Haiku
Today I saw the
Sun awaken, blue sky
January's chill
Hurting Her
Aquamarine castles emerge
From the deepest places
This ocean, her eyes
Fly open, wet as tide pools
Leaking her loneliness onto a soft cheek
I reach to touch the tear,
Hoping to soak the pain into
My own body
She recoils,
Already distrusting me
It is the First of Over
For she and me
{This next one is a work in progress, and has been for a long time! Egads!}
No Title Yet
I ask too much of you
But you give so willingly
And my need is so great
Give to me this: Your golden
Skin, pressed against my hands,
pale and shaking
Give to me your nights,
Passion's canvas on which
I paint my desperate
Watercolored longing
Need
I do not know how to
Release you
Give to me the peace
My restless thoughts crave
Ack, that one is so nice in my head...I need help. Writer's group, anyone??
On Being the Killers
We die tiny deaths at the
Hands of rage
We pleasure in the
Slow killing of each
Other's souls
Anger builds a hard
Stone wall around our
Hearts
We forget that we ourselves
Forge the steel cages of
Imprisonment
How pathetic that only some
Kindness, poured slowly like
Hot water on a frozen lock
Would have salvaged
This family
It is too late, it is done
We gradually acknowledge this, the
Murder of us, that we are guilty,
Noticing the blood on our
Incredulous hands
Forgiveness seems possible,
But reconciliation does not.
We do the best we can,
Moving from the scene of the crime
Unable to look away.
We do the best we can.
I made a new entry last night, even got a comment, and now it's not showing up. What is UP? It had a lot of "F bombs" in it. I wonder if it didn't get censored?
Me (Katye) again, writing to update everyone and let you know that after two days in the hospital and a painful time with a catheter (following her severely bruised bladder's inability to regulate itself), our very brave Kymmie is home at last and doing well.
Here is the more detailed version of what happened, which I am posting with her permission. I hope I have it all down accurately. The sequence of events with urgent care may not be exactly correct but I think it should be pretty close:
On Weds of last week she went in for a tubal ligation and a LEAP procedure to laser the cancer cells on her cervix. During the tubal she had a lot of surface bleeding, but her coagulation studies hadn't indicated any kind of clotting problem, so they didn't think much about it. The two incisions that were made were each very small -- only big enough for the laparascopic instruments and not really big enough to tell that she was actually having a similar amount of bleeding internally. She went home Weds. afternoon and while she was in some pain, it was bearable. There was some bloating, but by Friday she was well enough to fluff up her new cherry-cola coloured hair, put on her very cute blue workout outfit and come to watch my husband Tim lose his final Jeopardy! game on the big screen TV at Damons.
Sunday night she was really tired and went to sleep over at a friend's house so she could get some rest away from the leaping cats and very bouncy lovey kids. During the night she kept having to pee -- and it hurt bad. The frequency increased until she was having to go about every 10 minutes, with excruciating pain. So early Monday morning she went to the urgent care center -- her surgeon was busy with an emergency C-section, and they all thought it was just a UTI anyway. She gave a urine sample and went home (still having to pee constantly, still in pain).
Urgent care lab called and said, "Uh, this is not a UTI" Her doctor said "I can't get you in the office this afternoon, go back to urgent care or to the ER." She went back to urgent care; they sent her to the hospital for a CT scan of her pelvic area. She went to the ER, still peeing, still in pain, and waited for like 6 hours until they finally got the CT and admitted her at around 1 a.m. Tuesday, having found a big something that needed to be identified and removed (it was unclear at this point whether it was an infection with resulting pus or internal bleeding).
Around noon on Tuesday, her surgeon re-entered the lower of the two original small incisions and determined, via laparascope, that the mass was a number of largish blood clots between her uterus and the bladder wall, which were pressing on her bladder and causing the pain and urgency. He made a low transverse incision (not unlike a c-section incision), about 4" long to go in and clear out the bloodclots, irrigating and checking for active bleeding before closing her up with staples (again, not unlike a section). There was no sign of recurring bleeding, so this is unlikely to be a problem again, though the doctor is referring her to a hematologist to figure out what kind of bleeding problem started the whole thing.
In the meantime, she was in the hospital on a PCA pump to control her own pain and was doing well (very cute and dopey and falling asleep in the middle of sentences) until they took the catheter out around midnight Tuesday. Then the frequency and urgency came back, now compounded by the fact that she's got this big incision and can't get out of bed very quickly. So they re-catheterized her and she had to stay another day in the hospital to give her bruised bladder time to recuperate. I was with her most of the day yesterday and learned many things about how to make a catheter tube drain, and also about how incredible our friend can be in the face of some really scary and humiliating experiences! There was originally some question as to whether or not she would have to take the catheter home, but when they removed it this morning (Thurs.) around 9, she responded well, and she was discharged from the hospital at around 3 this afternoon, completely foley-free.
She had a hard couple of days folks, and it's going to be a longer recovery than expected, but she came through the first part okay and I am just so proud of her for being brave and working so hard to get better. Her incision is healing very nicely and while she is moving slowly and still being very careful when getting up and down, she looks (as usual) spectacular and is in good spirits!
This last part is really hard to write, but the LEAP results came back, and they did not get all the cancer cells, so she's going to have to go through the laser procedure again. They will wait several weeks to give her time to recover and regain her strength, but it was extremely disappointing news and she had to hear it at the same time that the doctor told her she might have to keep the catheter in even after she went home. The plan right now is to go to the cancer center at OSU and get a second opinion on how best to handle that, but in the meantime, she needs all the love and prayers and good wishes everyone can send. If you don't feel like leaving a comment, send her an email, because she could sure use the support of just knowing folks are thinking of her right now. I'm not sure when she'll be up and at the computer, but it should hopefully be fairly soon.
She is very happy to be home, thrilled to see her kids, and ready to be better and back on the dance floor again. She has promised to rest and let her body do its work healing and taking care of itself, but I'm sure she'll be back on the blog herself as soon as she can sit up long enough to be at the computer.
Thanks for listening. I hope I didn't gross you out too much. I could have been a lot more graphic but I resisted...
Just to keep everyone posted...
Kym is in the hospital tonight (Tuesday) recovering from emergency surgery to remove several blood clots that had formed after her tubal ligation on Wednesday (of last week). She came through the surgery very well and is in a lot of pain, but is managing it with a pain pump that lets her dose herself whenever it gets too bad. As you might expect, she's also very cute and falling asleep in the middle of sentences.
It's too long a story for right now -- I am exhausted -- but she is okay, which is the important part, and I will try to post the longer version (at her request) tomorrow if you need more details.
She is expected to be released tomorrow around noon, provided her blood count stays reasonable (and if she doesn't punch out the phlebotomist, who called her a whiner and really deserved to be punched -- though at the time I thought would create bad karma and encouraged forgiveness and love...). We've set up arrangements with her mom and friends around here locally to get the kids out of the way so she can rest without distractions for at least several days and into as long as she needs. That's all in good shape, but prayers and good thoughts are always needed, so keep 'em coming!
Change takes place each day without our knowing. Spiritual transformation occurs such and reveals itself to us sometimes suddenly. Beauty and mystery can happen in the most mundane of days. Life is beautiful. Love is being born and dying at the same time.
This is a temporary entry being written by me (Katye) -- just until Kym can get up and about enough to blog herself -- but I wanted to let everybody know that she came through the surgery just fine. She's having some pain, but everything went okay and the doctors think (according to Kym's daddy) that they got all the cancer. It will be a little while until the test results are back on that. My apologies for blogging in her space, but I figured if you were as jumpy about this whole thing as I was, you'd probably want to know as soon as possible.
Kymmers, we love you baby! Glad you are still in the present tense!!! And when you're better enough, I fully expect you to come kick my ass for posting on your blog without checking with you first, but every time I call you are asleep and CD won't let me talk to you!
Yesterday. listening to NPR, I heard some very disturbing opinions on the reason why horrible tragedies occur. I just can't shake how negatively they affected me.
One, a religious leader from the southern US, said that tragedies like this warn others that their lives are full of sin. He said something to the effect of "All of us are born in sin. Events like this tell me that I need to be ever watchful of my relationship with the Lord". He also says that tragedies like this will make sense when we ask God in the afterlife.
A Hindu woman said that karma was the reason for these tragedies. She said that even babies were humans deserving of terrible retributions, perhaps from a former life.
Also, I heard third hand that Star Jones, one of the hosts of the television show The View said that she knew there was a God, because she and her husband were vacationing in Thailand just before the tsunami, and they were spared. Huh? God chose to spare you and kill thousands of others? My, aren't we special?? Go sit next to GWB.
Basically, what these people were saying was that these people all deserved the death and the devastation that rained down.
I am disturbed. I don't believe that any of us are so sinful that we need to be massively killed off. Besides, I thought God said that after Noah, he wouldn't use massive flooding to kill people for their sins anymore. That theory's kinda blown, eh?
It just made me all squicky.
...out in the world, who really WANT you to be miserable and helpless and needy. They don't like it when you are actually doing well. I think those people are pathetic and have control complexes.
More later, but not on that topic.
Peace!
I am scared that my surgery will hurt. I'm worried that my recovery will take too long. I chose to have it, and it shouldn't be THAT bad. I know I will be fine, but this is my space to write what I'm fearing, and this is what I'm fearing. I'm afraid the anaesthetic (I don't care about the spelling right now!) will either work too well, or not well enough. I'm torn because Gene won't be at my surgery, and doesn't seem to care to be. He did say that he would do it, but he never said "Kym, I'm worried and I want to be there". I'm afraid that they won't get all of the cancer and I will have to do it again or have oral chemo. I'm afraid of being alone. I'm afraid that I will be sorry that I can't ever have another baby. I made that choice, but in the deepest place in my heart, of course I want to have another baby. I am not sure I'd ever be 100% ready.
I just needed to get all of these things off my chest. I know I will be fine, but it's hard not to worry. Scratch that. It's impossible not to worry.
Just for the record, my kids are both in that beautiful story book kid place. I'm so happy. I've had the most magical days with them the last couple of weeks. Thanks kids!!!!!!
This entry shamelessly stolen from conflict girl. Thanks!
1. What did you do in 2004 that you'd never done before?
Read my own poetry at an open mic.
2. Did you keep your new years' resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
I think that for the first time, I did not resolve.
3. Did anyone close to you give birth? Yes! Ms. Candy, Ms. Jodie, Ms. Katherine...who else am I missing?
4. Did anyone close to you die?
No.
5. What countries did you visit?
Stayed in the US.
6. What would you like to have in 2005 that you lacked in 2004?
A karaoke machine? LOL. And maybe a mini van.
7. What date from 2004 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
November 4, when John Kerry conceded. This answer stolen from Holly, but it's the truth. There are several other, more personal dates that I will always recall as well.
8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
Hmmm. Does filing for bankruptcy count for anything?
9. What was your biggest failure?
Does filing for bankruptcy count here?
10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
I'm a gynie nightmare.
11. What was the best thing you bought?
I didn't buy anything major. I'm boring on this thing today!
12. Whose behavior merited celebration?
Not mine, to be sure. I'd have to say my kids, esp. Delaney. She roooocks.
13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?
Politicians, as usual. And my own and my ch's.
14. Where did most of your money go?
Bills. Pizza shops.
15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
The belief that we could actually have a new president.
16. What song will always remind you of 2004?
"Just Lose It {ahhhhhhhhhhhh}" reminds me of this year. Also, this is the year that I discovered Dashboard Confessional, recommended once again at Holly's blog. I freakin' LOVE them. My fave would be "Chasing the Ghost of a Good Thing".
17. Compared to this time last year, are you:
i. happier or sadder?
Uhhh? Happier.
ii. thinner or fatter?
'Bout the same.
iii. richer or poorer?
'Probly poorer. Yeah, because I don't even have a part time steady income now.
18. What do you wish you'd done more of?
Therapy.
19. What do you wish you'd done less of?
Fighting.
20. How will you be spending New Year's?
I was with some of my best friends, just hangin' with our kids.
22. Did you fall in love in 2004?
Yes!!!! **Swoons with romance**
23. How many one-night stands?
Zero.
24. What was your favorite TV program?
American Idol. Yeah, yeah, kiss my ass.
25. Do you hate anyone now that you didn't hate this time last year?
No.
26. What was the best book you read?
Wow. The best one I can recall is Wicked.
27. What was your greatest musical (re)discovery?
Dashboard Confessional/Shinedown/Switchfoot.
28. What did you want and get?
To get my bankruptcy over with. Actually, we don't know that its over.
29. What did you want and not get?
A new vehicle.
30. What was your favorite film of this year?
Troy!
31. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
I turned 33 this year, and had a girlfriends get together at my house. On my actual b-day, we put up the tree, one of my favorite things to do.
32. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
Just getting the b-rupt FINISHED.
33. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2004?
Stylin'!
34. What kept you sane?
Writing. My friends. My children.
35. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
Jon Stewart? Theresa Heinz Kerry? Brett Scallions?
36. What political issue stirred you the most?
The war in Iraq.
37. Who did you miss?
Old friends!
38. Who was the best new person you met?
A fella by the name of Jay. Or J.
39. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2004:
Apparently I am important enough that the loss of my love matters.
40. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year:
No more blood for oil, we got our own battles to fight on our own soil
No more psychological warfare to trick us to thinking that we ain’t loyal
If we don’t serve our own country, we’re patronizing our hero
Look in his eyes, its all lies
The stars and stripes, have been swiped
{Mosh. Eminem.}