After stabbing You See El Aye (in my imagination) for the past week, I called them again today and was finally able to make an appointment. With a neurologist, though, uh, they didn’t tell me which one.

That is the good news.

The bad not good news is that the first available appointment was October 21st, which is exactly 7 weeks from today. OUCH. Oh and right in the middle of an exam, which I will hopefully be able to take early. If I hadn’t taken this appointment, I’d have had to wait another week for the next available opening.

SIGH. Small, tired stab.

I have had a bad feeling since I made the appointment. My insurance doesn’t allow for second opinions. I literally get one neurology referral for the year and if the doctor is crappy or if they, you know, are impossible to get an appointment with when you need one, I’m completely out of luck.

I don’t know this doctor at all, I mean literally, I don’t even know their name and I am entrusting them with my only neurology referral for the next 11 and a half months. It scares me. A lot.

Realistically, I know I can wait 7 weeks for an appointment. I’ve waited for 13 months with this headache now, and though there have been times where I didn’t know if I would, I survived.

And yet, something about the idea of waiting 35 more days before I can possibly get help is killing me.

I am tired, I’m starting to struggle with focus at school and it’s only the second week of the semester. I want to exercise and be active, but on a good week that’s only really possible 2 or 3 days in the week. On a bad week, it’s out of the question. I’m having a great deal of trouble sleeping lately, and that’s with a sleep aid every night.

I just feel like things are escalating and while I realize that there’s little to no chance that this new doctor will have a miracle cure, the thought of waiting 7 weeks to get that news is really difficult for me to come to terms with.

I am trying, I really am, to stay positive, to be hopeful. But I am also fighting against pain that just seems to be getting worse, that is not alleviated with any medication or heat or ice. I’m fighting against pain that knows no end, knows no cure.

Pain that each and every day takes a little more of me, of my life, away.

So, the insurance year restarted last month which means a few awesome things for me.

1) The out-of-pocket maximum cost that I met last year is all gone and we’re starting anew
2) I need new referrals for all my specialists.

Both of which are a real treat, trust me.

Last Thursday I scheduled an appointment with the student health center to get new neurology and neurosurgery referrals. I hadn’t picked out a doctor yet, but I wanted the papers so that I could figure it out and start scheduling asap, because these headaches? are seriously not fooling around anymore. Holy God.

The doctor I see at the health center there has met me, um, twice? if that many times, but he remembered that I had neurological stuff and recommended an outside neurologist at an institution that I’ve been considering lately, let’s call it, um, You See El Aye. Subtle, right?

So on Friday, I called You See El Aye to schedule an appointment. They asked me if I had a You See El Aye identification number, which, um, no. So I needed to call their 1-800 number to get an ID number and then fax them my referral and then call them back to schedule.

Right. So I got the ID number, faxed the referral from my apartment complex office (the nearest free-est fax machine) and called them back to schedule where, after waiting on hold for 22 minutes, I learned that it takes 24-48 hours to process a fax because it’s 1985 and it apparently takes that long to get information. Oh wait, no, IT’S NOT.

STAB.

Fine. So I called back on Monday to schedule. But this time, I couldn’t schedule because they decided that my referral needed to be reviewed by a case manager. I DON’T EVEN HAVE AN APPOINTMENT, HOW CAN I NEED A CASE MANAGER?!? GAH.

Again, I did as I was told and called later Monday afternoon to discover that the case manager had decided that they needed more information to place me with the right You See El Aye neurologist. And as soon as my doctor faxed the form back, I’d be good. Which worked out SUPER well since they faxed the referral to MY APARTMENT COMPLEX.

STAB STAB STAB.

FINE. I called back Tuesday and found that my doctor hadn’t returned the form (that they resent to his office after I pointed out that my apartment complex would be profoundly worthless in my health woes) and I tried to explain that this doctor doesn’t know me from Adam and therefore would be totally useless for this purpose. But they were unconvinced and continued to insist that this doctor would be able to help. They’ve obviously never met him.

But better yet, I was told that the whole reason we’re doing this extra form is because they don’t really want to see me, they want to send me over to neurosurgery. Because they don’t treat Chiari Malformation and apparently if you want medical not surgical management you are shit. out. of. luck.

STAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAB.

I tried to call the neurosurgery office to speak to them but they’re only open from 9 to 4 (note to self: in next life, be a neurosurgeon). So that was helpful.

And now I’m still waiting for my doctor to return the form so that I imagine I can be told I cannot see a neurologist any way and I’ve just wasted a week of my life, spent literally HOURS on the phone and in the end will not have a doctor at all AND will get to restart this whole fucking process again with neurosurgery.

Did I mention STAB? Because yea, that.

I’ve decided from now on whenever I write something that’s, um, upsetting and, er, depressing like I did last night, I’m going to follow it up with pictures of fluffy kittens.

And this time the pictures are courtesy of the cat show I went to this weekend, which I’ll admit that I only agreed to go to on the basis that I could make fun of it later. But then, I discovered that a) most of these people KNOW they’re crazy, which is much less fun to poke fun at and b) there are kittens EVERYWHERE. Who can make fun of KITTENS? Not this girl.

And then we walked around and I died from the cute. Okay, sometimes I died from the ugly too.

One of the adoptable kitties at the show. Stupid marriage interrupting my cat adopting.

I haz no legs.

The SWEETEST little kitten ever

Heh. Opposites.

I wants dis one.

While I was in New York (with a good portion of the internet), a lovely lady asked me (mostly kiddingly I’m pretty sure) how I stay “so thin” since I don’t really exercise. I kind of laughed and wasn’t sure what to say.

I mean, how do you tell a virtual stranger that the way you keep your weight down is by periodically starving yourself?

For a while here, I’ve been doing better with my weight issues. I was able to kind of let go for a while, to stop obsessing so much. But I say that I was able to let go knowing that the whole time I was not obsessing I was at a weight I am comfortable with. It’s kind of like an alcoholic feeling like they’re kicking sober ass when they have no access to alcohol.

Either way, things have been better this summer.

And when Slappy and I went to Canada I knew there would be weight gain and to my credit, I let myself enjoy and indulge in food. It was vacation and there were no scales. But there was poutine (which was eh, not a big fan of gravy), pastries, cakes and all kinds of treats. I didn’t eat myself sick, but I didn’t restrict the way I would’ve at home.

And when we got back the scale showed how much I enjoyed those treats. 6 pounds. 6 pounds in 6 days.

I wish I could tell you that I am being patient with myself and realizing that you can’t lose weight on the spot, that I’m not struggling, but I’m not being patient with myself and I am struggling.

I am struggling terribly.

I cannot seem to get this extra weight off. I think about it constantly, I look at myself in the mirror and I am sad, I am upset. I hate what I look like right now. I hate the way my clothes fit and don’t fit. Which is absurd because we’re talking about 4 pounds at this point, not 40. I know people would KILL to be 4 pounds heavier than their preferred weight and I feel terrible being so mentally screwed up about my weight. I know it’s not reasonable, but that doesn’t make it controllable.

I want to be carefree, I want to stop perseverating on the numbers. But more than that, I want to be 4 pounds lighter. I want my clothes to fit perfectly, I want to feel pretty and thin. I want to have a positive body image, but I want to have the body I like more. I want to be thin more than sane.

And that’s how I know that I’m not doing better.

I’m not starving myself, I’m not doing things that are unsafe, I’m no physical risk to myself. But I am not happy. I’m not me. I’m stuck on numbers and appearance, qualities that if any of my friends came to me upset about I would tell them to ignore. I cannot ignore them. I want to, but they weigh too heavily on my mind. To be honest, those 4 pounds are nothing compared to the weight of these worries, of these crazy thoughts about my body, my worth, my appearance.

I feel heavy in every way right now.

As much as I wish it wasn’t true, I’m not ready to handle the emotional and psychological weight right now. I can barely even admit how serious this is, let alone even begin to pretend that I can manage it, I can fix it or seek help for it. I’m not ready yet. I’m sorry.

And so I continue to manage the physical weight instead. And while I promise to manage it safely for my body, it will most certainly be at the expense of my mind.

Five years ago, my husband had been a resident of the city of New Orleans for 3 weeks. He had just finished building all of his furniture and had completed the first unit of classes in medical school and was preparing for his first round of exams. I remember I had a plane ticket to visit him on September 1st, but he wasn’t in New Orleans that day, and neither was I.

Five years ago, I remember that I watched helplessly, with so many other people, and saw the images, the video on the news. The cities underwater. The homes, the lives destroyed.

I remember that I cried tears for people I didn’t know, for the lives and livelihoods lost. But I was living in California, my husband got out, we didn’t lose anything. Five years ago, Katrina made landfall on the gulf coast, but it hadn’t made landfall on my life yet, at least not in the way it did on so many others.

I remember the first time I experienced New Orleans was Mardi Gras of the following year. I was only there for a whirlwind weekend, and I will admit, my first impression of her, of New Orleans, wasn’t particularly great. I hadn’t really wanted Slappy to go to school there in the first place and now I was going to leave everything I knew to live somewhere that was rebuilding after so much devastation.

In August of 2006, I moved. I got a job in New Orleans and I started work.

I fell in love with my new home. And for first time, I saw the true face of Katrina.

I saw it in the devastated homes that laid untouched a year after the storm.

I saw it in the neighborhoods that even three and four years after the storm, were empty. Were virtual ghost towns. The shells and foundations of homes remained, but there were no children. Nothing lived there anymore.

I saw it in the faces of my students. Students who terrified of the next hurricane season, of the strong rainstorms that they didn’t know were coming. Students who were unsure of everything. Whose lives had been set on foundations that still seeped flood waters.

I saw it in the work of a community that was pulling itself up the best it could. Where people volunteered to clean, where they accepted the help of outsiders who tried to sort through the damp remnants of the storm, of the tears that fell after.

I saw it in the city that regrew, that stood strong and faced a new threat, another storm 2 years ago, on the very anniversary of the last one.

I saw it in the rebirth of my city, of my home. Of a place that I never wanted to live in the first place, but now can’t remove from my heart.

Though there are two thousand long miles between my life now and my former home, I will always love that city. She holds a piece of my past, of my heart, and hopefully someday, of my future as well.

And on this 5th anniversary of the day of such sadness and destruction, of lives lost, of homes and families devastated, I remember the face of Katrina. I remember the ashes and the beauty that has risen from them. I remember a city that refused to give up hope.

A city that refused to be washed away.

I remember.

For the past several weeks my car has been making a noise. More precisely, it has been squealing. Whenever I’d drive faster than 20 miles per hour it would make this horrid high pitched squeal that made approximately every person ever stare at me with horror while I drive.

I’m not known for taking especially excellent care of my car. It’s that I don’t care as much as that it’s an inconvenience and expensive and well, I’m lazy. Nevermind that I haven’t washed it in, um, 6 months? but I haven’t had it tuned up pretty much ever.

Now that I’m back to spending several hours a day in my car (though ironically, rarely driving more than 20 mph), I decided I really needed to take it in. Especially since I started to remember the squealing sound from a brake issue I had a few years ago (this issue was that they needed to be replaced). I don’t fool around with brakes. Just oil. And gas. And washing.

So I dropped my car off on Wednesday morning at the Honda dealership nearby, grabbed a rental car (I’m pretty sure it was a Lincoln Landbarge. Seriously, biggest car ever) and drove to school. When I got out of my class at noon I had a message waiting for me from the car place.

“Hi Kathy (sidenote: duuuuude, do NOT call me Kathy), this is Andy at Honda, I just wanted to let you know that I have a report for you on the car. We did find that the front brakes are metal to metal, and it needs rotors, the rotors are undersized. Parts and labor you’re looking at (HUGE dollar number here). Also he said that your front motor mount is broken, you have a power steering reservoir that is seeping fluid and the lower power steering is also seeping fluid, those will cost (MOAR MONEY) to fix. You have one tire that has a nail in it and it’s too close to the sidewall for us to repair and that’ll run you (even more of your measly income). You have a couple of front struts that are leaking and compliance pushings that are torn. Oh and on the lights, there’s nothing simple for us to fix, so we’ll have to go through the wiring and um, it looks like your seatbelt is broken which is why the airbag light is on. If you give me a call I can go over all the other stuff with you.”

OTHER STUFF TOO.

Dude.

Sidenote: I have some really incredible talent to ALWAYS have nails in the sidewalls of my tire, never the tread where it can be patched. I’m going to put in on the special skills section of my resume because I’ve been driving for 11 years and have accomplished this feat like 4 or 5 times. It’s ridiculous.

I ended up calling and asking which things absolutely had to be fixed, and walked away with new brakes, new rotors, a new tire, a reminder to come back to get my seatbelt fixed in 2 weeks when the parts are in, and significantly less money than I started with. And, for the second time in 2 weeks, I didn’t get a car wash because their system was broken. I think that all the washes in the county see my car coming and pre-emptively quit working. Sigh.

Fortunately my car is no longer making noises. But coincidentally, my bank account is now making the exact same noise my car used to make. With breaks for intermittent sobbing.

One of my favorite parts of Canada, beside the 6 hours we spent at a GORGEOUS spa on our last day in Whistler, was all the time we got to spend walking around, hiking and seeing the sites. And the signs.

Because y’all, Canada has some AMAZING signs.

So, this one isn’t so much a great sign as much as it is an awesome idea. What could possibly go wrong putting an electrical fence around a big body of water? I mean really. Water and electricity are pretty much best friends.

I’m tragically sad I didn’t get to see any of these on our nature hikes. If only because I had almost no reason to keep repeating it’s name. I feel like this animal is a “your mama” joke in the making.

Equally awesome food name. It makes me laugh because I’m a 12 year old boy. Related: they are DELICIOUS, but super awkward to recommend to strangers. “Dude, have you tasted a beavertail yet?”

In Canada, they’re very serious about their speed limits. In Vancouver, if you go over 30 km/hour your HAND FALLS RIGHT OFF. It was terrifying not knowing how many miles per hour that converted to.

I can think of nothing more terrifying than a black diamond ski run called “Surprise.” They may as well call it “Death Wish.” Surprise, you broke all the bones in your body!

In Canada, random electricity from big boxes on the street will cut you in half.

Why it’s tough being the Y in YMCA.

I’m pretty sure this is the surprise in the “surprise” run.

It seems to happen to me once every couple of months. But this time it started after BlogHer.

I login to Google Analytics and look at my incoming traffic and start to feel…inadequate. I compare my numbers to other bloggers and I feel unsuccessful. Desperate. I look at my check from the ads I run and I feel silly and small. I think of all the bloggers I admire, of all the ones who have been blogging for a lot less time but have more readers and I wonder what I’m doing wrong.

I get caught up in the numbers.

I get caught up in trying to make my blog enticing and attractive. I get caught up in making it something other than what it really is.

And I hate that. I hate what it becomes.

I don’t write for page views or comments. I don’t write for twitter followers or to be given awards or put on lists. I don’t write for money or despite what my trolls think, for attention.

That is not why I write.

It has nothing to do with numbers, nothing to do with attention or accolades.

I write because I love to do it. I like to tell my stories, to share my life, to get things out of my head and record life events.

I write because I think I have a different perspective on the internet. Note that I didn’t say an interesting one. But I think that I am able to tell a story that many people live but few share publicly. I think I give an insight into a life that most people don’t know anything about.

I write because it makes me happy, it makes me feel like me. Writing here gets me out of my head, allows me to talk out my fears and worries. It allows me to celebrate moments and mourn others.

I write because I am a chronic procrastinator and it is a GREAT excuse to avoid homework.

I write because I have a support system here. I’ve written at length about my struggle with disordered eating and I am always blown away by how many of you encourage me, worry about me and continue to support me in spite of my issues. I wrote a tough blog post about anxiety last week and I am overwhelmed by the comments and emails I got, reminding me I’m not alone, thanking me for giving them a voice.

And every time I get caught up in this numbers game I realize just how much those numbers devalue my blog, how they disturb my writing, my voice. When I try to write for anything other than the love of writing or the desire to share my stories, I don’t like what I’m publishing. I don’t like what you’re reading.

There is no program, no statistic that shows how important blogging is to me. There is no way to measure how much it has given me, how much I have grown from writing here. And until there is, I’m going to write because I want to. I’m going to tell my stories, I’m going to appreciate my support system, I’m going to share my life.

And I would be honored if you’d stick around to read. But even if you don’t, I’m going to stay true to my voice, to my writing. I’m going to keep doing what I always set out to do: write.

Hey Mom.

So, today was my first day of school, which I know you know, but not everyone else does and since I’m sharing this with the rest of the world, I thought I should give some background.

I wasn’t really nervous, but I couldn’t sleep last night. It really helped that my husband threw his back out right about the time that we were both planning on going to bed, so we were delayed for an hour while I mocked him worked on his back a little. And then, just as I was falling asleep, I realized that my parking permit was in my mail pile instead of a logical place like in my car or on my windshield where it’s supposed to be (and then I put it on while driving today. Which was both unsafe and a pretty bad idea considering that I didn’t really want it at such a jaunty angle. File that under life lesson, I guess.)

So, I got up really early this morning, and you know how much I love mornings. I showered, got ready and headed out the door to sit in traffic for an hour. Thankfully I gave myself plenty of time, which would be totally unnecessary if people stopped staring at car accidents as they drive by them. I mean, what do they think is going to happen? It’s a car accident, not an art installation. DRIVE YOUR CARS.

Sorry. A little off track.

My first class seems like it’s going to be awesome, which makes up for the second and third class. The sad thing is, I think you’d probably love my third class. It’s all research and appraisal and boring crap like that. I feel about that class the way you feel about geology. Just no.

But I know that you’re really only reading this for one reason and it’s for the coveted first day of school photo. Yes, I remembered, I always remember. I just rarely remember to show them to you. I want you to know that it took me a solid 10 minutes to get a decent picture for you because as it turns out, my photography skills are still leaving a little to be desired.

Hmmm…

Closer…

This will have to do.

But no matter what, it’s already about 100 times better than my first day of school picture last year. It was obviously the camera’s fault.

p.s. Did you see this yet?

In many ways, I am a perfect blend of my parents. I look a lot like both of them, but am not the spitting image of either. Half of people swear I look just like my mom and the other half swear I look just like my dad. Either way, there is no questioning my lineage, my genetics. I got my dad’s crooked teeth and deep belly button. I have his long skinny toes and a smaller version of his nose.

And more than that, I got his love of history. I got his passion for politics, his love of the Dallas Cowboys and a low tolerance for stupid people. I think I got a refined version of his sense of humor, but I’ll admit that I love me a good terrible one-liner as much as he does.

But what I am most happy to share with my dad is my heart. He is my best cheerleader, my number 1 fan. He has been a support, a foundation of love that I needed these past few years, he has offered help with no questions asked, no expectation of anything. He has wanted me to succeed more than anything, he has wanted me to be happy, even when the road to happiness has been convoluted and not so happy itself.

A multitude of times while planning our wedding we considered eloping and skipping the formal wedding ceremony. It was a lot of work and no one seemed to be happy with our compromises, with our plans. One of the biggest reasons we decided to go through with the big ceremony was because I wanted to walk arm in arm with my dad down the aisle. I wanted him to give me away, I wanted to share that moment with him, have those memories.

And I cherish them. Like so many others I have.

When I was little, my dad used to wake me up on school days. I know that I have made no secret of the fact that I am not a morning person, and that has been true since I was a pretty little kid. I did not like to get up in the mornings and on about a million occasions, I thought my dad would lose his mind before he left for work.

Sometimes when he couldn’t get me up my mom would come in and tell me good morning, and because I was a total pill, I’d open my eyes, reach up and tell her good morning. You can only imagine how much my dad loved that. Sometimes I feel a little guilty about it, I’m sure that karma will get me when I have children of my own.

When I was 8, I broke my arm. The follow up visits with my orthopedic doctor for cast changes and x-rays were always terrifying. I never knew if it would hurt, or what they would do or what to expect. On one such appointment, they straightened my wrist out after it had been bent to let the bones set a particular way for about a month. I was terrified and I remember my dad being there, holding my other hand. And mostly I remember going for ice cream after to soothe the pain, to drown it in chocolate and peanut butter for me, a black and tan sundae for him.

I sat in the same ice cream place today for my dad’s birthday.

I don’t know if you’re reading this, I don’t know if you’ll ever see these words or see how much you mean to me. I’m sorry we got to spend so little time with you on your birthday and that we don’t visit more often. But no distance changes how much love I have for you, how grateful I am to be your daughter, to share my heart, my memories with you.

Happy birthday dad. And many more.