help others. But I'm trying.

I cannot wait to start my job as a pediatric staff nurse, I love kids so much. I do worry that I'll get too attached, that I'll get morose, flatter, if something bad happens. Mostly, experience has taught me that children have this special something adults forgot long ago, they have a tenacity and a toughness about them that is awe-inspiring. I'm always motivated to be a better person when I'm around children in a hospital. They're really strong, and they don't even know it.

I am so sad, and so sorry.

I want to make a difference in this world, to give back. I don't know how.

she thinks, but doesn't say

From Poetry Daily. This is my life right now:

Anniversary

She says he isn't as funny as he used to be. About fifty percent as funny, maybe less. He thinks, but doesn't say, no, it's you, you're depressed, you don't find anyone funny anymore. She thinks, but doesn't say, I've always been depressed. I've never found anyone funny—except you, once.

Jason Whitmarsh

Tomorrow's Living Room
Utah State University Press

on a scale of one to ten?

I'm really sorry for anyone who has ever been wronged by people working in the psychiatric/mental health field. I will choose my words more carefully and think before I write.

Intake Interview

What is today's date?

Who is the President?

How great a danger do you pose, on a scale of one to ten?

What does "people who live in glass houses" mean?

Every symphony is a suicide postponed, true or false?

Should each individual snowflake be held accountable for the
avalanche?

Name five rivers.

What do you see yourself doing in ten minutes?

How about some lovely soft Thorazine music?

If you could have half an hour with your father, what would you
say to him?

What should you do if I fall asleep?

Are you still following in his mastodon footsteps?

What is the moral of "Mary Had a Little Lamb"?

What about his Everest shadow?

Would you compare your education to a disease so rare no one
else has ever had it, or the deliberate extermination
of indigenous populations?

Which is more puzzling, the existence of suffering or its frequent
absence?

Should an odd number be sacrificed to the gods of the sky, and an
even to those of the underworld, or vice versa?

Would you visit a country where nobody talks?

What would you have done differently?

Why are you here?

Franz Wright

Wheeling Motel
Alfred A. Knopf