Click Cl--WTAF?

Actually, I didn't get that far.

On Friday, Future Shop called the SU and claimed my camera was in, fully repaired, having passed all diagnostics, etc.

I was rather beyond skeptical. And my 'rather beyond', I mean I couldn't even look in the direction of the camera without feeling violent nausea.

But of course, in classic form, the SU insisted I had to be fair. On Saturday, I crept out, crunched over in terrible pain, fever delirium, short circuiting vision, and some nausea. In my own nod to fairness, those are from the tennis ball, but the camera wasn't HELPING.

I was fighting doing it, but eventually, spotting something in the river, I had the SU pull out my camera, hand it over to me, and I turned it on.

And I, nearly bursting into tears, fought the crushing urge to smash the camera into the car console.

Because I couldn't punch a Future Shop Representative in the mouth. With my camera.

They smashed my LCD screen.

So, as I a predicted, my camera did in fact return more broken than when I sent it to them.

Further numb investigation confirmed that they fixed nothing. They just kept the camera for two months, smashed the view screen, and gave it back to me.

I know they were going all out fighting honoring the warranty. But this? Is...impressive.

Oh, and the thing in the water?

It was a seal.

THERE WAS A SEAL IN THE FUCKING RIVER.

That, is a shot that is not going to happen again.

So, not only am I indeed cameraless, but I am going to have to become very clever as well as stubborn. See, my needs require a lot of tech. But I am not inclined to give Future Shop even the spit from my mouth.

So I am going to have to Macgyver a way to get tech, when they're the only place that sells any.

Either that, or go without new tech at all. And if you don't think I'm that stubborn, to hold a grudge forever against someone who constantly insulted me and treated me badly for no fucking reason at all, when I was already suffering terribly? You really don't know me at all...

Kicked While Down

The Fetus is on CSI.

THE FETUS.

I wish this just meant I'd gone completely delirious from the pain.

Oh, and the appt with the specialist went WORSE than the one with my doctor.

Yes.

I'd tell you, in delightful detail, but the migraine is giving me extreme visual distortions. It's taken me a good hr, easy, to type this. It's hard enough to fight thought through the pain, but I can't just stubborn my way through seeing only a shaking smeared blur overlaid with random flashing aura...

I'm only partly confident this makes any sense at all, through the small snatches I was able to see. But speech to text works about as well as punching my keyboard at at random. >:|

And I don't think blogger takes audio-only posts...

Click

So my camera broke, nearly two months ago.

It started with randomly flipping itself into macro mode, progressed almost immediately to blue jelly aliens, and only a few weeks later suddenly decided pictures don't need to be exposed, so on a brilliant sunny day everything was nearly black.

It was still under warranty. Which means I've spent two months in warranty hell. Future Shop promised it would ship to Halifax, and be back in a week, two max.

We checked in two weeks later.

They had shipped it to Toronto.

We have heard nothing since, except some vague mention of a new lens. Which hardly filled me with joy. Since they don't make that model anymore. IF they found a lens, I'm sure it was refurbished from a dumpster.

So, for some time, I have accepted I'm not getting my camera back. Before I got chucked into the ER with deeper concerns, I tried out other cameras. Anything I could find, even expected fails.

I tried Polaroid, several Fujis, Kodak, Nikon--and those were just the ones that came home. I left the others in store because they were failboating right at the display and even with determined tinkering, could NOT take a semi-decent shot IN STORE.

All of the cameras have failed. They take blurry shots, no matter the light conditions. They're all underexposed, making even sunny days drab and colourless. And colour....dear odds, none of them can even TRY to approximate colours. In light conditions any less than looking directly into the sun, they take about three minutes to take a picture and it's just black. This is WAY beyond can't deal with low light. And if they manage a picture, a 12MP camera is pixelated to nearly unrecognisable. Because 'low'--meaning ALL light conditions--mean the camera shoots in 3MB, but still in enormous blown up size.

And they can't do macros. Period.

It's INSANE.

I can't understand how my camera, which was three years old, and NOT a new release when purchased, is kicking the living shit out of brand new cameras, which have 3+ years of new tech and more MB, and therefore SHOULD have better auto, features, settings, stabilisation, etc.

I got frustrated and desperate enough to look at DSLRs, which I, of course, can't ever use and can't afford. But I wanted to see if SOMETHING could still take pictures. Ah, the horror of seeing reviews with actual pictures, TERRIBLE pictures, saying things like 'this is exceptional quality, considering the price' and the price is, oh, $7000 USD, if you just get the basics.

WHY?

WHY would anyone do that?

But you read a bit more, and you realise why, the SLR and DSLR wankers. They take GREAT pleasure is spitting on, at length, anyone who takes pictures with a point and click or a bridge camera. Or ANYTHING that has an auto feature. So they WILL spend $7000 to take HORRIFIC pictures, just so they can feel elite.

Dicks. It always comes down to dicks.

So I am cameraless, and will remain cameraless. This seemed impossible, and unfathomable, having taken over 20k shots in about 6 years, always having my camera with me, in loving arm's reach. But it is what it is.

On the plus side, my opportunities for landscapes and macros are rather limited from my bed, so I don't have beautiful things needing clicks to torment me and my loss...

Well, except the guys, but they always got annoyed by the posing anyway...

Fight!

Well, my day began, oh, around 4am maybe? When I slipped back into consciousness to the certainty that my teeth were being broken out of my face with a hammer.

The migraine that never ends has scored a major win. I've been taken off all migraine and pain treatments. This also means the tennis ball has free play, and, of course, one of the things the tennis ball does? Makes migraines worse.

Why would they do this?

Well...

My primary migraine treatment was Imitrex injections. Imitrex and the new med the specialist wants to put me on will not be civil together, as in the pharm's computer went all Red Alert! Red Alert! and flagged 'Fatality'. Technically, it flagged 'violent seizures and brain death', but, hey, I'm going with if my brain is dead, I'm dead. This also happened with the painkiller that was to be thrown regularly at the tennis ball, to try to keep its snarling down at a bearable level. You know, where I could, say, get out of bed, and have the option to, maybe, not scream. Continuously.

I was not happy. But, honestly, I expected to be given alternative treatments. Knowing the specialist's treatment was already the best option there, I was, quite reasonably, thinking my doctor would propose alt treatments for my migraines and the tennis ball. Most likely, it seemed to me, a different painkiller that would try to kick down both.

But I really REALLY underestimated how deeply my doctor hates my specialist, and just how utterly fucking pointlessly dickish he could really be.

Because, first, he tried to tell me not to follow the specialist's treatments, and when I replied that I had done the research and it really did seem the best option at this point--

Snap, I ended up with no treatments.

And quite a fucking bit of pissiness.

So, now I don't have that nebulous irrational 'I am being punished' feeling that comes with unending brutal pain.

I really AM being punished.

Since life is cruel, I have to see my specialist again tomorrow. I fully intend to tell him all of this loveliness. It's not that I think he can help. Or would even if he could. But I have to. He's supposed to judge the effectiveness of his treatments, in part, based on my mental state. Being in a fuckton of pain, and deliberately cut off from all treatments, I'm guessing that fucks up my mental state. Just a tad. If I didn't tell him, I'd be sabotaging my own well-being. Fuck.

And I, am not as stupid or childish as my doctors.

But, at this point, I'm already bracing, expecting the specialist to take a nasty swipe at me, just because he can't punch my doctor.

So, basically, any way this plays, I am so going to lose.

But, in no way related, but def needed is this:



(Thanks to R.)

R. has also been informed that he BETTER show up for the Rally To Restore Sanity.

Because he can get there, and I so can't. He MUST represent for both of us, and bring me back an epic crapton of media. EPIC. Or yes, I will beat him down. Mercilessly. And I don't hit like a girl.

And, lo, I just happen to have a lot of stress, rage, et al to work out...

The Light of Midnight

'Fancy Face'
Original Photography
© 2005 Marlo Dianne


We've lost Midnight.

He was, simply, the sweetest and happiest person I've ever met. We've been crying. Hard. I was crying again, this morning. I will be dripping all over my keyboard even as I type this. Words are...useless right now, but other than hugs and tears, it's all I've got.

We hadn't seen each other in years. My illness means I can't travel. So he never saw what I've become, and I never saw the horror of what his recent illness had done to him either. In our memories of each other, we're not broken.

And my strongest memories of Midnight are all of greetings.

Whenever I arrived at Lynn's, he would just KNOW, and from nowhere would come a joyful wailing bellow, and he would just APPEAR, galloping at top speed, until he could throw himself on my feet, where he would roll around happily, sharing his utter glee.

I don't know if this was just how he said hi to everyone. Maybe it was. But this morning it hit me all over, hard, very hard, that I will never again have someone that happy to see me, that excited just because I EXIST.

*long pause, involving many more wads of Kleenex*

Midnight didn't like to be held, or snuggled in the usual ways. He wanted me to hurry up and sit down, settle, so he could groom himself into bliss by rubbing his head and shoulders thoroughly into my calf or thigh. When he got sleepy, he'd wrap his arms around me and cling tighter, as if he could break physics and absorb me. Or maybe I was just an especially gruesome and awkward teddy bear. Things would get a little dangerous when he got that mellow, because he would start to flex and knead, and he had wicked sharp claws. Ouch. But sharing his pure joy, feeling that utterly loved, was more than worth the occasional accidental puncture.

I tried to capture lots of portraits of him, but he couldn't contain himself enough to be still, even for an instant. And being gleaming black, indoors, and usually crocodile rolling along my thigh...kind of raised the challenge.

I think the portrait above was the best I ever managed. As I recall, we were all outside on the deck, and he had settled pressed into Lynn. She said it was because it was his favourite chair.

Silly.

He got pretty gooey, between the happy of family and soaking in the warmth from the sun. But he STILL wasn't still. His tail was doing the come hither wiggle worm, the paw at his face kept flexing, and being pressed tight to his mom wasn't close enough, so he was endlessly shifting, trying to absorb into her too. But I'm, oddly, very patient--and EXTRA freakishly determined--with a camera and a purpose. I took A LOT of shots, and sometimes the odds let you win.

Even so, whenever I look at it, I feel joy...and...disappointed. Oh, I think he looks beautiful, yes, but not near as gorgeous as he really is. I kept trying to do better, and now...

Maybe some things are just too special for any container to hold.

As broken as I am, I know the pain that Lynn has right now is so much worse, and I hate that there's nothing I can do to help. Nothing can make it better.

But I do know this:

Pain is terrible, so terrible, but pain is temporary. In universe time, even a whole life of it, unending, is nothing.

The joy and the love that Midnight gave me, that he gave all of us, he shoved it so deep it's never going anywhere. It's a permanent part of us. Family.

Bodies are temporary; love is forever.

Imagine

My brain is very critical.

It can't help it. It's always been this way. It is endlessly frantically tinkering away, taking things apart, trying to figure out how they work.

Or how they don't.

I have vivid memories of myself as a toddler, of watching my hand move my fingers and trying to understand how that worked. How my mind could make that happen, how my fingers could move before I had time to THINK at them to do it.

(Yes, of course I spent my childhood getting violently beaten for being weird. Like I'm giving you new shocking info here.)

By the time I was maybe six or so, I had read books on nerves, circulation, neurons--all the chemistry and physical reactions that make our bodies work.

And I would lie awake in the dark, watching my fingers move, trying to visualise it. Because it was just...amazing.

And we still don't understand it yet. Our bodies are so complicated, and mutated, we probably never will. It's too big, too MUCH.

But it won't stop my brain from trying.

And that bitch is like that with everything.

It LOVES critical essays. It breaks down stories, opinions, machines--ANYTHING--with equal passion. Whether it agrees, disagrees, or even comprehends. It WANTS TO. It has to get in there and sense it, figure it, weigh its worth. Endlessly evolving as new info comes in.

My specialist considers this a symptom of my disease, one to get rid of. That horrifies me. People who don't think? They just confuse, frustrate, enrage...and flat out scare the shit out of me.

I'm on Team Treat My Disease--yes please--But Keep Me.

Like gym class, I find myself alone, endlessly scorned and abandoned as the sole champion of Team Weird.

(True Trivia: I spent three years watching gym class. The teacher decided since no one ever wanted me on their team, the obvious solution was to ban me from participation, period. I was cool with this. Oh, I thought it was unfair and moronic, but it was infinitely better than getting an extra beating when, by chance, the team I was on happened to lose.)

But there's a problem with a brain that NEEDS to reason, is COMPELLED to rationalise. Nah, not the world. It has been thwarted enough to accept that the world, especially humans, don't make sense. Mostly. Sometimes it still shudders and flings about in frantic panic when they do something unusually...wrong. But lo, WTAF is just part of universe. And not always a bad part.

The problem is nightmares.

I can't sleep. And I don't want to, no matter how broken or exhausted I am. I'm blogging, even though it hurts, and hurts worse, because I'm afraid to go back to sleep. Because there will be another nightmare.

I still can't write. I've come through anguish and confusion and grief to admit, with great pain, that my diseases have killed that. It's a loss I never expected. My mind has given me stories, probably longer than it even had words. It sees the world as stories. And there was always two busy and joyful and fully compatible parts of my mind. The one that tore odd things apart, and the one that pulled random things together.

With both gone, I can't imagine what me would be left. I wouldn't be able to. Literally. And I can't be convinced of the point of saving my body, if I'm not in it anymore...

But I've wandered off. I think my mind did it on purpose, managing to cleverly compel me to say things I've been, mostly, avoiding saying while employing stealthy ninja aversion from the thing it wanted to avoid more.

Nightmares.

I discovered, especially while bedridden in pure agony, waiting for my surgeries and then recovering from them, my brain still desperately needs to make sense, to rip random into reason, force form on the formless...

When I'm sleeping.

It NEEDS to make sense of the pain. And the ONLY rational explanation it could come up with was this: I was being murdered.

So whenever I COULD sleep, in whatever broken little slip I grabbed, or jerking nod I feel into, it was the same. I had very vivid nightmares, exquisitely detailed and different every time, except in theme. Someone was trying to kill me, and I was losing. Badly.

The pain was perfect, exactly matching what the growths were doing to my insides. Other than murder, that was the only part that was identical every time.

I'm getting nightmares again. It makes sense. The tennis ball is technically a different disease, but it's fucking eerie. It's in nearly the same place as the biggest and nastiest of the growths they cut out of me before. It's actually BIGGER, and well, let's not get into all the utter grim and have you all flee, but it's shoving on the same things and causing the same pain and symptoms as before. The ones I spent three years with, so I know them rather fucking well. Too well.

This hasn't been good for my WAKING mental state, ending up exactly where I was, as if I never fought so fucking hard to find some way out at all. All those fucking arguments and indifferent specialists and excruciating tests and horrific treatments and brutal surgeries for nothing. NOTHING. Because I never recovered; I couldn't. I still have the progressive disease that gave me the growths in the first place. The growths that can still come back, anytime, and they might as well have. For all I know, the disease gave me this too. But..here we are. Trapped. Back in the same agony, back in the same bed, back with no hope, no options, no idea how or when this will end...

Awake or asleep, I'm already back in the same nightmare, the variations only make it worse...

Bad Medicine

I've been to the ER...maybe 9 times in a week or so? Maybe more. I lost track. Really. That's how bad it was. Plus there was The Cursed Clinic of Deepest Hell. And several doc appts.

Many moments of horror, rage, humiliation, helplessness, weirdness. A few sharp images of stunned confusion, after days of indifferent--and even worse, gleeful--torture with 'doctors' or 'nurses', when I bumped into sudden compassion from an actual person, and didn't even know HOW to react. Kindness was like endless pain not existing; it didn't seem real anymore, or even theoretically possible.

I considered, off and on in pain delirium, sharing these moments on the blog. I have shared some of them in rambling fractured emails with A., J., and R. But mostly, judging by those same people, who KNOW me, they're...hard to believe as real. And, of course, grim as fuck.

I eventually, by the great random, got a real doctor who ordered the right tests and got me a diagnosis. It's not a GOOD diagnosis, of course. It's horrible. But a CAT scan is compelling. It's completely impartial, has no reason for an agenda at all actually, and it's got FLIPPIN PICTURES OF YOUR INSIDES.

And yet my regular doctor, who just came back from vacation with timing quite worthy of being spit on, is arguing against it. He can't exactly ignore the enormous obviously Bad Thing in the pictures. It's the size of a fucking tennis ball. What, he was going to argue it was a smudge or something? No. But he decided that couldn't be causing pain. Really. So something ELSE must be broken, and he wants--of course--a hideously painful test to confirm. To start.

Um, you know what, I've got utter agony by itself. Now this. Plus hideously painful tests coming up, other horrors in various probabilities but still sure to surprise, and--of fucking course--possible surgery in the toss for the tennis ball. And I HATE sports. Always have.

And all those would still be listed on the GOOD side of outcomes, FFS...

I think, maybe I'm just crazed with pain here, we'll deal with the sports equipment that doesn't belong. You know, first. Let's concentrate on, say, FACTS. Before you wonder off, blind, into plain Crazytown: when you have a PICTURE of a WRONG THING that might as well have HELP ME in sharpie written on it.

>:|

Meanwhile, my specialist has decided I'm not responding to treatment for THAT disease. But my specialist and my doctor must have history more torrid than soap opera fanfic. They really REALLY hate each other. And they keep clawing at each other through me. Thank guys, I totally need your dumbass drama. Yay you! So my regular doctor is ALSO fighting my specialist on the proposed new treatment. :|

And then there is the Great Unending Allergy Saga. A deeply bitter and epic battle to beyond the rigor of death, just to get a test slightly more accurate than scribbling random circles on an old scantron slip. While blindfolded. Without even having questions.

JESUS.

I know I can't get House, I do, but we need to do this shit more efficiently. Can't we just shove all the doctors into a room and make them fight it out? By ideas I mean. I only want them armed with a whiteboard and sharpies. They can scribble out ALL my diseases and their repressed childhood angst at once, and then _I_ decide who has ideas that are least moronic / most competent / backed up by evidence and actual science / have the lowest quality and quantity of purely sociopathic tendencies / et al.

I'm already DOING this, but it's taking me fucking YEARS. Meanwhile, I'm in agony, and my diseases all have time to grow and play with my innards and, oh yeah, get fucking worse. Yes I'm bitter. I should be. This stupid shit is an embarrassment to the whole purpose of science and medicine.

To make my point, let me sum with this fact: 'doctors' have tried to kill me THREE TIMES in the past two weeks. See, they meticulously and tediously take down your drug allergies, your current conditions, and your current medications every time they see you. BUT THEN THEY UTTERLY IGNORE THAT AND GIVE YOU MEDS THAT ABSOLUTELY WILL KILL YOU.

By reading this, you're guessing they failed. Sort of. Oh, they tried so hard. But my body, broken as it is, is really fucking stubborn on that dying thing, even when I'm begging it to, asking people to please just kill me outright, whatever, because I just can't take any more pain. Problem is, they did damage. Serious damage. They gave me more pain, lots of it, and I lost use of my eyes, among the joy. Yes. I still haven't recovered, and I may never recover. And no one knows if I will, BECAUSE THEY STILL DON'T KNOW WHAT THE FUCK THEY DID IN THE FIRST PLACE.

Let alone care.

I'm guessing if I was allowed to, say, just put out their eyes, they might pay a little more attention to silly little details.

What?

It's just a theory.

And a better one than most of theirs...