Lonely Stories

(1.)

N. and I met on an archetypically beautiful August day. The day was beautiful. I was beautiful. He was beautiful. The confluence of these things drew the attention of people as we walked by. Typically, people ignored me no matter how dressed up I was but when N. and I were together, people seemed to be able to sense my beauty. I don't know how. It did feel nice.

We talked about our writing. He talked about New York, I talked about Chicago. It felt nice to talk to someone again. Finally, feeling confident, I decided to breach another wall of my identity, one I had been pointedly ignoring.I told him why I was wearing thick, black tights despite the heat. It was a pretty cut and dry explanation of orthostatic intolerance. But N. wanted to know more...and more. How did it happen? Was it curable? And I couldn't shut up.

Ten minutes later I had rained all over our date with my mouth with the past five years of my life. I fully expected never to hear from him again. But I did.

We talked more. At his room in a large suburban house. About his kids. We went to the library and took out books and shared passages from them with each other. He told me about his ex. But whenever I tried to tell him about anything related to EDS, he stumbled, seemed unsure.

"Are you sure this isn't mental?" he asked. "Yes, I'm sure." I said flatly, in a tone of voice that settled the conversation.

I showed him my ring splints, my bruise-y skin and funky scars. He would always seem to understand, but then would want to go for walks at one in the afternoon when the sun was out. "Please, let's drive," I'd say. "It'll be fun." he said.

On our last date, I told him all about my grand time at the EDNF conference and how it made me feel so at ease not to have to explain myself to anyone, but also a little sad, because I wanted to go to writing conferences too. I told him I felt that I until my doctors were willing to rally about me as a team, there was no way, I feared, to move forward in my life.

After we had hot chocolate (by now it was fall) at a cafe, we walked back to my car. He picked crabapples from a tree for me and I sorted out the worm-bitten ones and ate them. Delicious.

Then he said, "What if, you're just imagining yourself sick and your really not sick at all." I felt myself made the saddest, barest face. "I'm pretty sure that's what my doctors already think." I said.

(2)

When clinicians found that Black women were dying of breast cancer at a greater rate than White women despite contracting it less often, they initially blamed a more aggressive type of tumor than Black women are prone to getting. However, this did not completely explain the disparity. They went on the control for income, access to insurance, education to try to close to the gap.

"I feel like I'm living these statistics," I thought as I read. Here's a very recent publication from Oncology Nurse Advisor:

According to the report, black and white women reported equal breast cancer screening in 2010: 74% of black women and 73% of white women aged 50 to 74 years said they had undergone mammography screening within the past 2 years. However, when abnormal mammogram results are noted, 20% of black women experience follow-up times of more than 60 days, compared with just 12% of white women. And although treatment should begin as soon as possible after cancer is found, only 69% of black women start treatment within 30 days, compared with 83% of white women.

So, in essence, most of these delays are on the clinical side, rather than the patient side. Reading this I began to wonder why the time to see my neurologist was always the same: seven to eight weeks. The first time I saw him, I waited seven weeks. The second time, eight weeks. For my follow-up after my hospitalization, I was told to follow-up in two weeks, but the soonest they could see me was again, eight weeks. I wonder what would happen if I asked for a nine week follow-up?