Jugular

I was in the hospital yesterday to have a filter placed in my inferior vena cava, or the vein that carries blood back to the right atrium of the heart. The hope is that the filter will be an insurance policy to prevent any more clots traveling to my heart, lungs, or brain.

The filter is a rather creepy looking thing, a cage with small spikes to keep it anchored in the wall of the vein. Frankly, it looks like a torture device for small animals.

I was expecting to have it placed through my femoral vein, in my leg, but as I was being wheeled into the interventional radiology suite, the tech told me it was going in through my jugular due to "physiological anomalies." Nice.

At that very moment, I knew I would need a LOT of Versed. The thought of having a hole in my neck with things poking down into my body was hugely anxiety inducing. It made me feel extremely vulnerable; one wrong move and I'd bleed out.

I did get the Versed, mercifully, but the RN was cautious (she said she wouldn't be stingy, but I beg to differ). I am used to getting 2mg of it with 100mcg of Fentanyl (synthetic morphine) for conscious sedation. Apparently my blood pressure was low enough that they didn't want to risk it dropping, so I only got 75mcg of Fentanyl and 1mg of Versed. I was wide awake but not freaked out during the procedure, and I didn't feel pain. I didn't however, want to remember it--I do--or have an enormous amount of pain afterwards. I did. They gave me 650mg of Tylenol in recovery and wished me well. Yeah, Tylenol is really going to cover it. I was quite a testy patient and got the hell out of the recovery room as quickly as I could. One of the RNs asked me if I have a low tolerance for pain or a high tolerance. I think in general I have a high tolerance, but now having had chronic pain for so long, perhaps my tolerance is low. I don't care. I hate feeling like my head is ripping off my body. She should try it sometime, and take some Tylenol.

Today I am still in pain. That pain is compounded by a lot of things emotional. I was thinking about vulnerability, and how so many people love to attack others in the metaphorical jugular, just for sport. And then say, "Well, you deserved it," or "Aren't you a victim," or "My pain is worse than yours and you don't know shit." You'd think that by the age of 41 I would be able to brush off these idiocies. I would like to be able to brush it off. But I am not quite there.

I don't like it when others use me to feel better about themselves, or perhaps more exactly, I don't like it when other people tell me that they feel so much better about themselves because they see me as such a piece of shit. I am reminded of many times over the past few years when I've been speaking to friends about problems in my marriage, and they come back the next day and say, "Wow! When I told my husband about what's going on with you at home, we had the hottest sex we've ever had!" I don't need to know this, really I don't. Hooray for you! But please don't tell me this.

I sit here feeling wounded on many levels from the literal to the spiritual. And adoption has nothing to do with it? Again, if I had known my father's medical history, I could have prevented the clots. If C hadn't taken 11 years to talk to me, maybe I wouldn't have taken so long to think of myself as human. If I had loved myself, I wouldn't be rotting here alone on my island of solitude.

Yeah, bad day. Get the fuck away from my jugular.