And the seizure
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I sent this out as an email to all my good friends:
There’s been a little news on my end, and it’s not too good. Friday night (Sept. 11th!) I had a seizure around 8:45 pm. At first I thought it was another stroke, cause my arm felt very weird and tingly and then went numb, and I threw myself out into the hallway so somebody would see me. I was way out of out and fell asleep/passed out. I came to about a half hour later, and I was surprised to see nobody came to rescue me!! (I live on a very quiet floor, apparently.) So I crawled back in to my apartment and tried to finish the email I had started composing, but I had a lot of trouble focusing. I managed to finish the email with much difficulty and then I called Adam and then my sister. (I knew Steve was out of town.) Adam and my sister talked me into going to the hospital. I packed up my stuff (took my arm brace), and left to go downstairs, where the doormen would be able to help me get an ambulance. The ambulance was there in about 5 minutes, and took me to Weill-Cornell Hospital.
Adam was the first one on the scene. Thank god he stayed with me until my sister (she lives in NJ now–over an hour away) arrived, around 12:30 or 1:00 am. I (and Tina) spent a long night in E.R. and eventually they admitted me the next day. They hooked me up to an EEG machine (with 20 terminals going to my head for nearly 20 hours). I looked like Medusa. Not a pretty picture. They finally concluded that I had a seizure, not another stroke. They said overnight when they were monitoring my EEG, my brain misfired. They said it was due to new-formed scar tissue in my brain because of the brain surgery. Now I think I’m going to have to go on anti-seizure medicine for the rest of my life. That sucks. But at least it wasn’t another stroke.
I’m doing Ok now, I think, and Steve’s getting back tonight so we will be together…(I talked him a lot, too, and he would have rushed back, but my sister told him not to because it was over now…). Anyway, trials and tribulations in the life of one who is recovering from a stroke…But I am determined to get better. I even went to the Women’s US Open Final Sunday night–the same day I was released from the hospital (although my friend Brook picked me up and escorted me home, so I was safe). I was very frightened during my seizure (and afterwards), but I (somewhat brazenly) say, take that, stroke and seizure!! Not to get too big for my britches, I am humbled by the experience.
Be well,
Yvonne
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Windex Rain (on my Rooftop)
My HP Pavillion laptop, circa 2012, is a lot like me. When my laptop’s not turned on or better yet closed for business, it looks absolutely fine! When I open up it up, it still looks fine. Upon further inspection, it gets more suspicious, scratched and shabby screen, keys jammed or missing. I was a little too generous with Windex spraying on the keyboard. (Note to self: NEVER spray Windex directly onto the keyboard: spray on paper towel first), processor speed slowed to a crawl.
When I try to type quotation marks, I get nothing, screen blank. Same thing with some caps or the letters ‘L’ or ‘K’ (too much Windex on right side!). No matter what I do, it doesn’t oblige. When I’m sitting down, not speaking, I look fine, like there’s nothing wrong with me. When I stand up, in motion, anybody can see that I can’t use my right arm, hand and I have a limp. When I speak, I’m outed as having trouble talking, S’s become Sh’s, single becomes shingle, spell becomes smell, and so forth, courtesy of bloodbath on my brain’s left frontal lobe, resulting in paralysis on my right side, of course. It’s too juicy of a metaphor not to notice about my reality. Damaged bodies and brains on the both of us!
The other day, I was telling a friend about a funny incident. I said, “I swapped food from Robert’s plate…uh, uh, um.” Stop here, an awkward pause. I search my brain’s computer. “Serendipitously?” NO, I say inside my head. “Sirly?” No, that’s not it. “Secretly?” Getting closer. That will do, but it’s not the exact word I want. “Surreptitiously!!” Bingo! Yay! That strikes the right chord.
My computer brain was jammed, locked, frozen, like my HP laptop–broken keys, the mouse gets…uh, um, (what do you call the pointed arrow thingamajig on the screen? It is locked, frozen, sometimes gets lost altogether and disappears from the screen (computer language words fit so well). Curses! Hey, Cursor! Bingo again. Oh joy! I love when I remember words! (uh, when I’m looking back on the sentence hours later–I forgot the “it.”) Reboot. I love it when I remember words! It’s like a jigsaw puzzle, only the exact right pieces fit. It’s an invisible problem sometimes, extra cognitive load–processing speed slowed by word searching.
Mark Twain said this to say about word choice: “The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter–it’s the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.” Surreptitiously Cursory Cursing are all the exactly right words. Triple bingo. Lightening.
VINTAGE CUT
For the first time in my entire life, I got my hair chopped. 6 inches from the back. Seriously short. On purpose. Angular. Blunt. In a style that I secretly wanted forever, short in the back, like it was shaved, in a steep triangular angle much longer in the front, where the hairline meets the chin. Flapper-esque. I had thought it chic, sophisticated, cute for years, decades. In a what the hell moment, I got my radical haircut. (Mae West said something like, “Every notice that what comes after “what the hell” is always the right response.” This sure was a “what the hell” moment. Highly debatable whether that was wise.)
It was fitting to mark my 5-year anniversary of my stroke. Frustrating as it is being one-armed woman with a pronounced limp and a speech impediment, over the years, I have gotten used to my “new normal,” and I reverted, or maybe graduated, to my old meshugas. Recently, however, I began something fresh. I just stumbled upon them, but I took life up on the offers, and fed my luck.
Mona asked me to write pieces, vignettes, for a book about aphasia. I did, and it wasn’t half bad. It will published within the year. Then I took a storytelling workshop and told a Moth story (www.themoth.org) before an audience of 300 people. It was nerve-wracking as hell, but I did it, and didn’t fuck up. I couldn’t believe I got the timing right on the funny parts, quite a feat for me. The audience went on a ride with me. They laughed. A few them teared up. People came up to me afterwards and told me how beautiful my story was. I discovered that I actually like the limelight. I was invited to tell my story again, at a different event.
I’m starting to claim my place on a stage in other ways–even if that stage is just for myself, as in the radical haircut, a break from my old way of seeing myself. That was for me, for the symbolism. The MothShop manager invited me to coach other storytellers in other workshops. I was thrilled, and I just started my second workshop this morning. Helping other people craft their stories is a phenomenal experience. You often get to know their essence, what makes them tick, their sorrows and triumphs. Personal storymaking is an act of discovery, for them and you. It is wild and deep. During the process, we laughed, cried and came out the other end moved.
I began seeing a warm, attentive, funny–able-bodied–guy. I mention able-bodied because it illustrates that instead of being stuck in the whirlpool of my usual crowd, the crowd that I feel safe in, I think I’m branching out.
That doesn’t mean that I don’t retreat. A lot. Push and pull. Hide and seek. Ah, sigh, I retreat. I stick my turtle head out. I retreat. Sometime I’m “seen.” I hide a lot. It’s just easier. I don’t have the anxiety of having to “perform.” When I’m sticking my head out, I might get burnt. I retract like I’ve just touched a live wire. 30 volts of sting. But (I know, you’re not supposed to say “but” at the beginning of a sentence, it’s reference to the line before, BUT it requires a bigger pause!) there can be a different way.
I LOVE being in the state not caring what anybody thinks of me. In that state, I am my own my own audience first and foremost. And judge. I am the gauge of right and wrong, first. Ethical. Except I’m not judging my thoughts, just following the stream, observing without judgment, knowing that I’m allowed. I am light. Open. Inquisitive. Inquiring. Creative. Knowing what I feel. Good-humored. Mature. Young. Full of wonder. I am willing to be vulnerable–because I think I’m ok. That’s the state I want to be in. Connected to myself, and therefore I can connect with others in a genuine way. I can connect with you then. Better anyway. Yes, that’s the state I want to be in in the 5th year past my stroke. It’s delightful and miraculous. Yes, worthy of a brand new hair style.
On the 4th anniversary (small caps).
It was February 21, 2009. My 4th anniversary of my stroke had come and passed. Sure, I took note of it. I HAD to announce it to just a few friends who stood by me for all those months of recovery–even though they strained to make it what I was saying because my pronunciation was jumbled (”tafffor ” when I wanted to say ”important, ” and then a year or two later I graduated to minor misdemeanors like ”choke ” instead of ”joke ”). I even had to tell my sister about it again. She hadn’t known the exact date; I had to tell my peeps about it, insisted on pointing it out them. They said, oh, that’s right, and they gave me the requisite accolades, confirmation of them being glad that I’m alive. You’ve come a long way, baby, etc. But it came and went with little fanfare.
Perhaps I don’t want to touch it with a 10-foot pole, the day I stroked, the day I was, in one fell swoop, rendered infantlike again– speechless, helpless, feeding tubed up. It is treacherous to feel the pain of the experience of the experience again, but let me revisit. Well, here goes. On the downside, for instance, I was abused by one tormenting and sadistic nurse’s aid in the hospital, when I was writhing in pain and couldn’t speak. Another night, another highly inept (but not sadistic) aid who was charged only with the task of watching over me by my bedside, didn’t get that I was moaning because my catheter bag was full and I had to empty my bladder all night. My one hand that I could have used was strapped to the bed so as not to pull my tubes out. I couldn’t even point to show her what I needed. Ugh.
On the upside, I felt unbelievably free of self-consciousness, raw. Not one iota. I was all id, at first. I didn’t have to do anything to impress. I could be cranky, and let the world know about it. I grimaced without caring what I looked like. Filterless. I was daring, fearless. I had the fight in me, to make it back from the brink, to grow, to experience, to stretch myself, to shrink back when it hurt, to get mad at therapists who wanted to stretch out my hands, to try again, to show off what I could do. Every act was met by encouragement. My sister, friends, nurses, therapists were watching out for my safety. I left it to them in favor of daring.
I felt loving, empathic feelings. One nurse’s aid caring for me, again on the overnight shift, told me about her village back in Kenya, how the people were so grateful for every shred of clothing and food that they got, celebrated things, acts of kindness. I teared up and committed then to donate tons of clothing to her village, after I got out. I tried to dance a jig right there in my hospital gown. She laughed and scolded and got back into bed.
My ex-boyfriend said that it was because of my spirit and will and strength, that I have gotten as far as I have. I shrink away from that, took exception from that. I could have done more. There were a lot of extremely low times. I spent so much time in the dank basement of my dreams. Fear, anxiety, self-loathing overtook me when I realized my arm and hand weren’t come back, that I would never talk normally again, never walk without a limp, never run.
There are far, far worse things, in life, I know, I’m embarrassed to drone on about my miseries, but it really happened to me, the big bang, the black hole, the swarming frogs (if you’ve ever seen the movie Magnolia, you’ll know what I mean), and it is irreversible, the damage, with all my but I have chosen life—despite the threatening abyss, I have chosen wine, women, and song. Well, men, travel, working out (sans eagerness; procrastination galore!), volunteer job, reaching out–despite roaring anxiety– instead of being a hermit.
So, the night of February 21, 2013 I had planned to go to the Moth Story Slam with 2 friends. The theme that night was ”Patterns. ” I made stroke jokes (not ”chokes ”). That that is one pattern that I don’t want in my life. We didn’t get in because when we reached the door, the place was sold out, even standing room only was maxxed. Even on an icy, wintry night, people stood outside in line for a whole hour, raring to get inside, to make the cut. Obviously, there is a need for an overwhelming for cheap (only 8 bucks), competitive story-telling in NYC, starving artist capital as it is. Which gives me an idea….for a story….even in my own dysarthritic voice. It’s about bras and hands in other people’s pockets, etc…..(See earlier posts!)
Funny ha ha
An English professor friend said he was moved by the angry, sad, ironic tone in my previous blog entries, but he said how ‘bout something lighter, funnier, and more positive coming out of your stroke…
Well, here it goes. :
Yesterday, I met a fellow TBI survivor. TBI survivors come in all shapes and sizes and electrical currents, apparently, but this guys was a shocked by a Con Ed loose wire with so high a voltage that he was thrown 10 yards from the manhole he stepped on. (Trivial fact, there are over a thousand survivors of people struck by lightning or immense electronic shock, internationally, and here are more survivors than fatalities. He belongs to a Shock Survivors Support Group, which goes to show you there’s a Support Group for everything…).
Anyway, a small group of TBI survivors were gathered around a table having drinks at a restaurant when I said, well, I have to get going to my book club meeting now, and this guy perked up and said, Excuse me? Did you say FOOT CLUB?? To which I said, yes, I confess, I am a foot fetishist! (Only I couldn’t say fetishist because of my speech impediment. Ugh, there went the timing of my joke.) Still, when I was finally able to make him understand that I said BOOK Club, we laughed and laughed. He had a hearty, belly laugh. We had been talking about pedicures, and I said I’ll show you my pedicure if you’ll show me yours, and it was cracking us up. Gotta take the glee while you can, right?
Authentically speaking, pulling off the layers, most of the time, I get angry at myself and my predicament and I get twisted up inside myself when I can’t articulate something. I fall into the abyss of chaos, screaming inside my head, losing myself. I’ve got to put a halt to that. I hear myself saying, Stop… in the name of love, sung to the tune by Diana Ross and the Supremes…!!! (More glee. More glee. Stop, turtle, stop, and put your neck out, and lighten up.)
I write this to get writing. It’s an exercise to act, to do something that I say I want to do. Apologies, but I think of a thousand things more interesting to write about about. It soars for a minute and I get very passionate and excited, but only appears as a blip in consciousness, and fades away. (You should have seen this entry before the reigning in began. I spared you!)
Anniversary
Today (Feb. 21 ) is the 3rd anniversary of my stroke. I feel I should mark the occassion here. I feel ambivalent. I don’t want to touch it.
Many stroke survivors look upon their anniversary date with reverence and gratitude, thanking God that they lived to tell the tale, freed from being caught up in petty things, newly aware that things take up residence in their heads that are so unimportant, that the thing to be treasured are relationships with family, friends, love, kindness, blah, blah, blah. Ah, and the worst, “It’s the best thing that ever happened to them!” To those people I say, “Blech.” “Bah humbug.” “Barf.” Incredibly Pollyanna, I say. There is anger, rage and bitterness lurking beneath a pleasant, if confused, demeanor for me.
I do not feel grateful for my stroke. It led to a whole host of losses (I am not alone at all, I know) including the use of one arm and hand and my “normal” voice, and I find myself still buried beneath the rubble. Digging myself out so slowly, one pitchfork at a time, but still digging myself out all the same. I’m having trouble reinventing my life. Maybe it will change, transform, bloom into something more meaningful. (I know, I repeat myself.) Slowly I am weave my “new normal” into the fabric of my life. It moves at a glacial pace, but it’s still moving.
Yesterday, I went to my aphasia group. Sometimes we read poetry. A sheet of Robert Frost’s “A Walk in the Woods” was handed out to read. I said, “Hey, I memorized this poem! (For practicing speech, intonation, and as a cognitive task.) I proceeded to read it, and I got all the words right, in the right order. This was my only concern, not blanking out on the lines. After I read it, my audience broke out in heartfelt applause. I was not moved, it felt empty but I faked a smile. I thought, this what it has come to? I get applause for just memorizing a poem, not even my own words? They said it was quite a performance, I didn’t just read it, I read it with feeling, putting my own little twists of intonation on it, my own particular emphasis. I didn’t realize that, didn’t think about that. I don’t know what to make of that. I am not a performer at all, but I’m trying to take this as a miniscule accomplishment, but an accomplishment nonetheless.
What they didn’t know was it took me so many months, so many months that I am embarrassed to say. I memorized one line, one stanza at a time. I practiced reading it aloud in the shower. I got angry and felt defeated if I blanked out on the lines. I tried again. I blanked. I cried. I tried again. Eventually I got the whole thing. I have to take the road not taken, the road unplanned, unworn, but I want to want to take the road not taken, even if entails climbing, faltering, climbing. Even now I blank on the lines, and then I get a rush of remembering. It comes and goes. But I decided to take on memorizing a new poem. (Now if I could settle on the poem, a decision not to be taken lightly, being that I will get to know it intimately over time, grappling with it in the shower….!)
There, I marked the anniversary.
Daughter from Another Mother
Once in a while, I go to this Adoption Therapy Group, run by a therapist who was adopted himself. Some people who go have tales of woe, like this woman who calls her mother “the snake,” cause her adopted mother called her “no-good stinking piece of shit,” and told her her birth mother didn’t want her. It was a lie. Turns out her birth mother left some money in her will, and only after the mother’s death did a cousin track her down (because the law required it). She found out that her mother had been searching for her for 10 years. Another unwed mother was forced to give up her baby in 1960 because of the social climate of the time, and it had crushing repurcussions. Another guy tracked down his birth mother, and she had to tell him he was the product of rape. (Oy, imagine trying to reorient your world after learning that at the age of 30?)
The therapist talks about the death of a mother for a baby. That’s the way babies experience it, and instead of mourning for the loss of our mothers, we adoptees have to grow up with people saying how lucky we are that we were taken in by adoptive parents, that we weren’t orphaned in the streets.
Adoptees have particular issues, I guess. Secrets and lies. But most of us live with secrets and lies. I guess it is mostly about the scale of the secrets and lies. All of us have things that we don’t want to go around telling anyone. The people who go the group do have their issues, but mostly they are white, middle-class, well-fed, have good professional jobs. They are competent. High-functioning. Articulate. I get reminded of what my friend Damien has to say about psychotherapy. White people go to therapists to talk about things like their lactose-intolerance. Black people don’t go to therapists, except, maybe if they were severely physically or sexually abused. Back and forth, back and forth I go in my thinking–nah, phooey, it’s the freaking lactose-intolerant group.
Anyway, I didn’t speak. Partly because I think it’s bullshit that we adoptees have a different issues from the rest of all other human beings. (After all, many people, for one reason or another, fear that will be rejected, abadonment, and/or have social anxiety. Partly because of my aphasia. Could I say what I want to say with proper grammar (as in “I have a hamburger for lunch” instead of “I had.”) Could gather my thoughts in coherent fashion? (This blog entry has already taken me an hour and a half to write, instead of rolling off my virtual pen, so can present it coherently.) I don’t want to take an hour just to dispute with the guy, or tell him my woe is me story. We only have an hour and a half. Their are many people with stories–feelings, anger, bitterness, loss, sadness. I settle on not speaking. I start to speak here. After all, it is safer here. Here I have grammar-check, spell-check, comment-check! I start to speak here.
Speech Reach
I feel like I’m new to this blog thing, even though I wrote this blog for a year following my stroke, it’s been such a long time. I look to my friend Lori’s blog for help in achieving the right tone and content, to gauge if I’m doing it right. But part of me knows (that I shouldn’t be using “but” at the beginning of a sentence), that I need to cultivate my own voice, not imitate half-assedly. (Yes, I’m making up my own semi-foul language). Here goes:
I’m going to my speech therapists office today. Well, it’s really a place for speech-therapists in training, externs, they call it, wanna-be’s. Because they “graduate” from the externship, I get a new speech therapist in training every semester.
The student’s styles and strategies for helping me talk more naturally are all different. One coaches me on talking with more intonation, to help with the monotone and staccato way. (I say things that test my audiences patience, or my own impatience.) One says to say things in a sing-songy voice. One says to emphasize the last sound of every word. One says emphasize the first sound of every word. One says to talk loudly, exaggerate. One says to talk quietly. One says to talk slowly. One says to take pauses every few clusters of words. One says to talk quickly, say a whole sentence in one breath. The “master teacher” says to do it all. I want to scream. I seldom feel like laughing. I’m too hard on myself, they say.
I always get frustrated, and hear the way I used to sound. I often go back and repeat the more clearly, attempting proper pronunciation. I get frustrated and don’t think I’ll ever improve. (I won’t improve that much. Over eons I might improve a millimeter with my apraxia. It’s hard to treat.) Last week, my new therapist Jillian had a novel idea. She said, instead of pointing out what words you didn’t say right, I want you to point out what words you said correctly. Aha. Wow. It’s a whole different approach, to celebrate the words I got right! This time, this may be the way to go in dumping my bad attitude to the ground and kicking to the curb. This could be a 180 degree turn! But probably not. It takes an ice age to change my attitude, right, if it even happens at all? Still, I put my toe in the water of hope.
This blog feels like the water of hope, putting my scattered and nebulous thoughts to words. Let’s hope it’s warm.
Budding in Winter
It’s been forever, but I’m back. I am writing in the dark, not knowing how I feel until I write it down, attempting to quell the anxiety, put it into perspective.
The other day I was at the gym in my building, huffing and puffing on the cross-trainer, lost in the TVland to distract me from my workout, when something came on Channel 4 News that stopped me in my tracks (so to speak). It was a piece about stroke risk and exercise. They recommended it to fend off the risk. I looked at the TV in disbelief and awe. I had had a massive stroke right there in that very same gym almost 3 years ago. I look around and try to see if anybody’s paying attention so I can point out how ironic this is, but there isn’t anyone there.
I had a flashback of that scene—I remember trying to comment on the spanking new TVs added to the unassuming blah gym, but suddenly the only sound that would come out was gobbledygook. My mouth felt like it was melting. I must have fallen to my knees as the machine was still rolling around its track. Gym goers were jumping off their machines, building staff were whirling around me, everything in slow motion, me struggling to speak but no sound coming out, eventually just blinking out tears silently. I picture myself on the gym floor, my legs still on the treadmill, my body on the Astroturf-like floor. Some woman gymgoer is freaking out, telling me that if I can’t hear her, just blink if I understand her. She says, “help is on the way.” She is overbearing, in my face, but she holds my hand. I am taken away on a stretcher.
I come out of my daydream then, and because of the endorphins, I guess, I think how funny and ironic, I have to write about this. Now it seems like stale story to tell. I’m not close to the experience, can’t feel the flesh of the flesh of the story. I am writing this down after many weeks, just to get into blogging again (hence the post’s title “budding”), but I realize the feelings, the motivation, have to be in real time. If I can siphon through my thoughts with words, name the feelings, I feel real, less stuck in my own world.
The Ice Cream Cone
I’d gotten my chocolate chip mint ice cream cone, wrapped in a paper napkin, home safely. I was skipping along happily, when I started having memories of ice cream cones past.
Flashback: I had eaten 3 ice cream cones (or their artificial cousins with names like Tasti-D-Lite and 16 Handles—which sounds like a cross b/w a movie with Molly Ringwald and an online dating website for schizophrenics) in front of Steve, and all of them ended in disaster.
Cone 1–Vanilla Fudge: Before it could be licked even a 1/3 away down, I dripped and dribbled the ice cream in the sweltering heat and it made a sticky, oozy mess all over my fingers and palms until it was hopeless, and I had to throw the whole thing out.
Cone 2–Vanilla: I had in my hair, all around my lips and chin, on random spots on my face, I didn’t have another hand to wipe my face. The cone, the cone sleeve and the paper napkins were wet and glued together like pulp. Steve reprimanded, see, I told you that you should have gotten a cup instead of a cone.
Cone 3–Double dip butter pecan: No sooner did I get two precious licks then the whole thing went tumbling down on the sidewalk, my cone beheaded. (Note to self: when it’s 100 degrees in the shade, ice cream cones, as tempting as they might be, are really not a good idea.)
So when I was by myself, before I bought the aforementioned chocolate chip mint, I had amnesia about my own advice. I debated, oh for about one millisecond, about getting a cup (neatly packaged to go) instead of a cone, I decided the cone was eons better, a whole different experience. Cups don’t even come close to the infinite joy of licking, swirling, biting, licking, over and over again, with the promise of more to come (like grooves on a mini-record–you know, vinyl.)
Flash forward again: Happily, I went up to my apt., but it was then that I realized my mistake. I didn’t know how the hell I was going to get out the key, and turn the lock with the hand that held the ice cream cone. I panicked. I tentatively, pathetically called out for help in front of each of my neighbor’s door, but nobody was home. Arrggh, what do I do now in the hallway, nobody in sight? With a sigh that turned into determination, I knew what I had to do. With trepidation, I ever so delicately reached myself into my purse for my keys, trying to keep the cone from making contact, but to no avail. I proceeded to slather chocolate chip mint ice cream all over the inside of my bag anyway, juggled the keys in the doors, and got inside, but….I was at last home free to eat with utter abandonment!
When I came down from my post-cone high, I had to repent for my edible sins by throwing out the ruined bag. The offending ice cream cone had cost me a grand total of $59.
The Wrestling Match (with my Bra)
My boyfriend had this crazy, but well-intentioned, idea. With that flash of lightening look in his eye, he said, hey, maybe I can be the first stroke survivor stand-up comic! His heart is in the right place (and it’s a good bit of projection cause he’s a frustrated stand-up comic himself) to find a positive outlet for all the frustrations of being “stroked.”
First of all, if you want to be a comic, it’s all about timing, and I speak choppily, haltingly, like a record player that keeps skipping, repeating the words until I get it right. I have to slow way down to pronounce the syllables correctly. It sounds robotic. I am compelled to get right, goddammit! Good for rewiring the brain. Bad for comic timing.
Second of all, I find it maddening to be one-handed. I know I have to see the humor in it, and maybe I will get there in time. For now, my moods are like a roller-coaster. When I go to put in my bra, for instance, it is like man against man, only it’s man against lingerie. I have to brace myself for getting the contraption on. It starts off with the cups facing backwards, hooks facing frontwards. Fine. Then I start off getting the hooks to, well, hook up. I don’t ever get on the first try. One side inevitably snaps back, with a ha ha. I try it again, maybe 5-6 times. Then I get mad. I grimace. Sometimes I win the wrestling match. When I don’t, I get madder. (Naturally, it always happens when I’m running late for something, too. Which is usually).
When it reaches say 12 agonizingly elusive attempts–I curse at it. I talk to it, “You better hook up, you fucker!” I turn into a madwoman–replete with a menacing scream. One time I even spat at my bra (which only results in extreme ickiness afterwards.) Me against the evil force I’m trying to wrestle to the ground. I know it is ridiculous, but the inanimate object gets the better of me. When I finally get it on, patience fully tested, I have to tumble down from feeling spitting angry. Ugh. Sigh. After all, I am the victor! Man against underwire! I think, it’s not size of the bosom in the fight, it’s the size of the fight of her bosom! (Apologies to Mark Twain.)
Then there are the shoes! I won’t even go there except to say, goodbye to sexy black strap-ons and hello to frump pumps!
I don’t have a chance at being a comic. I’ll take frustrated and bitter for now. I’m sure I’ll get past it in the next century. My one-handed friend has cheer. “I could do anything with one hand,” she says breezily. I say to that, “Yeah, try pulling your hair in a ponytail with one hand.” The day I can do that, you will have won me over from the dark side–and I’ll invest in that gizmo….
Another Day in Paradise 
