Trying to be somewhere else

Tonight I went searching in my mind for somewhere else to be. This has been an intolerable summer -- getting fired by Dr. L in May, being diagnosed with C. difficile in June, clearing the infection with extremely high doses of probiotics only to be diagnosed with two other infections in July. For those I caved and took antibiotics, which plunged me back into severe diarrhea that resisted even the high-dose probiotics, and...I broke. I stopped taking the Malarone and the Tinidazole and the Artemisinin and the antifungals and all my supplements, and I started thinking about ways to die.

This week, I realized that I can't kill myself. It goes against my nature. It was a blow...I always thought that if this got bad enough I could end myself, but I can't. I can't even feel angry at the pathogens -- they are just doing what they do, trying to survive and reproduce like everything else. I do feel like a prisoner in my house; I do feel a terrible anger at the politics of Lyme, which leave patients trapped in this quicksand, losing function, ability to work, respect, even connections to their friends and communities, while the two Lyme political factions argue about which is righter. So, I'm trapped here in this hell, and to escape I went searching in my mind for a time when I was happy.

The memory that came up was of a lovely day in summer. Mom's studio addition had been finished, and I was lying on my stomach in the grass outside its sliding glass door, watching the ants. I remember that I would put my face right down into the grass, as close to the ants as I could get, so I could see the grass from their perspective -- giant curving green spears. I watched the ants going about their business; sometimes one would crawl onto me instead. Around the bases of the grass blades was dry vegetable matter from last season's lawn, pale and sweet smelling. The day was warm, but not too hot, and I could feel the tips of the grass blades poking my stomach through my shirt. I don't remember any sounds but the rustling of the grass. I felt happy.

Memory excursions. Another one: running in Wisconsin in the evening, in my extra-warm insulated tights, listening to a recording of Bridget Jones's Diary. The book was so funny that I'd laugh out loud, stop and hold my sides and laugh, then run on. -- Or -- the starling stagings at the season-changing times, where suddenly out of nowhere, you could see hundreds, maybe thousands, of starlings taking off all at once, then forming a hologram of flight in the air -- a shape like a water balloon, turning and squeezing, drawing itself out and collapsing again, but always controlled by the speed of the birds and their proximity to each other.

Maybe this is how I can get through the time till I can see Dr. J in November. Just to be somewhere else in my head, somewhere that I was happy. Right now I would like to go back to that grassy lawn, and lie there all night watching the ants.