A visit

She lays here in the bed eroding into it, transformed from loud, energetic and insane to a mull of whines from time to time. Her eyes are puffy and droopy; the pupils look like a dooming endless tunnel of exhaustion. She seems never to be at ease covers on and off, on and off, leg up, leg down, arm bent, arm straight, 1 pillow, 3 pillows, 2 pillows, better with no pillows. Her throat is swollen at both sides her glands press through like someone punching out ward from inside her neck. Her breath stinks of rot and medicine. Her hair is a mess, she’s sweating constantly. The melody to her environment is the constant beep, beep, beep, beep, beeeep beeeep beeeeep of the thermometer. When she can sleep she seems the most content, but the parallel world it sends her to seems quite unappealing as well. It's as if all the energy that usually pours outward upon others is battling within her trying to kill the bacteria. She has a high fever for the 3rd day now, strep throat, and an odd genital infection. She has lost all control and has had to surrender, home chained to the bed yearning to feel the snowflakes melt rapidly upon her cheeks. She says she is a visual person and needs to imagine, understand, and see what is happening inside her. Her parents say they do not know what she would do if the mirror and the flashlight hadn’t been invented. She goes into the bathroom stumbling from the whirlwind of haze that happens when one has a fever, attempting to maintain her balance; she turns off the light, sticks out her tongue, opens her mouth, and turns on the flashlight. She stands there peering to the depths of her throat; the red inflamed tonsils are visible covered in white specks and fleshy bumps. She examines thoroughly I am not sure what she is looking at for so long. She does so regularly she says, and with her genital infection as well, though that I was not graced with the opportunity to witness (joking). Once satisfied she turns off the flashlight and on the light, and stumbles back to her room. This is a process she has always done, and a claim is essential to her healing. She needs to know what things look like inside her, what the results of her pain are. She says it helps her imagine the process of healing. She describes having a fever as if a gas valve might be shut off to her brain suffocating her thoughts causing her to feel as if she’s in different dimensions. Her tonsils push against her ears causing discomfort; she says she wishes she could just pop them with a nettle.

The remedies have been a many. Attempting to keep the fever quite high to kill the bacteria but not so that she is terribly un-comfortable. To reduce the fever there is Advil liquid gels and cold washcloths laid upon her forehead. Her mother in the middle of the night tried to relive her intense pain by rubbing outward on her temples, nose, and eyes. She has used a neti pot, an Indian invention which one places salt water in the pot and drains it into ones nostril, with the proper head tilt it comes out the other. There has been relaxation oil applied, antibiotics taken, Vicks vapor rub on the feet and neck, LOADS OF WATER, hot tea the list goes on.

She narrates one of her dreams, I see the hospital all white all the attendants so happy so content to serve me, it makes me happy taking the work off my parents, I beg for help. They hook me up to an IV tell me exactly what I have and I feel so much better. I feel the liquid running through my body cooling me down appeasing every tissue layer, every red blood cell. I wake up. I want to go. I am worried about the price. I am ashamed. I don’t want to tell my parents that I want to go, it will seem so dramatic I only have strep throat, I don’t want to be charge tons. I see them cramped in a plastic chairs, so I withdraw from the idea, ohhhh but wouldn’t it be great she says.

She becomes very needy, dependant and in the constant need for affection. She realizes once we are better how quick we are to forget the sufferance of being sick the desire to simply breath fresh air, hold ones head up, read a book. We become so involved and worried about everything else when sick its back to the core. She says she feels completely out of control and she does not like it, she feels as if all the walls around her are crashing in and she is struggling to climb through the rumble, reaching for serenity with her weak will.

Many times she becomes very dreary and negative, dying to be better and then she says she must focus. Focus on he current state and place her energy upon the workings of her body, support them with her soul and tell them to work harder. She says she continues to think of all the others who are sick like her, but with no home, no medicine, no family. She says she feels there pain but doesn’t urn for their intensity.

A few days later, she is feeling a lot better, slight pain still in her neck but she can go about, she’s washed up, and no more fever. We go to a Manhattan health clinic to try and get her to see a gynecologist. It is a fail, we go to 2 other places, consecutively fails. She is frustrated, at losses for an explanation, uncomfortable. The first place we visit there are hundreds of different doctors at the establishment, and there is a room with only office workers, with paperwork everywhere, boxes and boxes of it. All symbols of the people they see and the money being accepted and the absence of any doctor or medicinal objects is clear. It feels so absent of help. As she leaves full of the absence she continues to ponder.

Health is a reflection of how one is doing mentally and how the exterior is affecting the body. Sometimes the mind and ones thoughts blocks one from seeing what is directly in front of ones eyes, what one can feel. It is an unexpected chaotic break upon the physic forcing it to take a step back and premeditate. This usually does not happen until after the break has been released and a little gas has been added and the gears begin to turn and one cane reflect, ironic.