Smokey Mountain Breakdown

Just checking in. Haven't posted most of the week.

I've been having what I guess is a sort of post-traumatic stress reaction from last month's health crisis. I can't get it out of my head how brutal my doctors were. I have trouble sleeping because it keeps running over and over in my head. I have flashbacks of lying there in the living room by myself, screaming and bleeding. I feel like I should sue Newport Baptist Hospital for what they did to me. I can't seem to put it behind me and I'm, at the very least, going to have to write a nasty letter to the BOD and their parent company. It's taking large doses of amytriptiline to knock me out at night. I've got headaches from stopping my Plavix--the drug I was taking to protect my eyesight and prevent arterial clots but am now too terrified to take because I think it has something to do with those attacks. I'd rather go blind than have that happen again. I'm terrified since I was told I couldn't go to the emergency room anymore and that podunk hospital is the only place I can go to be stabilized--and they said they wouldn't treat me. The great irony being they call themselves "Mercy" partners--or something like that. Mercy being the furthest concern any of them. I can't trust anyone in the medical profession here. Everything that happened in 1997 is happening again and I'm afraid I won't be able to get out of here in time.

I remember how long it took me to stop being afraid the vacuum in my chest would fail again. Once you have that happen, you never forget it. This is just as bad. I'm walking around afraid all the time, because I know there isn't a soul who will help me in east Tennessee. I know it sounds crazy, but I think the doctors think I'm too much trouble and should just go ahead and die. I really think that sometimes--it's the logical thing to think. I really would like to stop being so angry about this, but it took 140 excellent doctors to get me past what they did to me in Columbia, SC at Richland Memorial Hospital. I now seem to be in the same cycle of crazy.

But...the writing is going really well. If I can survive the not so tender ministrations of east Tennessee's health industry, there's a good chance I'll have a novel published eventually. People really like my work and that is gratifying. I spend as much time as I can concentrating on that so I don't concentrate on the other thing.

I'm really excited about the elections coming up. Sad that my Republican friends are so angry and inaccessible right now--but you can't say anything without them jumping these days. It's as though I'm not entitled to my opinion without someone jumping all over me. Not that I'm the sort who goes around crowing about it--but I should be able to make an offhand statement without people getting their panties so twisted. But I do like Obama--so there. He's presidential. And I'm not asking for comments here.