Reading Lips

Most of my patients can't talk. Some of them can mouth words. They talk to me and talk to me and I can't understand what they're saying. The worst are the people that die. People often wake up right before they die. They catch your hand, look at you for the first time and say something. Their mouths move, but there's no sound. And they need to say it, whatever it is is probably the most important thing they've ever said (Tell Myra I always loved her, even though I married Nancy. All my gold is buried under the McBain Oak, and it's yours, dear Nurse. Who knows?) and it's so absurd. Luck of the draw. They get me. Who can't read lips.
"What?"
"One word at a time. Let me get the word board! Can you point? Hang on! Oh. Oops. Bye."
What an idiot, they probably think, as they lapse back into darkness. Of all the people to get stuck with. And I'm not even going to get to live to fill out the Press Ganey on that one! Darn. Oh, there's the light!
No, I don't know what they think or say, and it's just awful. We are in such isolation, so dependent on externals. Wiz, of course, can always understand what they're saying. In detail. "No, I don't think Oprah's on right now. It's a Sunday. You've been unconscious for about 2 days. " he'll reply. "Your elbow itches? I'll get that for you. Your cast is twisted."
But yesterday, I was taking care of this woman I'd taken care of several months before. She was in a car wreck, then sent to a rehab facility, then returned to us septic, in terrible condition. Her hair matted and dirty--with mold in it, her trach ties reeking and green, yeast under her breasts, pressure ulcers under her braces, starving. Terrible. We were horrified. We had gotten her in such good shape--what had they done? I felt I'd been punched in the stomach when she came in. I took everything off, drenched it in hydrogen peroxide (hydrogen peroxide can solve almost everything--and it's only 80 cents!) She's doing better now, after a week. Most of her hair has fallen out, but we combed it and cut it and put it in little braids on top of her head. Lavished her with care. Sometimes, putting someone right is so satisfying. She wasn't septic, just neglected and starving. Wiz taught me that. I came in to nursing contemptuous of the little things. I liked things that made me think--I liked out diagnosing the doctors. I still like that, but the other stuff is just as important. Maybe more so. People give Wiz a lot of crap. I remember my preceptor saying, after Wiz had made a comment about our patient's fingernails, still dirty after a week in the unit, that if he liked all that nurse tech stuff, he could just do that--save the hassle of being a clinical supervisor. As if it was beneath us.
So anyways, I'm fussing over my patient. She was having a lot of gas. We'd had one ostomy bag explode, and I was burping her new one. She mouths something, and--it was the strangest feeling--I heard her words in my tummy--silent but there--like my own thoughts, but located in a different place in my body--she says, I don't think I can take this any more. And without thinking, I respond. "This is all part of the process, Gretel. You've been starving. Your gut is waking up."
They were so mean to me there. Will I have to go back?
"No. You don't have to go back."
It was the strangest thing.
I remember when Spanish finally clicked for me. I had really been trying to learn Spanish, since everyone speaks it in Miami, with very little success. I listened to Spanish radio all the time and I was driving home from work, listening to Radio Ritmo! and an advertisement came on. I never understood the ads, but all the sudden, I found myself musing "That's a really good price on pillows! And we need new towels." It was an ad for Bed, Bath & Beyond and I'd understood it without even realizing it. Language is only one part of communication, I think. Listening is getting your ego, your overactive "I'll figure this out!" part of you out the way and being present with where you are. Letting go of your own story.
It's a zen task, I think. You have to give over to the other person to really understand what they're saying.
Life can be full of awakenings, can't it?
That's my 1/2 hour.

How Not to Eat Dinner

I have more than a cold. I have pneumonia.

It finally sort of let up yesterday, but I still have a fever. I've been out of commission for a good six days at least. Amazing. I haven't been this sick in years.

I feel a little better today, but still as if I've been hit by the truck. My breath has this dry raspy feeling, this heaviness. I can't taste anything very well or smell, either. I keep forgetting things.

I've spent the whole week with doctors.

Lilly's doctor on Monday. She lost weight. I argued with the doctor about it. The number she had was different than the number on the scale. I didn't want to get the nurse in trouble, but it had been written down wrong. Still and all, even though the number was wrong, Lilly had still lost weight.

I don't like Lilly's doctor.

In the office, Lilly confessed that she'd been lying to me, and she hadn't been eating what she said she had. I felt stomped. So much for the Gilmore girls.

I feel like these people are trying to drive a wedge between Lilly and me.

"Have you been eating?" They ask her.

"Not always." Lilly tells her, not looking at me.

I'm exhausted. The pneumonia, school, the job, Lilly, the boyfriend, Nick into college. He got into the state university, not a sure thing, given his GPA. He's not really excited about staying in town, but, oh, well!

Lilly and I met with the therapist that afternoon.

"Have you been fighting about food?" She asked us.

We've only had one fight about food, but it was a doozy. "No," Lilly and I start to say, then "well..."

Tell me about it, the therapist says in her gentle voice.

Lilly begins: "Well, I was making myself dinner, because Mom was sick, and I was taking too long, so Mom thought I wasn't doing it and she got mad. But I wasn't trying to keep from eating dinner."

"So your mom misunderstood?"

"Yeah."

"Is that what happened, Mom?" the therapist asks me.

Here's what happened.

At 6 pm, I was flat on the couch. Fever, coughing up a lung, etc. "You need to get yourself dinner," I told Lilly.

The refrigerator is full of food. It was Thanksgiving, after all. We have 1/2 a turkey, ham, sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, vegetables, squash soup...dinner is not an issue. Cooked. Ready to heat up and go.

"I don't want any of this,"Lilly declares. "I want to have that egg and tuna salad Amanda makes." She calls Amanda. Amanda isn't there, so she leaves a message.

"Amanda, I'm getting ready to eat dinner and I want to make your egg and tuna salad. Could you call me back with the recipe, please?"

1/2 hour later. The phone rings. It's Amanda. They talk for awhile. Around 7, Lilly calls out, "Mom, do we have relish?" A list of other ingredients follows. Tartar sauce. Mustard powder.
"Look in the fridge," I tell her. I highly doubt we have tartar sauce.
"Mom, are you too sick to go to the grocery store."
Is she kidding? I'm too sick to walk to the bathroom. She asks her brother.
"No," Nick says, not taking his eyes off his video game. "I'm not taking you to the store for relish."
"But the dinner won't be any good without relish."
She decides she can do it without relish. I hear the sound of water being brought to a boil.
She keeps taking to Amanda. An hour goes by.
"Lilly," I shout out hoarsely, "have you made your sandwich?"
I get up and stagger in to the kitchen. "What's this, Lilly? Why is the egg still boiling?"
She puts her hand over the mouthpiece of the phone. "The other egg wasn't the right consistency. I had to do it again."
"How long has this egg been boiling?" I croak.
"Not long enough. Mom, I'm on the phone."
Another 15 minutes goes by. The egg is still boiling merrily.
"Lilly, you need to make yourself dinner."
"I am, Mom," she snarls.
"Ok. Tone. Off the phone."
"You've got to be kidding."
"Now.'
She rolls her eyes. "Sorry, Amanda. My mom wants me to get off the phone."
2 hours and 37 minutes after I first told Lilly to get herself something to eat, Lilly has finally managed to prepare herself an egg and tuna salad sandwich. Then I have to nag her about the fruit.
"I don't have to eat a piece of fruit at dinner!" she tells me. We've had the same diet for 2 weeks.
Mental illness is so fucking fun.
"You're the mom," the therapist says. "You can tell her when she needs to eat."
"I was going to eat." Lilly says, sulkily.
"I know that." I say.
Duh. 2 and a half hours of Lilly not eating.
Her father is this way, too. "I'm doing it, " he'll maintain--whatever it is you ask him to do. And then he'll delay and delay and delay--creating more and more and more rules about how to do it and when to do it. Preparing to prepare to prepare. It's psychotic. "Well, for organizational purposes, I want all the checks I write for the kids to end in '2', so I couldn't send the orthodontist money until the new checks arrived--and we'd switched banks." That sort of thing. The way to avoid having mentallly ill children is not to marry anyone mentally ill, I've decided. But the mentally ill are usually so charming and good in bed! So what do you do?
Oh, well. Too late now. I guess I'm stuck with her.
That's my 1/2 hour.

Home Sick

Okay.

What gives? I'm still sick.

I got a little better by last Monday, had a pretty good Tuesday, started feeling bad again Wednesday, floated through Thursday, woke up Friday, thought "Oh, no, I'm still sick! I can't call in again." Went to work. Got sent home by Wiz at 1500.

"You're going home at 1500." He tells me.

"I don't need to. My voice sounds a lot worse than I feel. It's just laryngitis."

"The float is coming at 1500. I'll be in MRI. Give report and go."

It is good to have someone who knows you well. I really needed to go home. I felt like hell. But I would never have requested to go home. The only way to get me out of there was to arrange for my replacement and pack me up and out.

I went home. Lilly wanted to go to a movie. I thought, "what's the harm? I'm on call, officially, not sick." So we went to see Happy Go Lucky. Lilly liked it a lot, but I didn't. For some reason, I walked out sad. I thought the driving instructor was way too disturbing. It's funny, because I've had almost the same exchange with someone in my life. Angry, screaming, offended by my good humor. I've had the same strange conversations with street people.

I had so much fun being YOUNG ME, I am always surprised at how much I do not want Lilly to be anything at all like YOUNG ME. "You know," I tell Lilly, "after she saw him stalking her apartment, she should never have gone in the car with him after that."
"I know, Mom."
"And you know, you must never get some place lonely with a homeless person, like she does. Never."
"I know, Mom."
All those walks at 3am on Mary Street in Coconut Grove or on the South Side of Chicago, or under bridges, or through steam tunnels, deserted churches, the lovely mystic wild lonely parts of cities. Singing sea shanties at the top of my lungs.
But maybe, by being this careful, I've starved Lilly, somehow. Maybe she needs to get wild to get a little fatter?
What was great about the movie is that it really reinforced for both of us what we already knew, that we create our own reality. Here's Lilly, starving herself in the midst of plenty--what sort of artificial reality is that? The world is really what you make it. It can be a trap, filled with rules and games, or a playground. I mean, for the average, middle class person living in a country not being plagued by war or famine. I.e. For us.

Here's my secret strange worry. Have you ever read any of the books by Carlos Castaneda? There's this teaching by Don Juan that humans are these egg-shaped energy fields, but that the people who have had children have a hole in the middle. Carlos goes back, reconnects with his daughter, and steals his energy back.

But I always wonder--how could you do that to your kid? And sometimes I wonder if I've accidentally done that to mine. I mean, I look so young and I have so much energy (well, not today) and the music and the writing--maybe I'm not supposed to have this much? Maybe Lilly is starving herself because I've somehow, psychically taken something essential from her?

That's my 1/2 hour

An Exemplary Day

I'm sick. My sinuses are completely full and I have a fever. I was at work til 2130 last night. My head feels like a nasty magic trick, like it's bigger on the inside than outside. I look in the mirror, and the swelling has actually filled in a crease or two, my eyes are all puffy. How can those two little ethmoid sinuses filling up make you feel like nothing will ever be okay again?

On top of that, it's cold. Freezing. And I hate the cold. I had to wear long underwear beneath my scrubs.

My parents are going nuts. They are showing up at the house at early in the morning and late at night, and leaving up to ten messages a day on both phones. Nothing messages, but full of bile. "Did you know that Lilly is going to a party at Diddle's? Did you know that?" My mother says, in one. They both leave long messages that take up the entire message space. If a guy was doing that to you, you'd get a restraining order. The subtext is "your kids suck and so do you." I can't describe to you how unpleasant and really mean spirited my mother is. I try to tell people about it, and they're kind of dismissive. Then they meet her and they understand. She's told Lilly that she's evil and has no heart and will never marry because boys will sense that. She told me the same thing. She once accused me (at 13) of having "something going on" with my father. She takes every experience and emotion you relate to her and coats it with grime. Talking to her is like "eating a dirt sandwich. You want to rinse your mouth and heart out afterwards.

"We never talk," she complains.

That's right!

So, I have a terrible day yesterday. Lilly lies about breakfast and I catch her. So I have to go to her school and make sure she eats her snack, which is humiliating for both of us. I was called off in the morning, but get called in by the rude staffing clerk who has a way of treating nurses as if we're call girls. At work yesterday. I have a patient covered with gorgeous tattoos of skulls and demons and pentacles with a lot of skull fractures and asked the RT, who's just this doofus, to help me bring him up in bed, and he slams his head into the headboard. In front of the family.

The fiance, who's already unfriendly because a pastor walked in unannounced and "why didn't I know about it?" goes screaming to the hospitality people, my manager, the house mom, and my supervisor.

Fortunately, as my manager tells me, when I go in to tell her about the incident, "she thinks your name is Julie."

And it wasn't my fault. It was that horrible RT's fault.

Then I get a trauma, who's just a mess. And takes up all my time and energy for the rest of the afternoon.

"Exemplary day." Wiz says to me at the end of the shift. "You had an exemplary day."

"It didn't feel that way."

"That's just your ego talking. Fucking you. Brain and body. The big fight" He says, nodding cryptically.

On my way out the car, my phone rings. The hospital is under construction, so we have to park far away, about a 20 minute walk. There's a shuttle, but it doesn't run at night and it's always slow. I have to trudge out late, in the dark, past the dead unblinking black eyes of the new half-constructed structures, the chain link fences, the piles of building materials, pipes, bricks, gravel. The phone rings, and pick it up, and it's my mother. Yellling at me about Lillly. "Why didn't you tell us she was going to a party?"
"Because she doesn't need your help getting there or getting home with it."
"Did you know she's going to a movie too? Did you know that?"
I'm climbing up a gravel incline to get to the level of the lot where my car is. Since I'm angry at my mother and not watching where I'm going, I slip and fall, scraping my knees right through my layers and twisting my finger.
"God damn it," I yell into the phone, losing my cool. "Quit calling me. Quit leaving messages over every god damn thing. Quit showing up at 6 am. Just stop it. I'm not talking to you. I don't have to listen to this." I hung up. Reached the saab, all by itself except for an SUV with steamed windows and its motor running about 4 spaces down.

I throw my phone and my coffee cup and purse into the back seat of the car. There's a ticket on the car.

A ticket! In this freezing lot they charge me to park in--a half mile away from the hospital in a construction lot. And the fucking powers that be had the gall to give me a ticket. Some stupid workstudy officious little college student wandering around with his pad. What's happened to all the young people, man? Why have they all turned into such nazis? What have we done wrong?

I kick the car. Then I apologize to it. Not Elka's fault.

A window rolls down on the SUV. Santeria by Sublime, blares out. A young blonde woman sticks her head out.

"Dude." She says, "you look like you are having a bad night. Want to smoke a bowl with us?" Her friend, dark haired, leans over. Both are smiling, pretty long haired girls. Girls like I was. I would have done that, at that age.

I walk over to the car.

"Come one," they urge. "Climb in. It's good shit."

My bad mood disappates. I shake my head. Smile. "No, thanks, though. There's no way I can sit in the parking lot where I work getting baked. With the kind of day I've had, I'll just bring the murphy karma right in on you."

"Yeah, dude," the blonde girl says, nodding her head. "I get you. Well, have a good night! Feel better."

And I don't. But I do, too.

That's my 1/2 hour.

Anorexia Nervosa

In big block letters, on Lilly's lab requisitions, the ones we had to take from the Dr's office to the lab. Dx: ANOREXIA NERVOSA

I mentioned before that Lilly's been losing a lot of weight. We went to the eating disorder specialist yesterday.

There are no magazines in the waiting room. Only that wretched upstart, Paloma Life, which is meant to be a social magazine (about Paloma!) and mostly features the stretched, chicken-skinned faces of doctors wives standing next to each other in pic after pic. There are also stacks and stacks of Neurology Today, incongruously. I have no idea why they have them. I'm a little frustrated by this, until I think, Oh, yeah, it's an eating disorder specialist. Not good to have pics of skinny models and celebs lying around.

They give me a "why you're here" sheet to fill out, which I hand immediately to Lilly. She checks off "Eating disorder/weight loss" without hesitation and hands it back to me. We don't talk. She stares right ahead. Her eyes are so huge. They look like agates.

They take us back. Get a blind weight on Lilly. 111.7 pounds. "And how are you related?" The nurse asks me, "friend? Sister?"

"Mom!" Lilly says.

"You look so young!" The nurse says, then leaves.

"We're so sick," Lilly says, after the door closes. "If we were really psycho, we'd be like, 'yay! Lilly, you've made it! You're finally skinny enough to have to go to the hospital! You go girl! And my mom looks like a teenager! Screw this psychological health shit. We win! We win!"
We start giggling, which confuses the medical student sent to do Lilly's intake.

The student is good. Slight. Indian. Mature and respectful. We like her. The doctor knocks on the door in the middle of the interview. "I'm interrupting. I'm taking over," she says, and sits down.

"She was doing really well," I offer.

"Yes, but this is very serious. I was just reviewing her chart."

Well, duh. That's why we're here.

"So, Lilly," she begins. "Why do you think you're here?"

"Well," Lilly says, and I can tell she's going into her beautiful mature interview mode. "I think I need to establish a better balance between eating and activity."

Lilly should become a campaign manager. She has spin down.

"Do you want me to leave?" I ask.

"Do you want your mom to leave?" The doctor asks.

"No. I won't tell you anything I don't tell my mom."

The interview unfolds. Lilly, for the most part, has a handle on the problem, but it's interesting to see the blind spots. For example, Lilly tells the doctor that she eats all her food. Which she never does. Ever. I interrupt to point this out.

"Yes I do."

"What about last night?"

"I ate all my pasta last night."

"No you didn't, remember? We were going to band practice and you got up to look for a CD, and then we were late, and you only ate a mouthful and threw the rest away."

"I ate it when you weren't looking."

"I don't think so..."

The doctor interrupts. "You need to trust yourself on this one, Mom."

"Ok," Lilly shrugs. "maybe I forgot."

Lilly's heart rate is 55. "she's a runner..." I offer. "I'm a runner, too."The doctor has Lilly lie down. "I'm going to leave the room. Let you rest. If your heart rate after resting a bit is below 50, I'm going to have to admit you."

So Lilly lies down. I sit next to her holding her hand. We talk quietly. Mostly jokes. I look at Lilly, and suddenly see her. I see how terrible she really looks. Skeletal.

"So this is a big deal?" Lilly says..

"Yeah."

The doctor comes back. Heart rate is 50.

"Ok, I'm not hospitalizing you. But if you haven't gained weight by next week, I am. "

We meet with a dietitian then, get labs drawn. Lilly takes the sheet, plans out all her meals for the next 4 days on a grid. Then makes a shopping list.

That's my 1/2 hour.

How to get a Minor a Passport

Shu Jo Mu Hen Sei Gan Do

Bon No Mu Jin Sei Gan Dan

Ho Mon Mu Ryo Sei Gan Gakku

Butsu Do Mu Jo Sei Gan Jo

Infinite are all beings, I vow to save them.

Infinite are all attachments, I vow to be free of them.

Infinite are all Dharmas, I vow to master them.

Infinite is the Buddha Way, I vow to attain it.

We went to get Lilly's passport today. It was Wacky Day at school. Lilly wore mismatching socks, athletic shorts over neon pink fishnet tights, my big grey cable motheaten cashmere sweater, and a plastic replica of the Time Turner from Harry Potter. She told me this was a hit with the sixth grade boys, who all wanted to play with it. Last night, while I was working on my paper, we'd somehow found the time to dye Lilly's hair red. So she had red hair again, too.

I didn't really think about all this until we were standing in line at the post office, waiting to have her pic taken.

The big bald guy with the big ears was at the counter. He's kind of loud and bossy. "Do you have an i.d.?"

"We have a birth certificate."

"You need an i.d."

"She's 16. She doesn't have an i.d."

"She has a school i.d., doesn't she?"

"She goes to a private school. They don't have school i.d.'s" What's with all this i.d. crap, anyways, for minors? I mean, isn't this in the constitution?

I produce the notarized letter from her father, allowing her to go out of the country. "We don't need that," he tells me.

Last time I was here, he had told me I did. But I didn't argue. Don't argue with officials. Yes sir, no sir. Get through the line.

"I have an i.d." Lilly pipes up. "It's in the bottom of my locker."

"You do?" I ask, incredulous. I want to kick her. Another lesson is that whatever your mother says, never contradict her. Didn't she watch The Godfather? That sort of thing is what got James Caan shot.

"It's ok. You don't really need one," he informs us. "It's just a good idea to have one. Ok. Let's go over and take your picture."

We head over to the other side of the counter, where the camera is. On the way over, I see someone I know. Phillip Lundqvist. Phillip was the weirdest, wildest, sexiest, most interesting guy in our high school. He became a curator for the Guggenheim. He had beautiful lush curly brown hair and he drove a jeep. He was my best friend, Heather's boyfriend. We never really did anything to betray Heather, but every day after school, my mother would drop me off downtown and go back to work, and I would just wander for 3 or 4 hours until she got off work. And somehow, Phillip and I started running into each other. And then, somehow, we started meeting on the corner of 9th and Cherry every day and going for ice cream. Then we would take off in his jeep with our ice cream at 90 miles an hour out into the country and drive like maniacs on the dirt roads through the fields in the county until it was time for me to be picked up. We hardly ever talked. Lots of crazy laughing, though. And he never kissed me or anything. Or even touched me. But we never told anyone we did this.

So there he was. Lots of thick curly grey hair and wrinkles. But the same eyes. Wearing overalls and a slicker. He looked like he'd been through hell.

He told me his mother had died, and that he'd quit work to take care of her when he was dying and now he was busy wrapping up the estate, selling the farm, etc. He told me none of his seven brothers and sisters had pitched in.

Then the bald guy came over. "Are you done filling out the form?"

"No," I said. "I'm talking. I'm sorry."

"Well, I have to go on break."

"Oh, I'm sorry."

He goes.

A short black woman with a prominent scar on her face that looks exactly like a dog bite, teeth marks and all. I hand her our documents.

"Where's her i.d."

"He said we didn't need one."

"You need one."

"But he said we didn't."

The bald guy comes back over. "I told her she doesn't need one. It's just for their convenience. She's a minor."

"Ok." the woman says.

He leaves.

"Ok then," I say, handing her the documents.

"You need to get an id."

"But he just said...."

"I didn't."

"But he just said that I didn't need one, I'm just going by what he said. Why didn't you say something?"

She gets really nasty. "Because I don't INTERRUPT YOU WANT ME TO INTERRUPT? THAT OK WITH YOU? NOW YOU GO GET AN I.D. I'M THE PASSPORT CLERK AND IF I SAY YOU NEED AN ID THAN YOU GO GET ONE."

I don't know what to say. I take a deep breath. Lilly sucks in her breath and we both stare at the woman, who stares back.

"Ok." I say. "Will a school i.d. be okay?"

"State. Drivers permit or state i.d."

We leave, meekly.

"Oh, my God," Lilly says. "I can't believe that just happened."

I'm shaking. "Did I do ok? Did I act mad?"

"No. " Lilly says, "you did great."

We head out to the drivers testing building, way North of town. It's in one of those buildings they put up in the 70's without windows. It's across the street from a Krispy Kreme, a Korean grocery store, and a trailer park. When we were on food stamps, we used to go to this building. Lilly goes in, starts taking the test. The older woman at the desk leans into me.

"Does she have trouble with her 's's?" She asks.

"I'm sorry?"

She repeats herself. "Does she have trouble with her s's? I always had so much trouble making the s sound."

I look at the woman more closely and realize she has a cleft. Repaired. But I can see the faint tracing of a scar. We start talking to each other like long lost relatives. She's so nice and kind. I tell her all about Lilly. It turns out she's from Miami, too, and went to high school at the school where my grandfather was a guidance counselor in the late forties. She tells me about her pretty mother, how they moved around as her mother went from man to man. It's a sad childhood, but things worked out. She's been married 51 years and has a daughter, lived all over the world

Lilly fails the test. Twice. We head off to the DOR to get a state i.d. But I feel like I've made a friend.

We go back to the post office.

I steel myself to deal with the mean dog bite woman.

She arrives at the counter cheerful as a lark.

"You got it?"

I hand it to her.

"that'll do. You go to a private school?" She asks Lilly.

"Paloma Independent." Lilly says.

"I sent mine to Catholic school."

"We thought about that for Lilly," I say. "but they stop at 8th grade here."

"Yes," Dog Bite nods, "then you have to ship them to Daviston for the high school there."

We talk about the public schools. She tells me about her daughter, how she wants to be a nurse (how did she find out I'm a nurse, I wonder?). She gets everything done, stamped, signed. Gives me a receipt.

"I'm so sorry about that earlier," she whispers, grabbing the counter.

And I got to say. "Sorry about what? No worries!"

"That worked out well, " Lilly muses, as we walk back to the car.

That's my 1/2 hour, and then some

Anniversary

Today's my wedding anniversary.

Small death? Derailment? Salvation? I have not decided. I have no idea whether my marriage was a mistake or not.

One of the benefits (or detriments?) of my practice is I don't really see things as mistakes.

I ran away in the middle of the night with my husband. I had only known him six weeks and had only dated him for three. We were having a fight. We had slept together once and then he had dropped me. I had run into him at a party. I poured a beer on his head and I guess he thought, "this is the girl for me!"

He had just finished doing his laundry. He took the laundry basket filled with clean clothes and put it into the back seat of my Chevy Impala filled with 1/2 empty packs of packs of unfiltered camels (I was trying to quit--don't ask about my strategy--even I'm not sure what it was). We headed south. I think the reason I did something so crazy is because I was nicotine deprived and losing my mind.

So now I have Nick and Lilly and a crazy ex-husband.

I've been at the library all day, doing a "health promotion paper" on the dangers of cell phone use. There aren't too many, but they aren't completely harmless. So, as with anything magical, use it carefully. That's really a good rule. Things that are too magical always exact a price--love, birth control, cars, x-rays. Think about the stories. If some new technology virtually confers upon you magical powers, it's bad for you somehow.

I called my crazy ex husband yesterday. I'm taking Lilly to an eating disorder specialist Thursday. She just hit 112 lbs. Her hip bones stick out like conch shells and her periods have stopped "I think I'm getting a little weird about food." She says in this off-hand way. I found myself spilling all this to this nurse I work with, not someone I particularly respect or am close to. He's kind of sloppy--not really as a nurse, but personally. Doesn't shave, scrubs always rumpled and sort of dirty looking. Looks like he's always rolled out of bed. Doesn't look like he showers very much. Now I know why. It's strange the way you always know the right people to talk to about things. It was at the end of my shift and he was taking over. "I'm going home to watch my daughter not eat dinner," I said as a joke. Then the whole thing just came lurching out.

"We're going through the same thing with Wanda." He tells me. "She's institutionalized right now. We can't handle it at home. " He and I swap crazy eating stories about our daughters. We start laughing. The stories are so similar.

"This will rip your home apart," he warns. "An anorexic ends up controlling every single person in the house. We have five kids, but we only have one, if you know what I mean."

5 kids. One severley disturbed. No wonder he looks like he just rolled out of bed.

Just like an alcoholic, I suppose. The craziest person wins.

"Get on it early. We kept ignoring it, trying to make it go away." He gave me the number for his doctor. Then he called me the next day to make sure I called. I wanted to cry.

At dinner last night I watched Lilly do anything except eat. Twirl the pasta, move it around her plate, get up, search for CD's. I realized, when does she actually eat? Ever?

I've done this to her. I never remember to eat. I'll go for two days sometimes, when I'm by myself. Always have done this. I don't have an appetite. Only for sweet things. Then I'll be sort of cranky and tired and wondering why everyone is so stupid and insensitive--then I'll think, oh, yeah, I haven't eaten in two days. I mean, I am totally disconnected from my gut in this respect.

So I called her dad, because I thought he'd like to know. Being her dad and all. He's so deranged. "Well, I've been telling her--she's been after 3% body fat--but I've been telling her that's unreasonable. Girls aren't supposed to have 3% body fat. I've been telling her she needs to eat."
"She exercises constantly." I tell him.
"She did that all summer. Hours on the treadmill every day."
I want to ask him why he didn't stop her when she started exercising all the time over the summer. Why he left her alone in the house all the time. He's so charismatic, such a powerful personality. Talking to him, I am once again swept up into his story, even though I know it's not accurate. I find myself in the same conversational pattern, wanting to please him, agree with him. I came to be so afraid of him. It kicks in, briefly. I know how to please maniacs.
I hang up.
Return to myself. Whatever that is. Return to quiet. My own lack of noise. Take a deep breath.
I realize that the reason I am still alone is because I am afraid of that happening again, of becoming so subsumed by someone else's personality that I lose myself.
That's my 1/2 hour.