#i need to know what the pain is but she wont be back till wednesday i think

[ars0nism]

send help

[thusspakejasminefofazmine]

Hey, Something has been wrong with my heart.

Maybe POTS? IDk, I was in the ER a week ago wrapped up like a sand person double N5 masked with cloth over it and a face sheild and swim goggles and more goggles on top with hair covered because

Partial vaccinated because my friend got if and was dead in hours of an anuerism and I have an anxiety/mental health dissorder. 😭😖

Im so ashamed! Please God forgive me🙏🏻

I deeply regret not getting it sooner. I understood the science and saw the math playing out. I’d been entirely isolated, never going out/having everything delivered and wiping down everything with med grade sterilizing wipes while taking care of my 2 year old alone even fully isolated from my wonderful husband who works at a busy dallas airport,

passing him food through a cracked window while masked. This has been going on over a year!

Finaly my reasoning overwhelms my sense of fear and I make an apt for vaccine.

Then, Two night befor vaccine apt something happens I cant explain. Waking up with uncontralable shivers all over. Idk what is happining? I dont have blood sugar problems but think maybe low? Drink juice feet in hot water. No fever. It goes away.

Next day it happens again. Wtf is going on. Gettjng worried.

Take a covid home test to be certain- negative. I havnt had exposure. But I’m paranoid.

It happens again- I wrap up with masks and everything I can and call an ambulance when my resting pulse is over 140 and I’m dizzy with pains

Mckinney Ambulance driver: you know Covid isnt real right? Me 😲. They say: your stable going is optional and you’ll wait!

I stay home.

Wednesday comes I get my shot 🙏🏻 and the asshole pharmacist at the walgreens at 1651 w university drive mckinney tx wouldnt put on a mask even after I asked. Its store policy! He never wears a mask and keeps his job and nobody says anything while he’s handling medications.

Whatever is happening to me is coming and going all the time now. Idk what it is. Its happening while I sleep. Pulse is crazy during during the day 160 pounding just walking between rooms

Now I cant take care of my toddler. Husband has to help me go to bathroom. He cant work.

Having chest pains! I put on all the masks and crap and grab my sanitizer and go to the ER they send me home with chest pains and said see a catdiologist asap. Ekg clear. While I’m there the Nurses and doctors Refuse to keep appropriate distance. Leave my room door open while pwople are outside sick I hooe 2 N95 and cloth on top will be enough

😓😭 wtf. They say if chest pains come back we’ll see you again.

Next day ER is at full capacity. feel like I’m dying racing heart chest pain. Another Self covid test is negative. I wrap up again and go to a care now people everywhere no masks looking at me like I’m crazy all wrapped up trying to keep safe. Ekg clear. Idk what to do. They give me antibiotics for maybe a uti?

Its friday Cardiologist cant se me till monday afternoon - every day and night i think i’m going to die. Pulse is insane. I sit and try to keep pulse down for the weekend. Its bad I’m vonstantly inches from ER

Monday finaly comes, I wrap up again like a person who wants to, you know not get covid! Cardiologist says clear ekg, whatever take a betablocker to help your anxiety. Me: this isnt anxiety! Doc 🙄 SUUUURE , look at how your wrapped up! Its just anxiety! HEART DOC IS NOT WEARING A MASK. People in waiting not required to mask.

At this poknt in tx All ICU’s and ER’s and childrens hospitals for 90 miles in any direction are overwhelmed. Clearly I’m in a twighlight zone episode.

I go home feeling hopeless. Still feel like I’m dying. I want to consult another doc befor taking this medicine they wont explain or talk to me about. Another horrible night. I talk to another doc- via telemed. Thank god no suiting up.

She says meds sounds appropriate even if no mask jerk doc wouldnt explain it to me.

I take it.

It gives some almost immediate releif to chest pain racing heart while I’m resting But its short lived. My condition is deteriorating. No appetite, nausea, diarrhea, still no positive covid.

I want answers. What the hell is happening to my heart?

I’m calling the cardiologist every day. They throw me a 24hour holter moniter to get me off their backs. But they Dont explain how I’m supposed to use it. I do it wrong! Oops our bad. 24 hours wasted. Lets do an echocardiagram that we should have done first -but we only do them on friday.😭

But lets up the frequency of the drugs. Me: ok I’m pretty sure its the only thing keeping me alive!

1 every 8 hours.

I can still barely function. I’m still afraid I’m going to die. I call my sister, I call my childhood best friend. We cry! Childhood friend says I love you I’ll leave tomorow be there in a day but I’m not vaccinated. 😭 sister says i’m vaccinated and I love you but I cant! Because its to dangerous there for my babies!

I understand.

Husband says I have to go back to work. I dont have a choice! We cant lose our car.

I need somone to sign fmla. I have no pcp.

We can get 2nd vaccines next week. 2 1/2 weeks to late.

They want me to stop taking the meds that are keeping me out of the ER to do a test to look at my heart valves.

Im so affraid.

IF YOU ARE NOT VACCINATED PLEASE GO GET VACCINATED NOW!!!

You are not safe no mater how isolated you are! Protect yourself and the community!

BEFORE ITS TOO LATE!

I love my family and my life. I’m scared.

All day I hear the ambulances up and down the street.

This morning they took a family member.

Humans out there

I’m so scared for our lives. Get vaccinated! And vaccinated or not, be a good human being and please Wear masks! Wash your hands! Use Sterile method! Its not to much! Do everything you can to fight this

Do everything you can to preserve life

DO IT BEFORE ITS TO LATE 🙏🏻💉🕊✌🏻



[the-girl-from-t]

Monday 26.4.2021:

Today was pretty good i don`t know what to write now but ill try. I went to school and hated everything and i doubt that i successfully manage to finish the 12 grade and i wont even think about the 13 grade. I got an industrial piercing a month ago and i really love it and cant wait to get the next.

Tuesday 27.4.2021:

The day isn’t over right now but i thought its a good idea to start writing now. So I was at the doctors and they took blood from me to see if my thyroid is working correctly. For that i skipped the hole day of school because its easier for me when i have to work. I work a t an elders home and i have to work at the station wehre the most people life... to be honest its not easy to work at this station and i would like to not be there but its fine cause im not that often there.I think ill go study for some of my exams i have to write tomorrow and Friday. Alright I‘m back from work and it was so annoying. I got headache and feel so damn tired. Luckily I can call the rest of this day through the night otherwise I would k¡|| myself right now tbh. I miss her so much even tho she just went back home a few hours ago but she wehre her at my side for 3 months and i got used to it. It‘s just physical pain i got now from missing her and i won‘t start at my emotional pain right now. And for the rest of the day i definitely not studying for the exam tomorrow. Instead i‘ll watch Netflix and FaceTime with my Girlfriend.

Wednesday 28.4.2021:

Did i tell you how much i hate school? I just can’t stand these damn teachers with all their stupidity. I mean how did they manage to get their university degree? But one good thing is there, it shows me that no matter how stupid i can become i can be everything i want and i can study what i want. I‘m so done with school! I finished my exam and went home but i‘m still full of rage for some reason. I also have to write an 10 paged essay till May 20th. I have to clean up my room and also need to study for my next exam at Friday. But first i have to at least watch one episode of Orange is the new black. I also think that i‘m gonna do something lika a schedule to plan my time on cleaning, studying and free time. Thats sounds like a good idea for me. So I just washed my dirty laundry and put the clean clothes in the closet. And I’m very proud that i didn’t quitt in the middle of the process and i also managed to do my Homework. I got a ´To do List` to visualize and not forget to do something before i visit my girlfriend for the weekend. I want to clean everything so that everything is nice and clean and not messy and disgusting. Im also very happy that i washed my laundry because i got no clean underwear anymore and now its clean i can see my floor again. I need to vacuum but thats a problem of tomorrow.

Thursday 29.4.2021:

So i just woke up and im pretty nervous because i have to go to the cardiologist. And at 7pm i got a date with my psychologist once again. Im pretty tired but my eyeliner is well damn fine today. I came back and my granddad tells me what all that stuff the doctor writes means. Its not dangerous or something. I got it from my mom and grandmother. He also said that my heart is going up faster than it’s should but as i said everything is fine. Thats that and for now ill watch one episode and then vacuum and swipe the floor. Maybe also look if some cloths are already dry and wash my bed sheets and put a fresh new on. After my psychologist appointment ill take a shower. I learned that my birth is one of my reasons i got so many issues and also takes part of me developed my ED. Im hella tired and took a shower. I probably going to vacuum either now or tomorrow. I also change my bed sheets either tomorrow or Sunday when i come home from my fiancé. The one thing that annoys me is, that i didn’t get any time to study or any concentration for it. Al least i get the chance to see my girlfriend for 1,5 hours and also get to visit a dear friend of mine as well. But im hella tired. I don‘t like the morning of tomorrow already but im very excited and happy about the fact, that ill go to my fiancé for the weekend.

Friday 30.4.02021:

I did my exam and i didn’t mess it up completely. I just hated the hole school day and i‘m glad that im at my girlfriends place now for the weekend! I guess that im gonna play more on my PS4 or actually do something for school as i should. Im just happy to be here. I just fricking hate my mood swings! I should be relaxet and happy to be at my girlfriends place, but im just annoyed and grumpy. Maybe because my mom is here for hours as well but the real reason idk. Its probably that i just don’t want to think about my health but when im here i just cant hold my walls up i use to unsee my health and mental health problem. Its a hard phase again, not in the same way as it was like before a month but its not that much easier either. I just don‘t know what to do and how to feel, neither how to behave. I just cant deal with myself, then someone from my friend i meet through my fiancé told me i look sick in a negative way. That wont leave my head. I just feel the need to cry, to scream, to stop being myself. I just want to safe and quit this game named ‚live‘. I just don’t know. Thats all. I don’t want to be happy or polite for others, i don’t want to smile for others. But they worry and ask questions like ‚whats up?‘ , ‚how are you?‘. I JUST DONT KNOW EITHER!!!! Why cant the just be satisfied with a ‚nothing and im fine‘? I don’t want to talk okay? I just got my therapy yesterday and that was enough for me, thanks. I just want to be left alone right now and cry alone for myself without someone witness it.

Saturday 1.5.2021:

I woke up and choose violence. Kinda. I had a relaxed and nice day with my girlfriend and her roommates. We just played a bit on our PS4 and decided to play Beat Saber now. I just needed this weekend to charge myself. I feel home in her arms and i love just be in her apartment. Just spending time with her is so wholesome for me. And i also like her roommates, i know one from school and its just so amazingly how peacefully it is with all the people living here.

Sunday 2.5.2021:

It just a chilling day as well. I remembered that ill write an exam tomorrow but its just art so is isn‘t tragic, that i wont study. And im sad and moody cause i have to go home today. Well back home i cried because i cant sleep next to my girlfriend.

[ecotone99]

[NF/MF] 2am

It was dark and silent as I sat internally screaming at myself for denying my need for an early night. I had been planning this for the entire week, the earlier I could fall asleep the less time I had to sit and dwell on the dare. It was going to be hard already to sleep that night, because five years before to the day still haunts me in reality and in nightmares.

I sat on my bed in the pitch black of winter nights just hoping for a distraction, looking back I only wish that distraction could have been a positive one. But then the text came through to my phone and as soon as I saw it I swallowed my wishes for a distraction with a bitter taste.

Have you ever sat, at 2am on a Thursday morning, trying to talk your best friend off a ledge. Maybe you did it at 4pm on a Saturday afternoon. Maybe even 9am on a Wednesday morning. So many times that you can’t even count them on all your fingers and toes, but it still kills off a piece of your soul every time. It’s not a literal ledge. That would have been easier. I could have flung my arms around her and clung on for dear life. The mental ledge is so much harder, so much more unpredictable. That ledge she so often balances on the edge off is why I feel guilty visiting home, because when I’m home I can't be there to sway her back to safety. I can’t grip her in my cuddles and stroke her hair and shush the voices back down by telling her its' okay.

This particular 2am on a Thursday morning was a hard one, you see something in particular my best friend struggles with is coping with death. Ironically nobody in her family had ever died. She was so scared of it happening, spending more time fearing them not being there, than being present in life itself. And it was at 2am, on this particular morning, she had one of her moments. A moment where she needs pushing further back from the ledge, and as the tears streamed down my face, and I felt my fingers tiptoeing across the keys as if I was barefoot, and finding my way through a glass room. The slightest slip could draw blood.

This particular 2am on a Thursday morning, I was over 100 miles away, trying to comfort her over text as she poured her deepest fears to me, frightened of life after someone else’s death. She desperately believed she had to die before her grandma and granddad, and she was even surer that it wouldn’t be long. As she clawed at her mind, I clawed at mine, because on that day when she had a moment, I had one too.

The biggest difference, she was mourning a possibility, a what if. I was already mourning what had. On that Thursday morning at 2am, the 6 year anniversary of my grandma’s death had already caused my heart to ache. I didn’t share this with her. In fact outside my family not a soul knew of this date. So she wasn’t to blame. But the pressure was pushing down on my shoulders as I tried to explain, how it becomes a manageable pain, which it does, except on memorable dates. And that date, was about as memorable as it gets.

Now its 2:45am and we've progressed a little and I think I may have helped subdue the urges, knocking them back down, for a week or even just for a day. But we’re mid conversation and she hasn’t replied in 8 minutes and my brain is on fire at all the possibilities, as hard as I try to be rational I sit in my pyjamas in a cold dark room, clutching my car keys trying to fight the urge to race to her, from over 100 miles away. Firstly because I know she'll reply as soon as I hit the M62. Secondly because I don't even know her address, she comes to my house for the distraction, and we avoid her house in fear of a trigger. The third reason, if anything had happened, if she’s done anything, I’d be too late. And I’d rather live in denial than regret.

When it hits 16 minutes since she last replied I message again, telling her anything and everything I can to remind her that she is strong and brave and just anything I can to make my voice louder than the ones that play in her mind like it’s a circus and she’s the clown that everyone uses as a target. She might be vulnerable, but her strength usually counteracts it, and for that I'll be forever thankful.

After another 30 minutes I don’t know what to do and I’m trying to calm down but I can feel the panic rising through my throat like bile and its at the point I’m happy the acid is burning through my tonsils because right now its firing me up enough to stay awake. Even if its to panic I have every possibility running through my mind and every worry possible. Is this my fault? Could I have said something more to help? If she has done something have I made the wrong decision by staying home and not knocking on every door in her neighbourhood?

Now its 4am and I'm still awake because the tiredness has evaporated and the now the tears are just fuelling the fear because I’m scared to go to sleep, and wake up to bad news. If I don’t sleep I don’t have to wake up to that text or missed call telling me there’s been another incident . I don’t want to skip the hours sleeping sound when I can stay awake and prepare myself for dealing with her parents heartbreak.

Its 5:39 and I’ve messaged our other best friend telling him how scared I feel and just hoping that he’ll know what to do. He doesn’t. He stays with me in panic but then he has to go to work leaving me in my pit of despair, wrapped in my quilt with the edges sodden with tears.

Now it’s 6:12 and I’ve messaged her 43 times with no response and the tears have dried but the knots in my stomach have tightened and I don’t think I can breathe. My phone battery light flickers to alert me its in need of charge, leaving me sitting in the corner of my room too scared to let it to go dark and miss a message.

It’s 7:45 and I’ve texted her parents trying to be nonchalant asking about an assignment and her phone being dead so can they get her to text me in the hopes that they’ll walk into her room and check before telling me she’s still sleeping and I’ll finally be able to sleep but the message stays unread and by now they’ve already left for work assuming she’s sleeping soundly. I still don’t know.

When I see a glimpse of the clock again it’s 8:14 and I’ve checked how long it’s been since she’s been active on Facebook about three hundred times and it still hasn’t changed as the hours that pass so slowly mock me.

Now it’s 10:38 and my phone vibrates again, my eyes barely staying open as they flicker over the text.

“sorry hun, fell asleep, was just having a bad night... thanks for being there. Love ya xx”.

My eyes can finally close as I know she’s safe and all I can do is be thankful that this is over for another night. As much as I hope I’ll never have to relive this I already know it wont be long till another restless night leaves us both immobilised in fear. I can only hope it ends in the same positive way.

No matter what happened, I'd always be there to help.

submitted by /u/jodieleighda96x [link] [comments] via Blogger https://ift.tt/2BtM6TC

[the-little-red-noodle]

7/10/19 6:40am

Hey. I’m dying to know how you’re doing. I know we said we wouldn’t talk for a bit, and i think it’s been helpful, but i just want to know how you are.

I’m gunna be at zeta tonight, so if you want to talk in person, then I’ll be in the neighborhood. Idk if that will be helpful or not, but I’ll be there.

I want to text him so badly. I want to say this. I want to know how he’s doing. I had a dream about it and i woke up before i ever knew what he was going to say. I think i just need to know. I need to know if he’s fine. I need to hear that he doesn’t care and that his life is back to normal and that he’s just fine. I need to hear it. I need to hear that i wasn’t that important. I need to hear that he moved on quickly. I need to hear that he doesn’t think that way about me anymore because that’s the thing that’s going to push me. Either way it’s a push. Cuz the other hand is that he’s miserable and sad and regrets it and maybe i want him to say that too. I want to hear that he’s devastated, but i need to hear that he’s fine.

I told myself not to message him until after 5. I don’t remember if he works wednesdays, but i don’t think so since he didn’t last wednesday.. ya know, when he dumped me. But still, not until after 5. That’s enough time to assess if this is something i actually think i should do or just what i want right now cuz it’s 6am and i miss him.

Idk what outcome would even make me feel better. Maybe he won’t even want to talk in person and thatll hurt too. Maybe he’ll say he’s been doing really well and that talking in person is a bad idea.

But i know him. I know how it’s gunna feel when i reach for him and he says no. I know how it’s going to hurt when i want one more hug and he says it’s time to go. I know how that’s going to burn. I know how that’s going to hurt me. I know that I’ll cry and he won’t. I’ll be still upset and devastated and still want him, and he wont.. he won’t want me anymore and that just fucking stings so badly. I know it. I’m gunna wanna come over and look cute and we’ll small talk and itll break my fucking heart.. I’ll ask about work and he’ll say good, and itll hurt me. And he’ll ask how I’m doing and i won’t know what to say. Probably that I’m up and down. That theres good and bad moments every day. But all center around the pain that i wasn’t ready and that i still want to be with him.

I still want to be with him.

I know that we’re wrong for each other. I know we had problems. I know we didn’t communicate well. I know it wasn’t working well. But i want him. I don’t want to be with anyone else and i don’t want to be alone. I really don’t want to be alone right now. I want to be with him. I want to hold him and kiss him and tell him i love him and say all those happy things and compliment him. I want to squeeze him and make him feel loved.. i just want him..

I don’t want to keep hyping myself up with single girl songs. I don’t want to keep crying anymore.. I’ve been crying for so long. I don’t want to feel this horrible. I feel so fucking horrible.

I had a panic attack at the end of therapy yesterday. I was feeling really stuck and blocked for most of the session and then near the end everything started coming up and coming out and i was sobbing and then she started doing the things she does when we’re out of time and i freaked out and i was sobbing and breathing too fast and everything was coming to mind and i couldn’t keep everything in. But then we had to end our session and i sat in my car and sobbed and felt horrible and hyperventilated and cried more.. i went home, cried more and hyperventilated, took a xanex and layed down with my weight blanket on top of me and felt so numb. My face was hot but no tears would come out. My head hurt. My heart hurts, my god.

My heart hurts so fucking bad. My heart aches and i just want to talk to him. I just want to see. I want to see for myself how he’s doing. I want to see for myself that he’s fine and doesn’t care. I wanna see that thing in him that i saw in him before when he wanted to leave my room. That thing that said i don’t want you here. I want to see it. I wanna see him look me in the eyes and be over me. I wnt to know that theres no more hope for us.

Cuz i think I’ve been holding onto the fact that when we finally do talk again, that he’s gunna regret the decision and try to make it work again.

He won’t.

I hope that he’s going to realize what a mistake it was and how lucky he was to have me and he’s gunna say oh i didn’t wanna bother you with my feelings because your other exes treat you bad and always want you back and it bugs you. But id be happy if he did..

I justwant him to change his mind. I know that he won’t.. the reasons for the breakup are legitimate and understandable.. but what about love ya know? What about you crying when you thought you were going to lose me all those months ago? What happened to that? What happened to feeling lucky to have me?

I bet he’s already fallen out of love, that’s the really shitty part. I could go over to talk to him and tell him that i still love him and still want to be with him and he could say i just don’t feel that way anymore. God how much would that suck? To put my heart out to him AGAIN and say exactly what I’m feeling and offer him everything i fucking have and be vulnerable just for him to shut me out, god that would be so hurtful.

Clearly i go back and forth on whether this is a good idea. Can’t text him till 5 anyway. I’ll settle. These are my morning jeebies and I’m up and down and horrible then angry then num then sobbing. Good fun.

He’s gunna say no. He’s gunna be over it. He’s gunna be fine. And i know this deep down but part of me is still just hoping for some amount of give. Just a little amount of give to hold onto. Just one ounce of regret or saddness. I want him to be broken up about it. I want him to feel horrible. It’s selfish, but i do. I want to feel like i fucking meant something to him. I want to feel like i had a lasting impact. I want to see him.

I want to see him.

But i know that will make things worse. I want to see him because i hope he’ll change his mind and we’ll make up and hold each other and kiss and everything will be better right? Cuz if we have makeup sex then none of the fundamental relationship problems matter right?

That’s how it feels to me sometimes.. when we were having bad days but then we could make up and be together, it made the problems feel smaller. It reaffirmed why we were together. Because love should be stronger than all those other details right? I wish that was right..

Can’t text him till 5 anyway.

I feel so goddamn broken. It’s probably just the morning. I should get up and eat something. I should try to rally myself. Hype up that I’m going to be fine but I’m not really fine but i just can’t get into it because they would never understand.

Either option is painful. Literally any way that a meeting could go is painful.

Least painful, we get back together and have a happy reunion and then still have the same problems but neither of us are able to talk about it cuz we still don’t want to upset the other person.

Medium painful, we talk and both are sad and hurt but come to the agreement still that this is the best option and i leave feeling some sense of closure.

Most painful, we talk and i cry the whole time and he’s straight faced and totally fine and then acts like he wants me to leave the whole time.

It’s really a toss up.

I’m gunna stop writing now cuz it’s making me think too much. Kiwisstill asleep cuz it’s only fucking 7am, so I’m gunna plug my phone in on the other side of the room, go downstairs and eat something, then come back to my room and either try to go back to sleep or watch tv. We’ll see how it goes.

[readfelice-blog]

moominland chronicles fünfzehn: felice vs the german health care system

Hello you, 

It’s 4am on Friday morning, I’m lying in bed with one of my 3 flowered ikea lamps burning away, holding my cuddly pig tight to my chest whilst I tap out this blog on my iphone, balanced on a pillow.

I cant sleep.

I’m going to get a taxi to hospital in 5 hours.

Before we start all that please administer any of the below music to yourself as an accompaniment, I’ve been dipping my toes into the clear water of pop shoals this week, I might be the last person to have listened to blond (an article in vice insisted upon me lining it up on my google play - still no cd player, I know):

Frank ocean

Nikes (song, always a fan of a big opener on an album)

https://vimeo.com/179791907?ref=em-share

Blond (album, yes you've probably heard it already)

https://www.discogs.com/Frank-Ocean-Blond/master/1046042

I'm also late on the train for Mitski I’m sure, but the words, restrain in her voice and divergent harmonies (discordant, is that better?) are searing through me, might listen again in the hospital tomorrow.

Though perhaps as she grows older she wont long for that kiss quite as much as she does now, because prince charming will never save her really (though she does acknowledge that from time to time on this album)

Mitski

A horse named cold air (song)

https://youtu.be/ce3m-o1pZqY

Be the cowboy (Album)

https://mitski.bandcamp.com/album/be-the-cowboy

And just this one song, which kind of speaks frankly from my heart a little, or at least I sympathise with, though in a fuller sense my situation is very different and it’s only my little brain that identifies with the lyrics.

SZA: the weekend

https://youtu.be/PALMMqZLAQk

So then.. youre suited and booted musically, lets press on shall we? After all I mentioned hospital, it would be cruel just to taper off now.

Heres my small brain again:

Fuck the fucking german health system, fuck all those uptight bigoted cunts that put the phone down on me this week, fuck my insurance for charging me since july and slyly adding it to my bill, fuck the man at the tk queue yesterday who aggressively shouted at me for talking on the phone with my sister, about my illness, at the first opportunity that day after a very strange experience with the gynaecologist.

Ok, 

I’m breathing, my small brain is retracting, lets continue a bit less aggressively now.

Health health health, we’re jumping back on the theme from last week, because sometimes illness doesn't go away, and as this blog is my warts and all document of the weird happenings of my life, I am going to be very very open about whats happening to me this week.

So I’m bleeding, like all pre menopausal women do who dont take contraception that inhibits it, thats what was happening in Paris, thats what has been happening for 3 weeks.

I’ve been bleeding for 3 weeks, yes.

I had really bad period pains last time round, which is unusual for me these days, I took buscopan plus, i soldiered on, then it stopped for a week, then it returned, light some days, heavier seemingly at the weekends. I pigheadedly pushed through physically exhausting weeks of cleaning, travelling, working, I’m a freelance cleaner, I don't get sick pay or holiday pay, I have to work or I can't pay rent.

I wrote a blog about it last weekend. But that was just before the blood clots starting coming, when the first one fell out it plopped in the toilet, I was so shocked I fished it out and curiously studied it (warts and all, I’m sick of skirting the weirdness in my life: its there: get used to it). I thought it was a dead baby, it was monstrous and displayed a horrid kind of plasticity as it eerily shifted round the jar in my hand I was gently coercing. It was an alien, more like rosemary's baby than my cherub cheeked nephew.

That was MONDAY.

I thought, ok the babies fallen out, now it’ll surely stop.

On sunday the bear got in touch, he'd been trying to phone, he was annoyed he couldn't get in contact, he was horny. I told him I was still bleeding, he insisted I go to the doctors, in his very forthright way, he sent me money to go even: because i was clueless about my insurance at that point. I knew i’d been getting letters I couldn't read from tk (die teckniker, german health insurance provider)  for months, since I stopped working at the hostel, but I’d just carefully ignored them.

I didn't have the money to pay for health insurance.

I botched my first attempt to see a gynaecologist, I made an appointment online but the transfer the bear made was not in my bank so he asked me to phone them and check payment methods. When I did the receptionist point blank refused to speak English to me, my quandary was simply, “Do I need cash today?” But she was haughty and unsympathetic, another colleague took the phone, who even through garbled understanding felt kinder but it soon transpired that my appointment was for November 1st not October 1st.

“Im very ill i dont think I can wait that long.”

I phoned Meoclinic to be told by a woman with razors in her voice who suddenly became sickeningly sweet after she’d told me it was €400 just to see someone. I felt like the pleasure she was deriving from me tripping over my words and despairingly saying that was to much money for me, was enough for her to take home and masturbate over later, in her silky agent provocateur corset, on silk sheets, with a flute of champagne on the bedside table.

I gave up for the day and decided that tomorrow I’d go to the doctors I went to for my sti test a few months ago, they were very nice. They spoke english, they had open appointments the next day at 18h.

TUESDAY

More clots started coming, big, gloopy, just pouring out of me, they were announced by a tirade of blood, I was soaking through organic pads at an alarming rate.

So that wasn't the baby on Monday then.

I went to clean first, I cant afford to not clean for reasons stated above, at an office where the woman who employs me talks to me through gritted teeth as if our every interaction is painful to her.

Lowly pauper girl, know your place.

Anyway due to logistical issues she had probably not envisaged, I didn't do the whole job and left early. I walked out on to the money lined streets of Uhlandstrasse, Cara Delevine’s svelte androgynous eyes staring out at me from various glass paned monoliths, and sat on a moth eaten bench, very upset from the shift, feeling utterly worthless, responsible and at fault, bleeding.

Then I had a cigarette, collected myself and went to tk: Round 1.

I waited, gushing out blood, in line for 25 minutes to see the receptionist, then a further 10/15 to see the sales girl. I dont have to pay them straight away but when november comes I will have to pay them 720+€ , plus from then on 180€ a month, from an average wage of 800€.

In retrospect I was probably fully within my right to protest starting the contract from July 1st, but I was so grateful for someone health related to be talking to me in English and perhaps it will stand in my favour now the hospital bills will be tallying up.

I left with no card or proof of insurance.

I went home, lay down, then showered, laced my trainers and went back into the world depleted, to Mehringdam to see the emergency doctors, it was raining heavily outside.

They were different this time, I had no proof of insurance but I had the bears money so I was paying cash, I waited dutifully and wrote in my diary.

It was a different female doctor, a more boxy and less vital woman than the previous medic I’d met at the same clinic. About halfway into my bloody tale of woe she stopped me panic stricken.

“You know this is a doctors surgery, you have to go to a gynaecologist.”

“Ok, so you cant help me.” - i start putting my coat back on.

A pause.

“Can you at least refer me to one? I’ve had a hard time trying to find a gynaecologist, I can't really speak German, people have been very rude to me so far, I came back here because I remember people were kind and tried to help me, even though I wasn't sure it was the right place.”

We go out to reception where I stand in front of 2 receptionists who speak in German and totally ignore me, the doctor hands me some measly bits of paper with contact details printed on them and hurries away. Shaken from my bloody tale of woe I imagine she just sits in her office for 10 minutes alone obsessively sterilising her hands and shuddering.

I continue to look at the 2 women in front of me who carry on as if I am invisible for a further 5 minutes, I tell them I’m going to the toilet and then coming back, they brush me off. More blood pours out of me. I return and finally they allow me to pay them, I plod back out into the rain and miserably wait for a bus, head home via the shops and climb back into bed.

WEDNESDAY

Is a national holiday, so I can't sort anything, my client offers me the day off, I take it. I make 9 drawings for my project, bounce the rough edit of the album I’m working on, pull myself to the dance studio I’ve started to rent to practise my live show. Have a long overdue singsong, though I can't really dance i can still sing.

Sunday edit: I’ve since missed 2 bookings at the studio because of this infernal bleeding, hope I can go back soon, it was utterly riveting to finally find a place I could sing as loudly as I wanted.

It's a glorious day even though blood still rains, I’m not cleaning, I’m doing what i really want to do.

THURSDAY

I need to be at my clients early, but I go via the apotheke on the way, there a pharmacist advises me on the best way to take iron and vitamin supplements, sells me ibuprofen and alerts me to the gynaecologist upstairs, but she’s only open till 13h, my job is supposed to finish at that time.

I hum and haa as I hobble to my clients and when I get there decide to finish the job early and see if I can get an appointment.

On the way into the building there's a system of doors, I enter alongside an elderly gentleman with a walking stick and we have quite the time not understanding each other, me holding doors for him, him very jovially propping them open with his stick. I have no idea what’s being said but something tender and wonderful is occurring between us that puts a lightness back in my step.

This reception is slick and clean, the receptionist is neat and elegant. But the doctor isn’t there. They wouldn’t accept my tk insurance anyway, they’re going on holiday till November.

Ok,

I leave and just flop down on the street outside, I’m supposed to be doing a double clean today but I have a 2 hour window before my next job, which is only a 15 minute walk away. I’m getting closer to seeing someone. Still crouched down on the street, still bleeding, I dig out the contacts handed to me, one is for a doctors I’ve called before. I call 2 numbers from the 4 sheets I have, both go through to hard voiced women who utterly refuse to attempt to speak English to me and relish the goodbyes they bestow before they coldly put the phone down. To the second one I say in English:

“I’m really sick, but if I don’t speak German I am just going to continue to be sick, is that what you’re telling me?”

I found a list on google, theres a male gynaecologist just up the road, a man rummaging in my lady bits is a bit disconcerting but truly I’m beyond pride now.

This reception is more modest, I place my cleaning bucket on the floor and then just start with

“I’m losing a lot of blood, can you please help me.”

He’s in.

These receptionists are gorgeous humans, they speak to me in broken English, they’re shocked I’ve been bleeding for 3 weeks, yes he will see me, please take a seat.

He’s a big warm man with no sexual energy, I tell him everything, I feel so grateful just to be able to see him that I’m bowing as I say thank you. I get sent to a little room, remove my trousers and knickers, get let into another room, climb on the chair, he inserts the spy camera dildo (ultrasound) device inside me, then on the screen we look at a ball like thing inside my womb.

Hes glowing when he tells me its probably a very early pregnancy, he’s so excited, though it’ll most likely be a miscarriage, but he paints a future where my little fetus determinedly survives the bloodletting and in 9 months time arrives in my life.

I cover everything in blood, which freaks him out.  

“You’re really bleeding a lot.”

He gives me the ultrasound photo, then after some confusion I go to the nurses and deposit a urine sample on the counter of another room.

“Thank you so much for seeing me.”

“Of course: you have been bleeding for 3 weeks.”

As I wait in the reception for the test results a new future, inconceivable before this point, rolls out before me, where I have the baby and take the government stipend to look after it as a single mother, I thought I didn’t want kids but something seems so precious about this vision. It’ll just be me and my little ball of love, together in some warm cosy flat in Prenzlauer Berg, surrounded by all the other Berlin mothers.

The test is negative, a jolt of dismay passes through me, the vision is shattered, I have to go to the hospital he says. They give me the bill, without proof of insurance I pay in cash, thanking the bear silently. He also tells me to go to my insurance and get a letter, because the hospital will really cost a lot.

So I go home, breathe and collect myself, go back out. Spend over an hour wandering around looking for a photo kiosk for my insurance card (not blind> I’m using google maps to try locate one), finally I find it nestled into a dark part of the s bahn station, it costs double what the machine costs but I just eat the charge, earlier I’d spend 30 minutes wandering around the crossroads outside Leopaldplatz: the fotofix on the map was apparently invisible, I need a picture. I then wait for another 30 minutes to have my photo taken.

When I get to the u bahn where tk is there is a fotofix booth right there, to my left as I walk out of the station, I really hold myself back from screaming and kicking over all the chairs arranged outside the cafe before me. I finally manage to call my sister and it's a glorious funny loving chat, cut short by the aforementioned man in the tk queue.

I tell him in english which he insists he doesn't understand, that I am having the day from hell and that was the first time I’ve managed to speak to that person, he abuses me again in German but then stands very far away from me, the shame weaving around him, I curse him, but its a little thing, just that I hope he gets eaten by spider babies.

Don’t take yourself too seriously.

I retrieve my letter from the receptionist, the same sales woman I spoke to on Tuesday who doesn’t recognise me at all.

It’s getting late in the day, I call back my sister and head to Charite Campus Mitte, as I get there it dawns on me this is where I was an extra on an art video shoot around 3 weeks ago.

There is no discernable entrance, it seems mostly deserted. I travel up in a lift towards the gynakolgie department, but when I exit the skybent box that is my vehicle there is no clear signage towards it, just a door to an emergency exit staircase, wind billowing behind it, with a note in fluoro yellow fixed on its metallic facade and a bridge / corridor leading to empty waiting rooms.

I give up, decide I’ll go to the address given to me by the doctors tomorrow. I’ll go home and sleep now.

Home, I eat then I crash, I get into bed at 19h, I’m still here its now 6am and I’ll try sleep a bit more before I get a taxi at 9am.

I’m scared

It’s like some sick version of the night before christmas, black humour and absurdity have been welcome companions but armour fades in bed, so writing this in the knowledge I will share it with the online community has been the only thing I can do to douse the fear.

I’ll probably have to beg receptionists later but I just hope I get to someone who can start to mend me, because the blood is still coming, for the first time since it started it stained my sheets last night but I’ve wiped them down a little.

Sunday edit: the sheets are now in the wash.

Saturday edit: they did see me, I’m having an operation on monday at 9:30, the saga continues because I have to rush back to the gynaecologists first on monday to get a note so I can be operated on : as by the time I got out of hospital on friday the gynaecologists surgery was closed and nothing is open on the weekends.

And on the anaesthetists form where it asked me who would be collecting me or looking after me for 24 hours after the procedure I stubbornly wrote noone. Though my mentor will be around as I swallowed my pride and asked her.

And, of course, I just expect more bullshit: that was my dads very astute advice:

“Expect more bullshit Felice.”

So then, yes I should speak German, yes I should of sorted my insurance, yes I’ve been irresponsible.

Saturday edit: I’ve been utterly irresponsible and disrespectful to the country I live in, I MUST learn German and make more of an effort to learn their culture, right now I’m truly an idiot abroad.

I might cancel all my jobs next week as well if I’m really sick, I might not be able to go to Krakow and watch Eartheater,

Saturday edit: All my jobs are cancelled, one of the days next week is my birthday, which I’d scheduled a double clean on so perhaps it’s not all bad.

But I’m not going to see Eartheater, if you’ve heard irisiri though ( LISTEN TO IT, I IMPLORE YOU, MORE THAN ONCE, on the first listen it’s quite harsh: https://alexdrewchin.bandcamp.com/releases) then you’ll immediately understand that not going to her show because I’m having my uterus forcibly wedged open and something cut out of it, is utterly appropriate, it’s like missing formula one because you got hit by a ferrari.

I hope I’ll be better by turin.

Saturday edit: very much.

I will still finish this project whatever happens.

Saturday edit: Now I have a week off it should help.

But I’m not 100% sure how I will make ends meet this month.

Saturday edit: Perhaps the polyp they cut out of me on monday is really an alien and I get paid hush money not to leak the story to the press.

I really miss the nhs, its a big soft Pugsy bear I just want to hug and hold and thank for everything it’s done for me over the years.

The german health system is an amalgamation of all these callous female receptionists, ignoring you and filing their niles whilst you just bleed out in front of them.

But still, I’m stubborn, its a test and i will overcome it whatever it is. I am not leaving berlin, I am standing taller, stronger and more powerful than before. I’ve experienced completely new angles and feelings this week, it’s been abhorrent but kind of sickly enjoyable as well. Life is always entertaining as it energetically throws its bounty of strangeness, cruelty and beauty (etc) at you.

It’s all good fun, even the dark days.

I’m going to try get a bit of shut eye now, might move my alarm back a little see if I can get 2 hours before i wake up to get a taxi.

Take care everyone, if you made it to the end then I guess thank you for reading as well, it’s a long fraught one this week eh?