four more days till surgery...
Jennie and I are going to make a zine entirely about the experiences we've had with various hospitals (especially Cook County) in regards to my recent health problems. Jennie has agreed to take pictures of me in the recovery room. I know I will look and feel like shit and might even be sobbing from pain, discomfort, fear...what have you. I wanted her to do this because when I was in the emergency room for fourteen hours, laying on my stomach, staring at the machines, watching the saline slowly drop into my IV, watching the med. student prepare the equiment for the minor surgery of draining my cyst that happened that morning.

I was so out of it and in so much pain, everything felt so surreal that the only way to really beat the monotony, fear, the lonliness feeling where I actually thought that I probably was going to die and that I was alone during it. I had to imagine myself compiling a collage for a zine. I imagined printing up copies and looking at the pics of my huge fluffy hair, my dry cracked lips, being really pale, my IV going into my arm, the blood that stained the white sheet that was over me...and thinking, wow, I can't remember that pain...did that happen...I'm so glad I'm feeling better now. I feel asleep several times in the emergency room, passing out from exhaustion. Having strange dreams...dreams where I'm walking, and walking, and walking...slowly, in pain, throughout Cook County and never getting to the room that I needed to. Having no help from Cook County employees...being told over and over that the front elevators were for employees only and that the ones all the way down the front hall and then you take a left and walk for 10 minutes ( slow in pain person walking time) to the end are the ones reserved for patients. Being laughed at when requesting a wheelchair. These are all true things at Cook County, things that did really happen to me - but I was dreaming them over and over again in that hospital stretcher. Haunted by what I went through just to get around inside an actual hospital...where once you step through the door half the battle is supposed to already be over.

I got through the emergency room shit by detachment. Once I realized I was there, looked into jennie's very tired, worn, scared eyes and seeing what all of that was doing to her and it was real. When I heard people crying in the beds near me because of hearing that their mother had a tumor the "size of a basketball" as I overheard their doctor say...it was real. It was all too real. I imagined making a zine after the fact, after the healing, after the surgeries, after getting a new well-paid fulltime fun (as fun as it could be) job, ....working through the past rather than the present.

So, moral of the story...we will be making a zine and you just might read it.

I'm feeling perfectly healthy right now. I've been going out on my own to the store, a huge feat for me and actually tiring because my body isn't used to it. Jennie and I completely cleaned our apartment, dusted, mopped, scrubbed...all of it, so that it would 1) be less work for her once the surgery happens, 2) be less full of bacteria that could infect my open wound while it's healing for the 3-5 months that that will take. Also, I've started using my bread maker to make several loaves of vegan bread to store so that we have bread through out the first couple of weeks for less work and cheaper than buying vegan bread (which is insanely expensive for being something that has less ingredients). I'm taking vitamins, going on walks, knitting, reading, showering a lot, cleaning, writing, organizing unbound shit....the vitamins for strength for the healing process and surgery. And everything else, for sanity sense I won't be able to leave the house for most likely a month after surgery. Also, for the first two weeks I won't even be able to sit and I can only lay on my stomach...means no knitting, no reading (which breaks my heart), no zine compiling, no letter writing. It means being lost in the tv and probably hating it but using it to pass the time. I'm not looking forward to all this. Especially with the weather getting so much better all of a sudden. I want to be out there. I want to be a part of it all. Not stuck here, burdening those around me and possibly not being able to go to our own benefit (Mar. 13th @ Insight Arts) and possibly not getting to go to M20 demo which I've been a part of planning for months.

My mom will be here on thursday, she's going to help me through the beginning of recovery...I'm very grateful. Also, for chicago people...we are having a "Liberte's last night out" party of sorts by gathering everyone up and going to Scott Free's homolatte, queer words and music event thursday night - it's free and you should be there.

Oh, and jennie cut a mohawk for me. I need a haircut badly, less hair on my body the better...if any hair gets into my wound it would create a new cyst and the need for a new surgery. Also, i can't work so what better time to look the way I want. It also will make bathing that much easier. And anything that we can make easier for me for a while is good.

Much love,
liberte