#and ‘literally the full sum of human knowledge about bees’

[boypussydilf]

“keroro platoon movie night” is more just a monthly rewatch of all the captain geroro movies because that’s the one and only thing they can all agree on

[bonesandthebees]

I did drop off the face of your askbox for a while but shhhh school has been kind of hectic bc I'm falling behind a bit skbska

GLASS DIVINE IS SO COOL YOUR BRAIN BEE WHAT THE FUCK

I read someone else's dream a while ago when you started talking abt revamping it here and goddd Glass is such an improvement already.

I love the changes, especially with Wilbur's behaviour in the Deathlings temple and how he was actually kidnapped. It adds so much to his relationship with Tommy and I love seeing Wilbur being a bitch because it makes sense!!! Wilbur was ripped away from all he's known since he was a child and they're keeping him from his purpose. He's lashing out because he wants them to be more antagonistic towards him; they're his kidnappers, they have no right to act like this.

Also the grey morality with the Deathlings is amazing already. They treat him with a bit more humanity than in the palace but it is painfully obvious that they had no plans past "get the Pythia to fuck over Schlatt 👍" without taking into regard how he is a person, not just a toy. Also that they likely have any more knowledge about the Pythia than the rest of the public. They don't know that Wilbur is traumatised and while they might be pretty open with each other about how fucked everything is, they can't expect the same from him. They literally kidnapped him, they can't be too surprised that he isn't taking very kindly to them when his entire role is to guide Schlatt.

They don't have a great grasp on how to interact with him and don't know when they push too far until he snaps back (see his convo w Niki).

Also I love the conflict between Deathlings vs Clara's followers. The way that worship of Kristin has been outlawed and all these rumours (some may be true, some may not be) have been spread about them to justify it. Also the fact that Deathlings have a name to refer to them as a whole while Clara followers don't seem to or that Wilbur just doesn't use it bc he's so deep in her worship is a little detail that I adore. It adds to the whole "us vs them" mentality that has been grown in this country in regards to religion and reminds me very much of my own experiences with religion.

I'll go into more detail about this chapter in another ask but my general thoughts abt glass divine can be summed up into "inject this into my veins, the religious trauma hits a bit too close to home".

(1/2)

- 🦈

hi shark anon!!! welcome back!! i'm sorry school isn't going well :( manifesting you getting caught up soon king!

aaa thank you so much, I'm so glad you're enjoying glass divine so far. I'm liking it SO much more than someone else's dream. that fic was so rushed because I wanted to write the world but just didn't have the time to give it the story it deserved, so I'm really diving into everything I originally wanted to and then some with glass.

yesss wilbur is not thrilled to be there because he's been ripped away from his duty and everything he's known!! he's lashing out because he doesn't know what else to do. at least in the palace he had a false sense of being in control. now he knows full well he has no control of his life and what happens to him, and he's not being treated like a deity for once. those things combined have just sent him spiraling. not to mention the fact that he can't serve clara and it's making him panic.

the grey morality of the deathlings is definitely something I wanted to emphasize in this. just because they're treating him more like a person doesn't mean they're doing a great job of it. they still thought of him as more of a tool than a person and now they're being forced to confront the fact that he's going to be an irrational and angry human being who doesn't want to be in captivity. it's a fun conflict to play around with.

YEAHHH US VS THEM!! there is no term for clara followers because clara worship is the default. everyone is expected to worship clara, so why would they have a title? only the deathlings have a name for their group because it shows that they're different. they're not following the common beliefs and it brands them as heretics.

[floggingink]

Riverdale, “Chapter Twenty: Tales from the Darkside”

THIS ISN’T DOWN TO THE WIRE, KEVIN

I think most of the references this ep went over my head, as I am not a classic horror connoisseur, but I’m giving it the old college try

CHUCK AND HIS 18-INCH WAIST IS BACK!

Sixth period is Intro to Film: for starters, the opening text crawl is from the beginning of the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and they did this to placate Jughead, who has an amazing episode this week in that he fucking survives to the end of it

oh yeah, Betty got Mr. Phillips killed!

I like that in response to the circumstances Betty and Jughead have started sinning MORE

Jug’s snake tattoo has a little crown on it, because history will not be denied/he’s a dweeb

Jughead’s being very dutifully “You didn’t do anything wrong, etc.,” and Betty absolutely cuts him off like, “BUT HOW THE FUCK?”

he calls her “Poirot,” which is like Betty calling him a rebel without a cause

ah, the poster of which is by his bed! Jughead has a bedroom!!!! you’ve earned it, champ!

Sexy, aesthetic Southside: I don’t remember if Penny Peabody had crimped hair the last time she and Jughead met, but it’s straight outta 00’s Avril Lavigne and I love it

the Kentucky Derby blinders Jughead has for his father are Riverdale’s truest tragedy. FP is doing him so wrong

Jughead is going to be Penny’s “transportation advisor,” because he’s such a good driver

LOVED the Kill Bill typewriter “Archie & Jughead” titles

What damn high school in America: you know Jughead just totally skipped class and sauntered into Riverdale High in his fucking jacket. now that his English teacher is gone, what’s the fucking point? can he still run his paper?

Gay?!: Cheryl calls them Bert and Ernie as she shoves them aside like they were made of papier-mâché (Bert and Ernie are life partners)

I like Jughead’s sort of layered expression when he’s asking Archie for help/telling Archie he’s going to help him, like he’s slightly smiling when he talks about the Ghoulies “stunt”

Archie COMMENDABLY says NOTHING about the huge crate full of drugs (it’s not POSSIBLY full of drugs, or even pancake mix) he’s about to get his prints all over. Riverdale would never have them pick up a like a metal Law & Order box, it’s got to be like a fucking pirate chest

Archie & Jug in the truck was presh. Archie had a lot of Fred-esque lines, but I think he’s filtering his true fears about Jughead ENDING UP IN PRISON, WHICH IS WHERE HE IS HEADED, into father-speak, and Jughead, whose father blows, is like I DON’T KNOW, DAD, I’M LIVING MINUTE TO MINUTE HERE

—which is very traumatized, you know? like when you’re growing up, if you’re too hassled and anxious you get holes in your developing brain because it’s too focused on constantly being in fight-or-flight survival mode to the detriment of learning how to be a person? Jughead doesn’t have time for anything that isn’t literally getting to the end of today, possibly sleeping with Betty

I like how Archie’s fantasy does NOT include college, which he doesn’t care about

Jughead doubts it: GQ tells me the East Village is still around, Jughead

not even in his dreams does Archie imagine Veronica would NOT be living on Park Avenue

I like the possibility-thread of “Even worse than jail” being cut off by the flat

Jughead wants to call Betty, his fixer, but then they’re like, How about the sheriff’s son?

would Kevin even have helped them out? he’s not into the shady anymore! he’s post-Joaquin!

Jughead has grand movie-thoughts about his own persona but has not “played it cool” once in his life

OH GREAT, IT’S TONY TODD. IT’S THE FUCKING CANDYMAN. GREAT. GREAT. HOW THE FUCK. WHAT. THE FUCKING—WHAT????????

Jughead only has $18 and he carries it with him wherever he goes

Jughead RELEASES Archie from his friendship debt before getting into McGinty’s truck, because HE’S ABOUT TO DIE

“DON’T LOOK UNDER THAT TARP”

JUGHEAD TAKING HIS LAST LOOK AT ARCHIE IN THE REARVIEW

The Blossom spawn: when Tony Todd fucking invoked Jason fucking Blossom, on top of everything else, ON TOP OF EVERYTHING ELSE, I had a fucking myocardial infarction

McGinty throwing out the time warp phrase “for just a hot minute”

okay the lighting in the truck makes his eyes reflect these tiny pinpoints of white out of the beyond-the-grave voids of his eyes and that Judgement Day shit is on the radio and Jughead is like, this is too much atmosphere even for me

“IN THE BLACK OF THE HOOD IS THE LIGHT OF GOD, AND WHEN YOU SEE IT, YOU WILL DIE.” WHAT? WHAT???? WHAAAAATTTTT???????

and then Archie sees a zombie deer. he sees like a fawn with its fucking skin blistered off. he sees a fucking Chernobyl deer. walking precisely the line between Riverdale and Greendale. great. Greendale is full of ghosts. Jughead is in a death truck driven by the Riverdale Reaper’s sixth victim or something. GREAT. GREENDALE IS FULL OF GHOSTS! GREAT!

Jughead wears his watch face very rakishly on the inside of his wrist

for a hot second, I thought the flies were bees. I did think they were bees. I did think they were doing Candyman

BECAUSE IT’S FUCKING TONY TODD!!!!!!!

you know Jughead was going to look under the tarp. you fucking knew it. he’s in act two of a horror movie. he’s going to relay this story later and say he didn’t look under the tarp? what’s under the tarp? WHAT’S IN THE BOX

deer too dead even to still walk around

I’ve seen this like three times and I can’t tell you what the fuck he’s eating in that shitty cafe. steak? Jell-O? kitten flesh?

the way he says “I’m no thrill-seeking sicko,” sucking on the S’s

the single fly buzzing around McGinty’s shoulder as he tells the Reaper story was like a single further death omen and if it turned out Jughead was already a zombie like in that comic you know, I would’ve fucking bought it, fuck it, what the fuck

some people THINK a lynch mob got him? there was a RUMOR lynch mob? or there was DEFINITELY a lynch mob that only MIGHT HAVE lynched the right person??? I’M GONNA NEED SOME CLARIFICATION, POP TATE

California in my experience is exactly where you should be to pray to the devil

I loved how fast things went incredibly south in the diner. the thud of the check, McGinty saying Jughead would pay, Jughead beings like, Pardon me? Jughead about to be LEFT BEHIND

“YOU’RE SINNERS, BOTH OF YOU. CAREFUL OR YOU’LL TASTE THE REAPER’S BLADE NEXT.”

Archie > Dawson: Archie is, simultaneously, the worst and best person to have along with you inside a horror movie, because he’s sort of dense but also will never give you up, never let you down, desert you (if it’s a Good Archie episode, which this unmistakably is). Archie is the only character I would buy forgetting he was there and miraculously he shows back up in the nick of time

next we have Archie and Jughead driving around some more with the Friday the 13th echoing exhale sound effect in the background, just for funsies

Fifth period is AP English: Penny’s fucking Arctic exploration crate has all this HP Lovecraft motif lore on the side of it, so, cool, I guess it contains screaming desiccated souls or something (Lovecraftian Ghouls eat flesh, by the way)

“Damn good coffee”: aaaaaaaaand coming out to meet them is a Soviet spy wearing a beret, wheeled out by Karla, with an AK on his hip. Greendale contains the trapped spirits of everyone who died there in the 70’s

These students are legally children: Jughead is screwed. Jughead is so screwed. Jughead is one part vodka, two parts orange juice

Archie’s coloring lends itself well to being bathed in that pink Pop’s lighting I love

Jughead has recovered enough to call McGinty (who isn’t named aloud) “Mr. American Gothic”

JUGHEAD WANTS TO GO TO THE LIBRARY WITH ARCHIE. he doesn’t want to do drug runs. he wants to snoop around with his best friend, because despite having a gang in his bloodline, Jughead is REALLY not a gang member. when he gets to choose what he wants to do, he just wants to do research. he wants to be Giles, okay

endless tragedy with Archie’s “Next day, for sure.”

I would absolutely believe that Riverdale’s jail’s visiting hours are actually “sunup to sundown” as opposed to like “eight to four”

how precious is he, steeling himself to see his father’s slashed face

“You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

apparently Penny’s surveillance video has some sort of infrared lighting quality

I like how Penny specifies that Jughead is not to raise his voice to her, a classic scarier-than-violence threat

is this why FP was so freaked that Jughead would owe her? not because she’s naturally treacherous to everyone, but because he knows she wants recompense for his betrayal? FP, you’re awesome start to finish

Jughead has not done like a SINGLE THING WRONG this entire time that hasn’t been at the behest of him trying to FIX everything single thing that his father set him up for, dog

I do not deserve a whole segment dedicated to Josie and her white manicure, yet here I am!

Josie and the janitor have an understanding, because people who stick around school after hours are usually slightly strange and have to stick together

“I don’t need a bodyguard! I’m not Whitney. Yet.”

Certified pedigree: Mayor McCoy is another Scary Riverdale Mom, but I’d say she’s the least scary of them WRT her daughter (not the southsiders, although jury’s still out on how much of that is Alice’s fault)

Josie’s vocal polyps swell when she’s stressed

her denim one-piece? only you, Josie

Cheryl’s hair: Classic Disney princess hair this episode. Classic Cheryl. a Classic

Cheryl sums up Josie’s guilt as being about “sinning” which means therefore the Black Hood may notice, as opposed to something like “You feel like you’re betraying your friends,” which would be the human response

Chuck Clayton is thoroughly charming throughout. if you just watched him this episode, you’d be like, How bad could he really have been?

he came prepared with the knowledge that Josie “loves her cheese fries”

Chuck’s leather jacket is very nice. all the boys should just be wearing leather jackets

Josie is partaking of a “eucalyptus steam”

“Nick St. Creature”

Cheryl’s measured response to Josie calling her controlling was perfect. she says she’ll never be able to “repay” her “debt,” because Cheryl is ALL ABOUT tit-for-tat, emotional burdens handled via business deals, paying off favors, clearing her side of the column

I also like her Blossom pun

The 2001 Josie and the Pussycats movie was a masterpiece: VALERIE! MELODY! VALERIE’S SWEATER! MELODY’S SKIRT! VALERIE’S CURLS! MELODY’S AFRO! “WOMEN ARE SUPPOSED TO TREAT EACH OTHER BETTER THAN THIS.” “PRIDE COMETH BEFORE THE FALL.”

Fwoopy hair is the best hair: Melody is not happy but she is the goddess of my life and I hope she can sense that from this distance

why IS Josie doing the solo thing? she did claw them in the back!

ooh, he’s smooth. he’s smooth with the Pop’s thing. Chuck did that

Josie’s “YEAH MHM” nod when Chuck says he “doesn’t have the greatest track record” and rolls her eyes at him “going to church”

“Why? To objectify models?”

he wants to draw comics, because he is a creative? Chuck and Jughead and their leather jackets would have a great time at the library together, after they make up (with hugs)

did I say Archie looked good in the pink light? fucking Chuck and Josie look phenomenal

Pulp Fiction diner dancing!

I’ve seen Brick like thirty times: the two of them synchronized jitterbugging together, I did not have the patience to Google the name of the dance, like fully won me over. is Chuck good now? I’m fucking on Chuck’s list now. like is that all it took for me? I am a weak bitch

“YOU’RE A DAMNED FOOL.”

stay strong, Chuck! don’t fuck this up!

is Mayor McCoy lying on the spot about her hate mail mentioning Josie? just to scare her into compliance?

“Taking a few art classes does not a saint make.”

Cheryl’s sheaths: Cheryl’s wearing huge thick ankle-strap platforms again with a VERY leggy romper

okay shut up because Cheryl actually says “What’s in the box?” and Brad Pitt felt a little bit of his life force drain from his body

Gay.: What up with Cheryl’s game here? was she preemptively putting things in Josie’s locker on the off-chance she would need to get a rival presence out of Josie’s life? I would like a reason, but I don’t need one, because Cheryl is so beyond my mind to comprehend I take solace simply in basking in her wake. like, she found a pig’s heart? of course she did. of course you did, Cheryl

Cheryl’s a chaos angel from hell: “For all we know, he’s the one sending your mom those letters, too” is SUCH an overreach if Josie had had time to think about it for two seconds, but she does not have such two seconds, thus it is a master move by Cheryl Blossom

Chuck’s puppy eyes

Josie knows what she diiiiiiiiid!

THEY GOT ME FOR THE SECOND TIME! GODDAMMIT!

nicely specific throat-slashing, right in the polyps

I’m writing a scene where it’s gay.: Cheryl is listening to Josie sing as she draws, in the greatest reveal in television history (at least since “You’ve done a bad thing, Daddy,” which feels like it happened fifty-eight years ago) (is this actually gay? am I being #blessed with Gothic lesbian villainy?)

Every triangle has three corners, every triangle has three sides: Betty and Jughead literally sleeping together I WOULD ASSUME means they’re having sex except I’m like 0-4 on this stuff, I’m not taking anything as a given

Best costume bit: Betty’s flower decal sweater

VERONICA: How’s he been dealing with it? BETTY: WHAT’S HE BEEN DOING?

Veronica’s tiny poofy magenta skirt and EXTREMELY high heels

“Poor Kevin. He’s like a character in a lost Tennessee Williams play.” (Archie does not know Tennessee Williams)

Sheriff Keller is REMARKABLY forthcoming, in that I think he assumes Betty is going to dig around until she’s found this stuff out anyway, so he may as well show her the ACTUAL EVIDENCE PHOTOS now

Kevin is a cashmere-besweatered angel who plays RPG’s and drinks milk

dare I spy a Tarantino split-screen?

The female gaze: Tom Keller is jacked and this just complicates everything

the extent to which Veronica can be read as absolutely hitting on him while actually prying him for information while ostensibly offering comfort is a tribute to Camilla Mendes, James DeWille, 60,000 years of human speech

the animal targets on the wall as like, art?

aw, Kev took the floor. honestly thought he might have a bunk bed for like, his bears

God bless jingle-jangle: can you imagine having it in your obituary that you were “a jingle-jangle addict”? can someone finagle this for mine? is this blog a legal document?

50 Shades of Betty: I love how off the rails, if you will, Betty is this episode. she’s lost the forest for the trees a bit and it’s GREAT. she’s such a fucking oddball. Lili Reinhart’s massive eyes are like laserbeams of manic certainty

Summer + Blair = Veronica: Veronica is the only person with sense this entire episode. like what would it have been like if it was Veronica and Jughead in the first part? and Archie seeing Josie get a pig’s heart! AND CHERYL IN SHERIFF KELLER’S MAN-SWEAT BASEMENT

it appears the singing bass salesman made a stop at the Kellers’ after he hit up FP Jones

Please protect Betty: Betty’s expression of defiant stoicism throughout her father’s apology on her behalf and Keller explaining himself even further

“Where-oh-where do you think you’re going, Sheriff?” TO LIVE HIS LIFE, BETTY?

he is wearing a very Black Hood outfit of the leather jacket (!) over a flannel with jeans

love the split-second shot of the camera flash

Veronica was rich: of course Veronica’s in like thigh-high boots or whatever

OOOOOOOOHHH HE’S DOING THAAAAAAAT WITH HEEEERRRRRRR!

Veronica was 1) correct and 2) says “broment”

Pop keeps delicate teacups around for “fancy” orders

Cheryl’s structured red coat!

can you believe Jughead left BEFORE Pop got that phone call?

THE RECKONING, Y’ALL, IT’S HERE! MAYBE ONE SINGLE MORE PERSON WILL DIE!

NEXT WEEK TWENTY HOURS FROM NOW: Cheryl makes FP clean up a milkshake, and I enjoy this very special purchase

[how2to18]

MANY YEARS AGO, a patient I’ll call Alice had weakness, fatigue, brain fog, and joint pains that I was unable to diagnose. Eventually she took matters into her own hands. After connecting on the internet with others who suffered similarly, Alice determined that she had chronic Lyme disease. Through this online community she found a physician with a reputation for being Lyme literate — meaning that, unlike most doctors and medical organizations, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, he believed that in certain people (the majority of them women) Lyme infection can persist after the standard 14- to 21-day course of antibiotics and cause symptoms such as those Alice experienced. He prescribed high doses of doxycycline and erythromycin over many months. Sometimes the treatments made Alice feel better and sometimes, when she sensed that the drugs were killing large numbers of borrelia burgdorferi, the spirochetal bacterium that causes Lyme, she had painful Herxheimer reactions or “herxes,” as chronic Lyme patients call them.

Depending on your perspective, Alice had either reclaimed her autonomy from a patriarchal medical system dismissive of patients, particularly of women with difficult-to-diagnose conditions, or she’d fallen prey to a charlatan who charged her large sums of money to treat a fictional disease.

Few medical topics are as divisive as chronic Lyme disease or, as it is often referred to in medical journals, “chronic Lyme disease.”

A June 2018 editorial in the American Journal of Medicine asserts that chronic Lyme disease does not exist and that “Lyme literate physicians” are quacks in cahoots with shady labs that perform tests rigged to confirm the specious diagnosis. The editorialist, Phillip J. Baker, PhD, of the American Lyme Disease Foundation, argues further that the notion that Lyme is a “strange and mysterious” disease about which not much is known is false. Lyme testing is quite reliable, he states, and the scientific evidence on which current international guidelines regarding diagnosis and treatment are based clearly contradicts testimonies of individuals who claim to have chronic Lyme. The reason more resources aren’t being directed toward researching chronic Lyme disease is that there is nothing to research.

Within days of the publication of Baker’s editorial, an article appeared in Slate that might as well have been written to refute it directly. In “The Science Isn’t Settled on Chronic Lyme,” Maya Dusenbery and Julie Rehmeyer argue that doctors’ refusal to acknowledge the possible existence of chronic Lyme disease is driven less by science than by sexism. Dusenbery recently wrote about sexism in medicine in Do No Harm: The Truth About How Bad Medicine and Lazy Science Leave Women Dismissed, Misdiagnosed, and Sick. In her 2017 memoir, Through the Shadowlands: A Science Writer’s Odyssey into an Illness Science Doesn’t Understand, Rehmeyer wrote about myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS), another condition that, like chronic Lyme, affects mostly women and which many doctors consider psychosomatic. They don’t claim to have an answer to the question of whether or not chronic Lyme exists but, rather, suggest that gaps in our current knowledge of Lyme make the question worth asking. They point to the unreliability of symptoms and blood tests in diagnosing Lyme early, and to data indicating that some people may have abnormal spinal fluid and brain scans long after standard treatment for Lyme, as well as to other uncertainties that would seem to make Lyme merit further study, especially given that the infection, once mostly confined to the northeastern United States, is now endemic throughout much of the world. The reason medical scientists don’t study chronic Lyme isn’t that they’ve proven it doesn’t exist, Dusenbery and Rehmeyer write, but rather, “the attitude of ridicule for chronic Lyme is part of why we don’t bother to research it.”

These opposing views of chronic Lyme seem irreconcilable: chronic Lyme is either definitely phony or possibly real; chronic Lyme patients are either “head cases” or people suffering from a serious and poorly understood disease; doctors who dismiss chronic Lyme are either responsibly practicing evidence-based medicine or they’re sexist jerks.

¤

When I first opened Porochista Khakpour’s new memoir, Sick, about her pursuit of recovery from chronic Lyme over many years, I felt sure I knew where she stood in “the Lyme wars,” as the controversy has been called in both medical journals and the media. The very title of the book declares: “I really am sick.” The cover photograph, of Khakpour staring straight ahead, wide-eyed, oxygen prongs stuck in her nostrils, feels both defiant and accusatory. This is not a woman who is merely suffering. This is a woman who has been made to suffer.

Indeed, for the most part, doctors, particularly male doctors, come off badly in Sick. As a child, Khakpour is given insufficient anesthesia during ear surgery; as an adult, the ER staff laughs at her; a “gloomy” psychiatrist she consults looks “like black and white newsprint”; and a flashy L.A. physician who touts himself as “VIP Medical Concierge” reassures Khakpour, unreassuringly: “Don’t worry. We’re gonna run every test there is.”

With each medical encounter, Khakpour risks harm. Doctors usually don’t make her feel better, and often make her feel worse. Their disbelief in chronic Lyme erodes her humanity, leaves her “faded.” She has a positive Lyme test (many people diagnosed with chronic Lyme don’t) but this earns her little credibility with “so-called medical professionals.” Khakpour is well aware of their scorn:

I had been to the hospital so many times for my Lyme disease, not just explaining but overexplaining, as if I had something to hide. Lyme is a disease that many in the medical profession, unless they specialize in it, find too controversial, too full of unknowns, to buy it as legitimate. It’s thought of as the disease of hypochondriacs and alarmists and rich people who have the money and time to go chasing obscure diagnoses.

When doctors fail her, Khakpour seeks relief from healers who offer supplements, Chinese herbs, bee sting therapy, psychic readings, and other alternative treatments. This effort is not only expensive — Khakpour estimates she’s spent $140,000 on chronic Lyme — but it also results in a frustrating, self-perpetuating cycle familiar to many with conditions about which doctors are skeptical: doctors’ dismissal drives Khakpour to look for help outside conventional medicine, which makes doctors dismiss her even more.

It’s easy to see why Sick has been grouped in several reviews with other “illness manifestos,” recent books by women who insist on the validity of women’s experiences of and decisions about their own bodies, even when — especially when — those experiences and decisions are deemed invalid by a male-dominated medical establishment. These books include both Dusenbery’s and Rehmeyer’s as well as Abby Norman’s Ask Me About My Uterus, in which Norman recounts her struggle to have her endometriosis pain acknowledged and treated appropriately by doctors. They also include Michele Lent Hirsch’s Invisible, about how the health problems of young women such as herself are negated and, at the other end of the age spectrum, Barbara Ehrenreich’s Natural Causes, her declaration that, in her 70s, she is no longer buying the health industry’s prescriptions for immortality. Unrest, a 2017 documentary by Jennifer Brea, who suffers from ME/CFS and has become an activist for recognition of and research into this condition, is also frequently discussed in this context.

But Khakpour is no activist, and Sick is not an illness manifesto. Though Khakpour never abandons her belief that she has chronic Lyme, she doesn’t insist that her readers believe she does. Nor is it necessary to accept the legitimacy of chronic Lyme to embrace Khakpour’s story. She holds firm to the diagnosis, but she’s open to its many possible meanings.

Khakpour considers the possibility that she’s had Lyme for most of her life, having contracted the disease from a tick bite while hiking in the California mountains that reminded her father of Iran, from which the family fled after the revolution in 1978. Or perhaps she acquired the infection much later, and it compounded the PTSD she developed as a child refugee. Dislocation, not Lyme, is Khakpour’s central theme. She organizes Sick geographically rather than chronologically, with the names of the many places she’s lived — “New York,” “Maryland and Illinois,” “Santa Fe and Leipzig” — serving as chapter titles. Khakpour never feels at home where she lives, or in her own body. She often conflates her Lyme with her perpetual sense of displacement: “I have never been comfortable in my own body,” Khakpour writes. When her Lyme flares, she describes herself as feeling “off,” by which she seems to mean “not right” and also, in the literal sense, “not there.”

Many memoirs use illness as a prism through which to refract, and magnify, the themes of a life. Where Sick differs from most illness memoirs — indeed from most memoirs generally — is that it is not a tale of redemption. Khakpour eschews the arc that takes the memoirist from sick to well or, at least, to enlightened. At the end of Sick, Khakpour admits that she’d intended to write a more uplifting book: “The Book I Sold was a story of triumph, of how a woman dove into the depths of addiction and illness and got well. She got herself better. She made it. The Book I Sold might even imply you can do it too.”

Except that Khakpour doesn’t feel transformed by her illness in a positive way. In Unrest, Brea, though profoundly impaired by ME/CFS, expresses gratitude along with grief: “You have to be able to hold two things in your head,” Brea says. “This illness destroyed my life but what it showed me, I could never give that back.” For Khakpour, there is no silver lining. The list of plagues Khakpour endures — and seems always on the brink of not enduring — from Lyme and from life includes: paralyzing weakness, crippling fatigue, suicidal depression, panic attacks, insomnia, drug addiction, racism, family discord, war, homelessness, financial catastrophe, car accidents, and disloyal lovers, to name a few. The narrative tension in this messy and beautiful chronicle exists not so much between the heroine and her trials, but between the writer and the reader. In Sick, Khakpour challenges us to do what countless doctors, friends, romantic partners, and her parents have failed to do: witness her pain without turning away.

This is not nearly as depressing as it sounds. In fact, it’s not depressing at all. Despite her woes, Khakpour is excellent company. She has many friends and includes in her memoir an email she sent to them after a Lyme relapse left her dizzy and confused: “would you mind occasionally checking in on me?” She could also use some help walking her dog and riding the subway. This email appears early in Sick, and at first it’s hard to imagine it receiving an enthusiastic response. As her memoir unfolds, though, Khakpour’s intelligence, humor, and the generosity with which she exposes her vulnerability make us certain that her friends would be eager to help her. We’d help her.

Part of what makes Khakpour so compelling as a narrator is that she rejects the limited menu of identities we usually afford the ill and disabled, in life and in memoirs: brave or pitiful. Khakpour is sick but never only sick. She’s a party girl, a stunner in designer clothes. She wins prestigious fellowships and lands glamorous jobs. She has lots of sex.

The one place Khakpour does feel at home is writing. As a child, she retreated from her parents’ loud arguments by making up stories. “[S]torytelling,” she writes, “from my early childhood was a way to survive things.” Storytelling continues to serve as Khakpour’s refuge through a young adulthood marked by illness, addiction, poverty, and bad relationships. We breathe relief each time Khakpour’s writing leads her to a safe harbor: a college mentor, an MFA program, a book contract, a teaching gig. Yet, another familiar narrative Khakpour resists is that writing, including the writing of Sick, has healed her. She’s wary, too, about her “wish to tie the threads of narrative so neatly,” to have Lyme make sense of her life. She leaves her conclusions ambiguous. Khakpour finishes Sick: “The story didn’t end as I imagined so many times: in the end I would make it.”

Does she mean she would “make it” à la Mary Tyler Moore (“You’re gonna make it after all”)? Or that, in the end, what she would make was the story itself?

¤

Alice, my patient with chronic Lyme, continued to see me for primary care, despite knowing I had concerns about the prolonged antibiotic treatment her Lyme doctor was administering. Ultimately, her weakness worsened and she was diagnosed with a rare degenerative disease, which I thought in retrospect explained all her symptoms. She discontinued the antibiotics and quit seeing the Lyme doctor but, to my surprise, Alice never stopped believing she had chronic Lyme. Who was to say that the chronic Lyme had not coexisted with or even accelerated the degenerative condition? she asked me. Or that the antibiotics she’d taken for Lyme hadn’t held this other disease at bay for a few years?

I wish Sick had been available when I knew Alice. I think Khakpour could have helped me understand our relationship better. At the time, I thought that the reason Alice pursued alternative therapy was that she was grasping for the certainty of a diagnosis, the promise of a cure. That was true, but I was grasping for certainty, too: the certainty that Alice’s pursuit was misguided. I plan to recommend Sick to my medical colleagues. Khakpour has made a major contribution to patients and doctors in moving the intractable “Lyme Wars” narrative beyond unhelpful binaries such as “real” versus “psychosomatic.”

The last time I saw Alice she was bedridden and could no longer speak. With great effort, she scrawled a message to me, one with which I agreed completely. It read: THIS IS VERY BAD.

¤

Suzanne Koven is a primary care physician and writer in residence in the Division of General Internal Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. She writes regularly for The Boston Globe and other publications, and contributes the interview column “The Big Idea” at The Rumpus. Her website is www.suzannekoven.com.

The post Beyond the Lyme Wars appeared first on Los Angeles Review of Books.

from Los Angeles Review of Books https://ift.tt/2KR83L9 via IFTTT