Intravenous

A poem from deep within a six-year undiagnosed illness, now identified, healing.

 The tang in the back of my throat, a rushing gathering warmth

roof of mouth

swallow

pulling down into warmth

it doesn't feel like I've peed myself

thought they said it would

almost a burn a spreading across my groin

and the taste of

the taste of

the taste of

hollow echoing corridors

alcohol

saline

fresh rubberized plastic

nothing tastes like anything in here because everything

smells

like the antiseptic they wash the floors with

the machine with

the me with

the crack and peel

that sound of the disposable

pop

this means i'm sanitary

the sudden tunnel wrapping my vision

in indigo clouds

a zolly shot

i can't let them know

I'm the easy one

the happy patient

they give you more drugs if you are on either pole

            screaming in unrelenting agony

            or smiling and laughing and being brave in the face of unbearable illness

anything in-between and you won't get the magic elixir

that makes it stop

they'll push almost anything through this tap

into my consciousness

radioactive things

dye

dilated

dying?

the one thought never permitted

even seeing the thought

out of the corner of my eye

No

.

No.

.

dying

dying

this must be the precursor to dying

i beat it back

i search desperately for something to beat it back with

            Catherine Anne Howe. Absolutely not.

            I send my traitorous weakness into time-out.

            That way lies madness and you must not be mad.

They treat you different when you are mad

Or they don’t treat you at all.

the nurse, quick

something true, something you can say something to change the focus something to switch me

from complainer

to ally

to friend

to someone she wants to care for

..."those are beautiful..." everyone wears scrubs... what, crocks? what can I say? Her eyebrows! They are plastic perfect they are overdone they are penciled on, she took time to make them like that.

"Your eyebrows are amazing," I say. It has to be truth or it doesn't work. They are amazing. It doesn’t mean I like them. I am, indeed, amazed by them. This is true. I breathe out.

She smiles, slips out of Nurse and transforms in front of me, the bridge has been crossed. She becomes a person in the halls of pain and complaint. 

"Thank you! I use a stencil. I learned on YouTube actually, there's a make-up artist I follow." I learn shaping, pupil location for the arch, individual plucking, trimming, and penciling techniques as she snaps the tourniquet with relaxed confidence, chatting away. I make interested noises. I ask follow up questions. I admire the fine brushwork and matte powder which makes them look airbrushed. 

"Do you mind...?" I break in as she approaches

Pop!

I’m sanitary

Here I come

as though it is my first time imposing this question.

"What, hon?"

"Well, I have shitty veins, I'm sorry. There's a good one on the side, but I think it might be hard to hit. Most people can't hit it but it runs well when they do... I don't mean to impose; I just have had a lot of bloodwork done in the last couple of years…

Time this right, it has to sound

nonchalant

uncomplaining

factual

and a little, but not too pathetic.

… because of Cancer."

That's how you do it. You don't say 

i get a lot of ivs

please put it here

this is the vein where it doesn't hurt

i know my body

you can't say

anything 

about drugs

you have to imply blood draws, things coming out

not things going in 

or they won't give you

the only thing that works

I drop the C bomb

I play the cancer card

            Why is it a play when I am sitting here because I had cancer? I can’t answer this question. You ask hard questions.

I walk around with an instant hit happy tap

once i'm in the brave column they'll drop whatever i ask for into it

and off my senses go into and beyond relief

delicious torpor

freedom from responsibility

an iv is the ultimate hall pass

no one expects you to be on time to anything

if you have an iv in

I wore one for a week once, in the crook of my arm

it snags

and pulls

i took it home and brought it back, along with my bloodstream

so they could push antibiotics and fluids and more dilauded

once someone pushed something into it

this tube of relief and bliss

while i was sleeping

after they'd hammered my neck back together

with pieces of my hip

and a metal plate

but I'm not supposed to talk about that

he left a hand print on my pubis that showed his angry thumb for days

they paid me not to tell you

but my body insists

as i slept he dumped

we are not sure what

into the tap

into my sanity

some things that made me forget the act

but his hand, inside and out, the tools he forced

left marks that told his lie for him

i surrender

and get in the car

and drive myself to the hospital again

a path more familiar than my drive home, almost

and almost always solo

i don't like company at the hospital

i don't like holding someone else's hand through their fear

when i need to marshal mine

so i can get into the

give her the good shit and don't be shy column without preamble

in the car i worry.

i worry that the nurse will be new

or experienced but proud

or young and cocky

i try not to rehearse my litany

because if it sounds practiced, i won't get the good shit

the best order is a nursing student

who listens and hits the robust vein right above the valve near a freckle in my right arm outside the eye of my elbow

but i have rolling

collapsing

weak

fearful

veins that spit the iv out

sometimes they go fishing

back it out and dig around

i can feel it tear. i am afraid to move

my heart hammering in my chest, i watch my glasses throb in my vision, i hear the rush of my heartbeat in my ears, i slip into glazed meditation and breathe, staring at my heart rate on the machine, willing it lower

do not tell me I have anxiety

then all the drugs will go away

i am anxious, i want to yell to those who have yet to accuse me, because it is such a fucking crapshoot and no one gets it right the first time

I am anxious, I want to yell, because i must be the perfect patient for you, solving who you need me to be in real time, through, above, beyond and past the grinding complete pain i have brought to you

for treatment.

first it has to be about you

so you'll hit the vein

and dump

2 liters of warm saline

dilauded

and an antihistamine

like a package in a balloon sailing over the barbed wire fence of my pain

it drops

the parachute falls slowly, collapsing, the sun hits the basket

the puddle of cloth forming a stain on the ground

as everything relaxes

it is in

it is being flushed

my blood blooms beautifully up the tube

it is pushed

i watch it go back in, i feel the cold substance

the not me

go in

a millionth of a second

and there is nothing

but surrender

not to the pain but to the reprieve - thirty five minutes exactly my body will hold and suck on and savor the relief, my eyes close, i hear them but i have no obligation to respond.

we are being wheeled - i know these halls in six hospitals and more

to the cat scan where they push dye

to the MRI where they push dye

to the x-ray where i have to get up and behave

and back

snap

the curtains crisp

my private cubicle of tubes

i look at my heart rate. I have to keep it up now, not down

or the alarm will sound

and I won't get any more

of the good shit.

42 BPM then.

It stays quiet

i pretend to sleep

the plastic tugs and pulls

the tape tears my pink flesh from yesterday's tube

it snags on the sheet

i hate this deliverance

i hate the device of remedy

i long for it so often

as my body continues its betrayal

but i mustn't think that way

my body is like the nurses, it will not give me the good shit

if i am not brave in its face

or at least pretend to be