Words From a Wicked Woman

I have been in a lot of pain since last weekend but was dumbfounded to find myself in hospital at the Cleveland Clinic this afternoon, scheduled to remain through this weekend. I got a call from my orthopedist’s office this morning saying that tests I’d taken last Wednesday indicated that I probably had a infection in my knee joint and needed to have emergency surgery to clean it out. This is the same knee that should have been replaced March 21 but wasn’t because I was sick with the remains of a sinus infection while undergoing pre-op testing. It is that same sinus infection that is believed to have traveled to my knee, causing it swell to at least 150% of its normal size and caused enough pain this last week to prevent me from leaving my bed–other than to go to my orthopedist’s office.

I got to the hospital a couple of hours after my doctor’s office phoned me, but the order of the day was “hurry up and wait.” In the meantime, I hadn’t had anything to eat or drink since the night before and no pain medication. I finally moved up to a patient room three hours after my arrival. Unfortunately, by the time I got there I was in so much pain, and had had so little sleep, my blood pressure was way over normal. Infection or not, there would be no surgery today because my blood pressure was too high. No amount of explaining why it was so high worked. The up side of that was that I could at least eat.

OK, so the food wasn’t great. (At least it was something one might consider calling “food” if you’re a half-starved, nicotine-deprived crazy woman with blood in your eyes like I was.) Still, I have to say that I’ve seen more attendings on a Friday evening at The Clinic than I’ve ever seen past 6 p.m. any day of the week at other area hospitals–and this isn’t even the hospital attached to Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, University Hospitals (where they do have really good food). If I’m going to be sick, and I can choose where I’m going to be sick, I will almost always choose UH. The only reason I’m here is because the one doctor I can honestly say I truly like is here. In fact, this is probably the last time I’ll see him since he’s headed out the door to retirement any minute now and has, technically, passed me on to a colleague. I don’t know what I’m going to do without him. But, to prove that Fate’s hand was at work today, the colleague to which my doctor has passed me is the same one who will be deciding, finally, about whether to proceed with surgery Monday because my beloved doctor is going to his swan song conference as president of some professional organization or another in Florida. Yeah, he gets to lay on a beach in the sun while I’m here in his hospital eating crappy food, watching the snow fly and wondering if my leg is going to fall off while I have a nicotine fit. I really should have gone to medical school. I was supposed to see the new doctor for the first time for an office visit on Monday . Well, I’ll see him Monday alright–because I’m in the hospital.

I’m starting to ramble. It’s the drugs. I am bored out of my skull and it will probably only get worse even though there are far too many doctors and nurses walking in and out of my room. They are all very nice, but all very annoying because they want to hear things over and over again. Yet another phlebotomist will be here any minute to take more blood and I am deeply thankful that it isn’t someone else with an aspiration needle to take more yuckiness from the infected joint because that business hurts like you would not believe. I’ve heard that I will be getting high doses of antibiotics and, with any luck, more pain meds.

I will try to post something next week. Until then, I hope that your local Major League Baseball team had a fabulous Opening Day. It snowed on ours and I’m pretty sure this game is going to be called due to weather. Better luck next year!

Technorati Tags: blogging, disability, health

I’ve been immersed in study of sexual minorities in Africa and the current debate about full inclusion of LGBT members in the Episcopal Church, U.S.A. Both of those topics require esoteric knowledge I am still attempting to grasp even after long hours of examination. In addition, fibromyalgia absolutely floored me last week like I’ve not experienced in many months. I was in so much pain that my blood pressure rose precipitously and necessitated rescheduling the knee replacement surgery that was scheduled for this Thursday, March 22. I have not gotten a new date as yet, but I will keep you informed.

I’ve been in contact with Davis Mac-Iyalla, director of Changing Attitude Nigeria, an Anglican Church gay rights group, who has been forced to flee his own country and seek safe harbor elsewhere due to death threats received in connection with his advocacy for gay rights both within the Church of Nigeria (Anglican Communion) and his opposition to legislation in front of the National Assembly that would forbid: any displays of same-sex affection in public or private; any assembly of LGBT people–even so much as having dinner together; any advocacy for civil or human rights,; or any number of other things depending on how strictly one chooses to read the proposed law. He has agreed to an e-mail interview and I am eagerly awaiting his response to my questions. In the meantime, I’ve been reading any current material I can find as this man truly is in danger. The situation for LGBT in Nigeria was never good, but the atmosphere has gotten worse by multitudes of degrees.

I’m still recovering from the fibro flare, so I have no idea how many posts there will be this week. Again, I ask for your understanding. In the meantime, I’ve written one about the current situation in Nigeria and its impact on immigration to this country that I encourage you to distribute widely anywhere and everywhere. I promised Davis that I would get let people know what is going on with LGBT Nigerians.

Technorati Tags: activism, africa, blogging, disability, fibromyalgia, gay, health, lesbian, lgbt

Valentine’s Day weather in Cleveland, OH (image courtesy of Cleveland.com)

Happy Valentine’s Day to everyone! I know that some people hate this consumer-oriented holiday designed for greeting card, confection and gift companies, but some of us look upon the day as a time to appreciate those we love be they family, friends or, yes, even our honies. It is true that this day reminds many of us that we’re alone and lonely and may stay that way for the foreseeable future. However, I honestly believe there is at least one someone out there for all of us. The trick is to find him or her. That is often a difficult task, I know; and keeping the faith while agreeing to open one’s heart requires a commitment like no other. I have to believe the risk is worth it because if I didn’t, I’d end up a cold, bitter, hopeless and cynical woman. I, for one, refuse to live my life that way. So buck up, people!

Now, to the point at hand. I said that I’d post an article yesterday about the transformation of Venus Magazine and its publisher, Charlene Cothran, into shills for the ex-gay movement. Unfortunately, the worst snow storm in years hit the area and this Wicked Woman and her fibromyalgia-addled body was caught in the middle of it. Although I knew the storm was coming, I had appointments that had to be kept. Of course, both of them took longer than expected and I was caught in this mess slipping and sliding back home in a vehicle whose heater and defrost suddenly decided they would not function. Thankfully, it was an SUV, but that was both a blessing and a curse. I had traction, but I also had the burden of trying to guide a big, heavy potential weapon of destruction down crowded, snow-covered thoroughfares when I couldn’t see through the windshield. I didn’t get home until early evening and my body was, and still is, in dire pain. I re-injured my foot with the boots I wore and the fibromyalgia pain surfaced in greater intensity because . . . well . . . that’s what it does. Slogging through several-foot-deep snowdrifts did not help, believe me.

Cleveland and environs were shut down until about an hour ago. We’re all digging out now. I’ve literally got two feet of snow in both my front and back yards; my 23-inch Airedale Terrier, Lola, (named for the Kinks song), who was born in the U.S. equivalent of the Arctic–Minnesota–was frazzled by outside conditions and refused to relieve herself until Berry, my Dachshund-Jack Russell-mix, tunneled through for her like the good Earthdog that she is (tested or not), and; it’s snowing again, but lake effect this time, and there’s a wind chill advisory. Since fibro is most definitely influenced by weather, and since I ache, I’m taking today and part of tomorrow off. We’re going to try again–Friday. Until then, hug the ones you love and remember to also hug yourself. Happy Valentine’s Day!

Technorati Tags: blogging, disability, health, postponement

Respect yourself, respect yourself
If you don’t respect yourself
Ain’t nobody gonna give a good cahoot, na na na na
Respect yourself, respect yourself

So say the Staple Singers in the song “Respect Yourself” from the 1972 album Be Altitude: Respect Yourself. It occurred to me as I was searching for housing information for disabled people that I was running across all these souls who, for one reason or another, didn’t like who they were. They disliked the way the rest of the world reacted to them and so they downplayed their difference instead of acknowledging it and moving on. These weren’t only disabled people, but gay people and black people and . . . and . . . Anyone who wasn’t white, hetero and able-bodied seemed to face the same issue at some point in their lives: whether to come out of the closet. “Coming out” isn’t only a gay thing and it isn’t always something one does in front of a crowd of family, friends and peers. The most important step in coming out is acknowledging to oneself that there is something that sets him or her apart from the majority of other people in one’s environment. Having “come out” to oneself, the next thing is to accept the difference and become comfortable with it. As any out gay person knows, that is far easier said than done. It often takes many years to get comfy in one’s own skin. It’s almost as though coming out is giving birth to an infant. That child has to grow up in the world for a few years, make the usual mistakes, learn the usual things, go through puberty, grow physically, emotionally and spiritually to become a mature adult. It doesn’t happen overnight.

I used to hang out in African history newsgroups on Usenet in the mid 90s or so. I’d often encounter a number of North Africans, particularly Egyptians, who’d swear on the holy Koran that the population’s phenotype is the same now as it was upwards of 3000 years ago. Given the number of times North Africa, especially Egypt, has been invaded by everyone from Nubians to Babylonians to Visigoths to Greeks to Romans it is impossible that the population has not changed. Invaders have this nasty habit of leaving their seed everywhere. If they didn’t, all black folks would be approximately the same color with minor variations. We aren’t. We range in shade from what used to be called “light, bright and damn near white” to a brown so dark that it looks blue. All of them are lovely, in my opinion. Unfortunately, my opinion is not shared by many. Slavers and colonists found that it was in their interest to divide populations, turning them against each other, as a way of controlling them. We see the legacy of that today in the genocides of Rwanda and Sudan. People with certain physical characteristics were labeled Semitic and, therefore, Caucasian while their brethren were labeled Negroid–black. Very bad things happened to black people while Semitic people might be spared some of the hardship and may even inflict it on their “lesser” black neighbors. Consequently, we have the Janjaweed who are Muslim and darker than a paper bag, but consider themselves to be Arabs, slaughtering Nubians–black Africans–in southern and western Sudan. It does not help that those in the south are also Christian or animist. However, it is a mistake to characterize the slaughter as sectarian because it isn’t. Black Muslims are being killed just like black Christians. The Christian Science Monitor called it what it is–racism–in a 2004 article.

“Race - not religion - is the fundamental fault line in Sudan, though religion has certainly added fuel to the fire in the south. Indeed, since independence from the British in 1956, the demon of Sudan has been race. The Arab north, except for brief periods when token Africans were included in government, has exclusively held political and military power. To protest political exclusion, military repression, enslavement, and economic exploitation, Africans in the south rose against the state several years after independence,” writes Makau Mutua, a law professor and director of the Human Rights Center at the State University of New York at Buffalo.

Mutua adds, “President Omar Bashir and his fundamentalist Islamic government declared a holy war against African groups in the south - the Dinka, Nuba, and Neur peoples.”

As mentioned, many, though not all, Egyptians consider themselves to be Caucasian just like the Janjaweed. Furthermore, feelings of superiority are endemic. There is a population in southern Egypt near the Aswan Dam that is more Negroid than people below the dam in the north (the Nile flows south to north and empties into the Mediterranean Sea). Priceless Nubian antiquities were destroyed when the dam was built and the world lost one of the most important caches of artifacts that may have contained clues to understanding the as-yet-indecipherable Meroitic script. There was a great hew and cry from archeologists, anthropologists and other scientists when it was learned these lands would be flooded. Unfortunately, the Egyptian government felt it was more important that the dam be built and there was little time for experts from the United Nations to find and catalog these treasures. I know why I think this happened. It is obvious to me. However, an Egyptian from Cairo or Alexandria may feel differently. I say that it was naked racism. It is the same racism that commands a great many to deny they have any black blood no matter how dark-skinned they happen to be and in defiance of history and logic. You see, black is shameful. Black is never to be admitted. Respect yourselves, my Egyptian friends.

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