It's three in the morning.
My husband is massaging my neck for the sixth time in less than an hour. I'm wearing dark sunglasses in a dark room, loosening or just taking off my clothing, until I'm just about beach ready. Around me are cups of peppermint tea, something caffeinated, hot packs, cold towels, a bucket with two shopping bags inside, a half eaten plate of food, chocolate, IcyHot, Vapo Rub and the brightly lit screen of my HP Laptop or ZTE Maven, either one has a “Mother Nature” or WebMD article up on self-treatment for migraine. I'm off and on nauseous. Depending on the type of migraine, I'm either dangling my head over the heating vent, trying to nuke the pain, or I'm shivering under an ice towel, about to go back to the heating vent. It comes in waves. I can be bright and cheerful one minute, and making my peace with Elvis the next. I might be dizzy. Or I might be trying to overcome the pressure that comes with the pain. Against better judgment, I might be running for the bathroom to either vomit or dry heave. If it's the latter, then I stand in front of the mirror. I wiggle my fingers over my head, stick my tongue out and repeat “The rain in Spain stays mainly on the plane.” Why am I doing this? To make sure I didn't just have a stroke, which can start off as a piercing migraine. Assured my senses are all in check, I go back to suffering on the couch. I'll start to doze off, only for the pain to jolt me awake a half hour later. I can't cry, because that will actually start a secondary, cluster pain in the base of my neck. One that medicine ignores. But I can whimper really, really loudly. Not that I would want to, but the pain is so hot, sharp and intense, I don't know what else to do. Usually, I can take Excedrin or it's generic, 6-hour equivalent. It's a mix of aspirin, acetaminophen and caffeine. Separately, the three have little effect, except for acetaminophen, which on it's own, speeds my heart rate up to near heart-attack levels, but combined, they can reduce the pain greatly. At least 80% of the time. It's the only medication my doctor will allow. Except.. not anymore. The moment I discovered it was messing with my monthly cycle, my doctor decided it was time to ween me off. Besides, my husband and I want a family. So no fetus-killing drugs for me. And no Imitrex, the flavor of the month drug every third friend I have seems to be on for everything from a minor headache to a migraine episode like my usual ones. My doctor has noted that I am a lightweight. Imitrex, Vicodin, Zofran and the hard to spell wrestler-killer Percocet, are all on the “NO” list for me, as is anything with Ibuprofen, which gives me hives. So no Motrin and no Aleve. The luxury of having an immune system made of silly string. Hours go by. I sleep from five in the morning until three the next afternoon. And as I type this, I'm still in severe pain. Only now the pain has gone from my right side to my left. I go into town to buy a sports drink, hoping the electrolytes will do for me what purified water and a full breakfast did not. I wear colorful sunglasses, a suggestion from not only my current doctor, who has written so many notes for this, but by doctors and specialists I've seen since I had my first migraine at five years old. My eyes are strong enough I don't usually need prescription strength, but I still need to wear something. Why am I wearing sunglasses? Because right at the start of a migraine episode, everything gets ultra bright to me. So bright, nothing looks black anymore. It's all gray. Sunglasses mean I can function. I can read. I won't be useless. I choose to wear colorful glasses, sometimes with funny shapes. I do this so I can take control of my disability. It's my way of saying “Hey, I have this issue, but it doesn't have me.” I can dress up my disability the same way a person with a broken leg can draw on their cast as if to say “You don't own me.” I don't have to be the stereotype of the “sad” handicapped person we see in dozens of TV ads, wearing muted tones and plain glasses. I can say I'm handi-capable and if I can't make this disease go away, I can at least coordinate it with my t-shirt. And I've explained this story and my reason for the glasses hundreds of times since I was a kid. It's to the point where the above paragraph is so well rehearsed, my husband has caught me repeating it in my sleep. My doctor even repeats the story under her breath now as she writes me another note. And yet, no matter how many times I tell the tale of the sunglasses and the migraine, no matter where I go, I am still treated like a social pariah. People call me “crazy” and lie, claiming I'm making this all up. People laugh at me. Some have even tried to take my glasses from me, because my disability is “offensive” to them. They feel like my illness is mocking them. “So what if you have a headache?” I get headaches ALL the time, I can't see what makes YOU so special.” Is a statement I have heard time and again. I'm treated like I'm stupid. I've been called worse, and people really, honestly believe this is all imaginary. I wish it was. But this is the life I lead and have lived for a long time. I've had CAT scans come back with the good news that I'm cancer-free and stroke-free. But the bad news that I have unlucky genetics. My mother and father suffer from migraines, and swear by Excedrin and Aleve respectively. So I sit on the couch now, drinking a cup of coffee after having a cold Gatorade. The caffeine has hit my stomach, meaning I need to eat or the hunger will cause the ice pick migraine to stab harder. A cold shower has proven ineffective, and medicine hasn't helped. Usually, the culprit is easy to control. Too much hard cheese, eating the wrong foods, not sleeping or eating enough are usually triggers I can control. But today, it's the weather. It's sunny and perfect now, but we have a storm coming later in the week, which is causing the barometric pressure to spike up, triggering my now two-day episode. All I can do is ride it out. I can't sleep, so I try to work through it, like it's not even there. I know I'll be screaming later, but for now, I want to feel useful. On Facebook, someone has shared the song “Return to Pooh Corner” which has the lyric “chase all the clouds from the sky” as an action phrase. I wish I could. Koriander Bullard is an author, cartoonist and human rights advocate. Keep up with her on Facebook!
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It's unusually warm outside one recent day in April. I'm outside on a daily stroll, when all of a sudden, I freeze up.
Right in front of me, is a wasp. Now granted, it's not a very big wasp compared to most, but it's a wasp nonetheless, and it seems to think my red Felix The Cat t-shirt must be a cherry-flavored new flower, because it's speeding towards me at a breakneck pace. All at once, my usual demeanor disappears, and I revert to being six years old. I pull my arms inside, under my breasts, clench my teeth, clench both fists, stretch my mouth into a thin, long frown, and I shut my eyes, whimpering. And as I am standing still, petrified, I have a sea of adults around me also reverting to a kindergarten-first-grade-split. Only nobody else is whimpering in fear of being stung. Instead, the other adult children begin pointing and laughing. As a slightly braver adult walks up and swats the wasp dead, I am scolded in front of everyone as though I just farted in church..... loudly… and on a nun's head. "Oh honestly, Koriander!!" Says an adult, stamping their feet as my eyes slowly pry open. "You are so much BIGGER than that little old thing over there. Can't you take care of it yourself?" More and more, the chiding continues. "Afraid of a widdle ol' wasp?" Laughs a distant voice. "What would happen if you were all alone? SOMEDAY you'll have to learn to take care of this all by yourself." Chides another. On and on, until finally, I hear a country bumpkin exclaim something my father used to chide me with. "Dat's a city girl for you. Dey can't handle nothing like a country BAH." Granted, my father has spent zero percent of his life in the country, so I never understood why he would say that, but I get why the "local yokels" would say that to me amid pointing and laughing. I've met enough "Pappaws" and "Memaws" to know that underneath the sweet sounding "Bless your heart" statement is a bitter sentiment of fear equating to stupidity that they were taught to accept growing up. Finally, if not the pointing or the laughing is to blame, the resonating teasing of my father from twenty plus years behind me causes me to snap. Taking a deep breath, I yell out "I AM ALLERGIC TO WASPS!!" with the timber of a woman who is very flustered and embarrassed. Suddenly, the laughter and pointing stops. A cock-eyed glance heads my direction. "Well EVERYBODY swells up with a wasp sting. What makes YEW so special?" Again flustered, though now with a chest puffed up with oxygen, I pout and explain. "If I get stung, I will die. I am HIGHLY allergic to wasps, bees and tiger mosquitoes. The last time the latter stung me, I was rushed to the ER and had potato sized welts all over my arm for a month. My throat closed up and I had to be cut out of my favorite t-shirt as they stuck me with an antidote." The non-believer turns on his heel, chastising me for not carrying an Epi Pen with me at all times, while the other naysayers soften their gazes upon me. I hear a few calming "bless your hearts" again, but no apologies. I am to "have a sense of humor" grin and bear it. I am told I don't deserve the right to be angry at them, nor should I be allowed to be afraid of the insect that could end me with a simple sting. I'm the one who needs to grow up and like the torture. They're allowed to make fun of me. And subsequent jokes are snickered behind my back for all of eternity. This is how we are taught to handle an episode of phobia-started anxiety. Our parents and grandparents contradict themselves constantly. We are told in one breath that people are different, and it's not okay to make fun of people who aren't like you. But in the next breath when someone different does appear, that same parent or grand will teach us via their own actions that pointing and laughing, along with beating your chest and starting a long-winded story with "When I was YOUR age" and prattling on about the "good" old days, is how you "cure" someone's fear. Or, the more scientific of the lot teaches us that the best way to cure a person of their fear, is to lock them in a dank room with the thing they are afraid of, stick a camera in their face and turn them into a YouTube sensation as punishment for being afraid. I'm not sure what angers me more. The fact that this childish behavior is again, contradictory to the adulthood we were all told existed in childhood, or the fact that this unwarranted and unproductive teasing contradicts modern psychology. Any physician or psychologist worth their $25 co-pay will tell you up front that none of the above is how you treat a phobia, which is a very real anxiety disorder. In some people, their mental health is so badly hindered by a phobia, that medication and in rare cases, surgery ends up being the main ways to treat it once regular therapies prove ineffective. Doctors, whose job it is to treat anxiety, often remind us that the teasing, no matter how funny a person looks when they are in a state of fear, is counter-productive, does not make the anxiety magically go away, and actually helps the patient regress further into an even worse anxiety episode, and therefore should be avoided at all costs. And yet despite how real they are, we still exist in a society where we are told not only is it alright to chide someone because they have an anxiety, that failing to engage in the teasing and name-calling would render you a "softie" or my favorite, a "no good bleeding heart liberal ruing mah countrah" the latter of which I am always accused of being. Aside from therapy and medication, education is the only other verbal medicine allowed for the treatment of phobia based anxiety. In my case, I know my Spheksophobia (fear of wasps) stems from two real-life incidents from childhood. The first strike was when I was five. I was bit by a tiger mosquito while checking out my dad's garden, and wound up in the ER. A test was done on me, and the doctor told my mother in front of me that I am allergic to bees, wasps and the thing that stung me. When I asked the doctor what would happen if a bee stung me, she very flatly looked in my direction and without any gentility stated "Well honey, you would die. Period. Want a lolly?" Five years old by the way, is a very young age to be told about your mortality. The second strike that created my Spheksophobia came just a few, very short weeks later, after I turned six. My father rented the movie "My Girl" and watched it with me while breaking the news that we were moving away from Indiana and into Virginia Beach, where wasps, bees and tiger mosquitoes were more dominant than the other flying things. Ironically, would you like to know what happened to the little boy played by Macaulay Culkin in the movie 'My Girl'? Spoiler alert, as my doctor told me, he died. Period. I most certainly wanted a lolly after that one. It kept my teeth from gnashing together in a panic. I have many friends who have different anxieties. Some seem harmless, others stem from real life events like mine. But all are real problems we tend to ignore. If not for the greater good, then maybe just for the sake of common decency, we should try to behave like the adults we were told existed in childhood, and learn that the more feet stamping, chest beating and name calling we do, the more we are exacerbating an existing phobia much more than we are to help hinder it. The next time you see someone having a panic attack, lend a helping hand. Lend a hug. A soothing voice to say "it's going to be alright" which is an act that takes less time and uses fewer muscles than pointing, laughing and video blogging does. Or at least, lend a flyswatter, then pat the individual on the back and wish them the best of luck. Even half of a kind gesture is worth more than a full act of ignorance. Koriander Bullard is an author, cartoonist and human rights advocate. Keep up with her on Facebook!
We've all been hearing about the horror stories as of late. North Carolina's harassing new law that banishes transgender people from the restroom of their choice is just one more in a long slue of laws and policies designed to rip away American freedoms from the LBGTQ community, under the fake guise of religious "freedom" which of course, ignores anybody not a straight, Christian, Caucasian male of anything resembling freedom. Not too long ago, I remember reading an article that had my blood boiling. Sing along if you know it. A public school threatened to suspend a little boy, because he is transgender. A custodian caught him trying to go to the bathroom in the room designed for little girls, and he was so offended, that he told everybody in the school, and made sure faculty would block the boy (who dresses as a girl, mind you) from entering the "wrong" bathroom. Now, if you are watching mass media, you're caught up on one side or another. You either think this is somehow enforcing "good" or maybe even "Christian" morals, or like the little boy's flustered parents, you are angry. You feel the slight of injustice for the little boy, and you are outraged that here we are in 2016, and we're still stuck in mid 20th century ideals, trying to bully children out of their bathroom time. But if you're like me, then you're looking at the bigger problem these schools, laws and policies are supporting. And you have one, very good question. Who is allowing these perverts to genital-check people in the bathroom? Think about it. Think very hard. The child in the public school story I mentioned was wearing a dress. His hair was done like a girl. His outfit was again, girlish. In order for the custodian to have known the boy was not really a girl, he would have had to look up the little boy's dress, or worse, asked him to drop his pants. This means we don't have an identity problem. We have a pedophile problem. If you are a Christian, and you believe in Christian morals, shouldn't you be angered and disgusted that a fully grow adult went looking up the skirt of a little child? Regardless if this was a boy or a girl, odds are good that if he looked up the boy's skirt, it's not because he was worried the boy was confused. It's because he's looking for a little girl to prey upon, and by making a brouhaha out of whether or not LBGTQ kids deserve to pick their own potty, you are in fact ignoring and allowing a clear and obvious pedophile to gender-check little children. And that by the way, is not only immoral, it's illegal and it's a form of harassment. The custodian was looking for a girl to sexually assault. If he wasn't, he wouldn't be gender checking little children in the bathroom. No longer should it matter what gender the little boy wants to be, when there is a predator in the hallway, allowed by the school to hang around children's bathrooms without being monitored. The Christian right are praising this man as a "hero" for protecting their idea of "value" when they should be asking if the remaining children are safe being at a school that is allowing strangers to check inside their pants. Excusing religious freedom a moment, there are a few American rights here that should be at the forefront. For starters, we have laws against gender-based harassment. We also have a declaration of independence that specifically states we as Americans have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The latter of which is a broad term that should imply by it's writing that if an LBGTQ person wants to use a boy or a girl bathroom, based on how he/she feels about themselves personally, then it shouldn't matter to you or anyone else because it is part of their "God given" right to pursue their own happiness with themselves. Therefore, it is simply un-American terrorism to deny these people their right to use the bathroom they feel the most comfortable with. Again, I must point out that the bigger problem is that we have perverts, disguised as "Good Samaritans" who are checking the pants and skirts of every complete and total stranger they come across in the bathroom. We have perverts and pedophiles gender-checking children, and not only are they expecting the right to hide behind "the good book" while doing it, they demand your respect and praise, when they have done nothing of value to earn such prestige. The next time you read an article about someone raising a stink over who stinks up the bathroom, ask yourself this question: why are you looking at their crotch? In all the years since I've been potty trained, I've never thought to ask for anything other than an extra roll of toilet paper. I simply obey a code of conduct every parent has given their child since the dawn of time. I mind my own business. I don't pants-check strangers to view theirs. Koriander Bullard is an author, cartoonist and human rights advocate. Keep up with her on Facebook! |
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