Category Archives: Spilling Personal

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Leaving 2020 between the pages…

This is my diary for 2020.

Projects progressed. Notes on cancelled creative, teaching and facilitative work. Notes on other offers of work I have declined. Work that under normal circumstances I would have enthusiastically leapt in, head first.

The energy of 2020 did not permit that.

This diary is also bundled with many notes, cards and tokens. Blessings from the friends who kept in touch, those connections that proved so vital to our mental health. To our resilience.

And what a year for paper-cuts. Some healed, others still open sores. I’ve dealt with personal ill-health. Watched my elderly father decline, and just recently, experienced the devastation of a family member’s death during brutal Covid restrictions. This diary is a log of heartache. Of anxious days. Of a year for questions and revelations, of feeling battered and bruised.

For all of it, I hope I will emerge a little wiser. Right now, all I really know for sure is that the universe has plans for us. A future that we cannot control.

What we CAN control are the energies we allow to share that future with us. The people who make it bearable. The ones who think outside of themselves to ask how YOUR day is going. The ones always ready to offer support. To listen. To be on standby with a supply of bandaids for those pesky paper-cuts that might never heal. Cherish THOSE people.

For 2021, my friends, I wish you all the happiest of days. We only have to do one at a time. There will be no new year resolutions, though I will try to be resolute in avoiding the following:

1# Rumination: fuck that noise!

2# Dry January in Lockdown: fuck that too!

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Chiari Malformation: Coming to Terms with a Neurological Disorder- and keeping my sense of humour!

I gave some serious thinkage as to whether to share this or not, and to paraphrase from the legend, Frida Kahlo, I am not sick… though I may be a little bit broken. In the bigger scheme of life, I see where I am today and count my blessings. Life is short, too short to ponder on what others might think of you – that’s not your business as another popular saying goes – so I’m getting on with things. And more thinkage.

I’m one of the millions who deal with pain, often chronic, on a daily basis – always have. Back and spine issues have been the bane of my life, but also migraines, neuroglia and a host of other maladies that would make me sound like a hypochondriac if I were to list them here! I’ve also battled serious anxiety and depression, some of it, though not all of it, I can certainly link to carrying pain, physical and emotional. I am not divulging this information for sympathy. Like I said, I am one of the millions, but if I am to write about this health issue, it has to be done with an all or nuthin’ honesty!

A couple of months ago, I was diagnosed with degenerative disc disease in two areas of my spine, which although is a pretty grim result, actually helped me to come to terms with a lot of the symptoms that have been getting progressively worse. I can handle DDD – I just need to mind my back and take appropriate care to try and slow down the degeneration.

However, other ‘symptoms’ prompted my neurosurgeon to investigate further, and that’s when the real bombshell hit. Something else had shown up, a rare (though the jury is still out on the rare bit, from what I can gather) neurological disorder called Chiari Malformation.

And yes, I was as dumbfounded as you might imagine – WTF??? being the questioning phrase of choice!

So, with this, let’s face it, pretty shitty diagnosis on top of the DDD, and the further examination and treatment plan that lies ahead for me, I decided to try and find out more about this unknown thing that I could quite possibly have had since birth. It can be congenital, with serious complications for infants and young children.

There is a lot still to be discovered about CM, it appears, and information is constantly being updated.

If we are honest, we can all admit to trying Doctor Google for what ails us, but I am steering clear of anything that is not verified and documented by experts. And, I have decided to write about it in the hope that this process might help me to drill down into a disorder I must learn all I can about, but also to share my experience so that anyone else who is presently, or might be diagnosed with this in the future, can at least have a place to check in with a fellow soldier!

So here are the deets! (A brief amalgamation of information I researched from medical websites – without the gruesome graphics!)

Chiari Malformation is a condition named after Hans Chiari, an Austrian pathologist who first described it in the late 19th century. It is a disorder in which the cerebellum is smaller than normal (YES, I do have a rather small head, thank you very much for noticing!) causing the cerebellar tonsils to migrate into the spinal canal. (Mine have travelled 10mm). If the cerebellar tonsils obstruct the opening of the skull that connects the brain to the spinal cord, the flow of cerebrospinal fluid can be blocked, pushing the cerebellar tonsils down even farther and exerting pressure on the lower stem of the brain.

Yes, it all sounds yuck and quite serious, which it is, though I’ve been told that if properly diagnosed and monitored, with accompanying pain relief of the constant and serious type, it can be manageable. An invisible disorder, (because ya don’t look sick!) the condition can cause headaches, fatigue, dizziness, difficulty swallowing, muscle weakness and balance problems. It can also produce hoarseness, sleep apnoea, weakness or numbness in legs or arms, neck pain, pain across shoulder blades, general body pain, ringing in the ear, trouble walking, blurred vision, mood changes, anxiety, and problems with memory or concentration.

Apart from the sleep apnoea, I have been dealing with all of the above in varying degrees for more years than I can count. Insomnia is also another problem for me, and I can only assume that this too is linked to CM.

Searches on pain management and associated issues of fatigue brought up a couple of helpful links. This LINK for more detailed information and also, this useful LINK from writer and broadcaster, Andrea Hayes, who has also been diagnosed with CM. These are not definitive portals of information by any means, but they may help in gaining a basic understanding of the condition, and in Andrea’s case, her personal account as detailed in her book, Pain Free Life, my journey to wellness. 

So for now, I’m dealing as best I can with it all, staying positive, though I’d be lying if I said I didn’t worry about what might be waiting for me down the years. Anyway, I’ll keep you posted! And I’ll keep doing what I do, writing out the thinkage! And if anyone reading this has CM, hugs to ya!

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Her Whiskey Rose

Many years ago, I bought my mother a present – a whisky rose, named so for its rich burst of colour and translucency, a blend of amber and peachy hues that was even more striking in the setting she chose for it, to the side of the front door, along the garden wall.

Over the years, her much-loved whiskey rose battled for strength against the sapping dominance of the vines and shrubs that overshadowed its delicate nature, binding it, bending it, stealing vital light and nourishment, and yet, her whiskey rose fought on, surviving, year after year to bloom again, brazen, vibrant, smiling at the sun with her unique blush.

My mother is nine months gone now, and after her funeral, my brother, Austin, dug up her whiskey rose and brought it home to replant it…and there she is, our whiskey rose, resilient as ever, turning her face to the light, proud and vibrant, and she is there.

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LET IT BLEED

So there’s a part of this story that will remain untold for now, but there’s also an amazing episode that can’t NOT be told. When I was a small child, I went to live with my Godmother, Auntie Kay, a genuine fairy godmother in a time of enormous upheaval, she nurtured my little self generously with the help of my uncle and her four teenage boys and only daughter, who was 19 when she had to share her box bedroom and single bed with me! The youngest, my cousin Derek, was sixteen at the time, and would let me sit with him for hours, listening to music from his vast array of LPs. Very early on, I remember being able to sing the lyrics of songs that he played over and over from the likes of Bowie, Zeppelin, Hendrix, The Doors, Pink Floyd and The Rolling Stones. One LP I particularly remember because the cover depicted what looked like a cake, was Let It Bleed, but of course, on closer inspection, as was mandatory for the times to examine every detail of the art work, front, back, and inner album sleeve, I was distracted from my misery for hours at a time, figuring out what I was looking at and what it all symbolized while listening to lyrics so totally inappropriate for my young age as I tried to decipher their meanings. I could sing You can’t always get what you want before I had even made my first communion!

Fast-forward to the present day. My son Lee, an old soul with impeccable taste for classic retro, had purchased a proper record player, complete with custom cabinet and speakers from the 70’s and an older friend of his gave him a bundle of LPs that had been gathering decades of dust in his attic – low and behold – originals from the likes of Bowie, Zeppelin, Hendrix, The Doors, Pink Floyd, The Who and The Rolling Stones. There was one in particular that Lee wanted to show me, the Stones’ Let it Bleed, released in December 1969 by Decca Records, it was the last record to feature Brian Jones before his untimely death. Lee particularly wanted to show me the handwritten notes and the Christmas dedication on it, as his friend had told him that he used to go to school with a guy called Derek and that this particular album had been his.

Yes, this is the very same album that I held in my curious little hands all those years ago. You can see Derek’s handwriting on the album, and his sister’s message. Imagine his utter joy on receiving this just released album from his big sis at Christmas! I’m not an overexcitable person, I don’t think I’ve ever squealed for joy or anything like it, but I did get a shiver of nostalgic solace when my son handed me this album, so many decades after I’d held it, pondering the grown-up, compelling strangeness of it all. To see it again felt like a big old blanket of comfort had just been returned. I’ve always believed in serendipity – and resilience – both themes that revisit me often through my life and creative work. Another irony is that I am currently finishing the final draft of my novel, LADY BETH, a tough project to write, and have recently listened to the lyrics of the song Let It Bleed for inspiration. WTF? Now that is serendipitous!

“You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you might find, you’ll get what you need.”

Jagger and Richards: 1969