gimp the girl goes down
From this point on, I will forever praise the wonders of technology. At exactly 12:40pm, according to the clock on my cell phone, my monitor clicked into \”sleep\” mode. As it does this after exactly thirty minutes from last active movement of the mouse or keyboard, I knew that it was at exactly 12:10pm that I took my tumble. At the time, I didn\’t think to look at a clock. I didn\’t think of anything. I just screamed and fell to the floor.
I have what doctors like to call a \”bad knee.\” It\’s my left knee, and on that knee I have three scars from orthopaedic surgery which was done in May of 2001. That was when the doctors confirmed that I no longer have any cartilage in that knee. If you know something about cartilage, you know that it is important to shelter your bones, almost like a thick sort of lubricant. It keeps things moving smoothly. Without it, your body can have problems.
The first time I remember my \”bad knee\” locking up, I was about seven. I was an acolyte at church (mother\’s family being Lutheran) and I had just brought the Holy Collections Plates down to the church goers. The organist was then to play a tune, and I was return to my seat behind the choir, except I couldn\’t, because my knee locked up. I therefore stood dumbly facing the congregation for the next few minutes until my knee straightened itself back out.
It was only in April of 2001 that I learned what was happening to my body when this took place. By that point, I was 20, and it had been happening frequently for more than ten years. A few days after Joey Ramone died, I was waiting outside of my sociology classroom, crouched on the floor and talking with a fellow student. Suddenly, POP! ZOOM! ZORP! FUCK! my knee \”gave out.\” Looking down at it through my thin trousers I could, for the first time, I see what the problem was. My entire kneecap had slid out of its socket and lodged itself to the left of its natural resting place.
Sitting in the hallway of the college, I rolled to the side, grabbing my knee and trying not to scream. The guy I was talking to asked if I was okay. \”Oh, sure, this happens all the time,\” I lied. It had never happened quite like that before. I laid there on my side, curled in a ball, unable to unlock my knee from its bent position. The students who had been in the class prior began to file out, and I panicked. I did what anyone else in my shy position would do — I put my hands around my kneecap and physically forced the fucker into place. If I had thought I was in pain before, I had no idea that the pain from forcing my kneecap back into its socket would nearly make me pass out. But shy to the end, I hopped on one leg into class, sat through the lecture in misery, hopped down the hall to the elevator, out to the car, and left.
It was three days before a doctor was able to see me. I spent those days staring at my knee, perpetually swollen to twice its size despite the acetaminophen and ice I was using. I kept my weight off it, and prayed to the god that does not exist that I had not broken my kneecap. (Interesting side note: when I broke my ankle on the same leg at age nine, it took my parents three days before they were willing to take me to the doctor, because despite the swelling and the odd shape my ankle fixed itself into, they thought I was \”overreacting.\”)
Upon seeing my doctor, I was given painkillers, NSAIDs, diurtetics, and a referral to the orthopedist. MRIs and X-Rays showed only excess fluid and strange wisps the doctors could not identify. A month later, the swelling had not stopped and I was still limping, so they decided to operate. Hence my diagnosis of \”no cartilage, sorry kid,\” and a prescription for a month at a sport rehabilitation clinic. I was told that I also had the option of undergoing a not entirely successful procedure of having my kneecap surgically removed and replaced with a metal one, which would prevent it from slipping. On that suggestion, I decided to pass.
Fast forward a year to 2002. I was still occasionally having problems with my knee locking up, but when my hands took a nose dive and I returned to the same orthopedist and was unresponsive to their prescribed treatment for carpal tunnel syndrome, they began to suspect something else. Hence my referral to a rheumatologist where I was finally given the diagnosis for fibromyalgia. FMS often results in cartilage depletion. It is a chronic condition, and there is no cure. \”Sorry, kid. Tough luck.\”
I started learning ways to not aggravate my condition: a small, light exercise regmine. Vitamins. NSAIDs. Sleeping pills to fix my sleep cycle, which makes my body better. Listening to my body for signs that it is starting to get stressed, and then slowing down. Stop working, stop going to school, stop dancing a few times a week, stop this, stop that, stop stop stop. Stop living and become utterly dependent on other people. Needless to say, I don\’t like this one bit.
The main thing I learned was to avoid stress and avoid pushing myself physically. If it starts to hurt, stop. If I don\’t get enough sleep the night prior, don\’t do anything that day that could be strenuous (like carrying my purse). You know, little things.
Sometimes I like to try and defy what I know to be true. Sometimes I get fed up with being gimp the girl, and want to just live. I\’ve always had so many ideas and dreams, and sometimes I start trying to make them happen again. When I do this, I end up in deep doo-doo. As it happens, this time around brought me to the rat doo-doo.
The last three weeks, I have been pushing myself, juggling class, a live-in boyfriend, socializing online, going to a few shows, updating my web site, working on my portfolio again, lining up modeling shoots, making art, sewing clothes, running an eBay store, starting an electronic music distro, writing music, D.C. area music promotion brain storming, driving to Pittsburgh and back in 36 hours, etc. All that would be a lot for any person, though most people seem to handle it just fine. I watch my friends lead their very full lives of full time jobs, bands, significant others, hobbies, and insane amounts of socializing, and all I can do is envy… and sometimes, I make the bad decision to try and emulate.
My mind still thinks like I can do things, even though my body knows it cannot.
After these past three weeks, I have been worn out to the core. Not getting enough sleep again, having too many things to do during the day, and stressing myself out. Today the temperature is once again more than fifteen degrees above average. As a person who is very sensitive to the temperature, this has been hell for me, as my boyfriend and I live in an apartment with no central air. Maintenance turned the air conditioning off and switched over to heat two months ago, so all we can do is turn the air off and open our terrace door, which of course, does not do much, as there is no other window, and therefore, no way for the air to circulate.
So there I was, a little after noon today. I had just come back from moving my car and making a deposit at the ATM. I was soaked in sweat from the humidity and decided to take a shower before heading up to campus to take one of my math exams. I stripped my clothes off at the end of the bed and turned to walk the five steps to the bathroom. I live in a tiny, tightly packed studio apartment, and I have rather terrible depth perception. You can guess what happened next.
As I turned to head to the bathroom, I smacked my \”bad knee\” right on corner of the tiny table which holds the male rats\’ cage. My kneecap immediately slid out of its socket, and caught off guard as I was and due to all the pain, I let forth a rip roaring scream as I fell to the ground. The nine rats, all in their little cages, all jumped up to put their nose through the bars to see what the hell was going on. At least I hope they did, I was in too much pain and incoherent to bother checking, but they would be ungrateful little fuckers if they did not, seeing as how much we spoil them.
The funny thing about my building is that no one gives a shit about anyone else in it. Its mostly George Washington University students that live here, and they have their heads stuck rather far up their arses. I was screaming my head off for about fifteen seconds, and though I could hear the guy in the apartment next door, nothing happened. I am not very pleased with my neighbors right now. In fact, I wish I could go next door and pound them with that little table. But I can\’t because I can\’t walk.
I sat there on the floor bawling my eyes out for I don\’t know how long before coherency started to come back to me. \”You\’re going to miss your exam.\” \”How the hell are you going to get up? There\’s nothing to grab ahold of here.\” \”I\’m fucking naked and sitting in rat shit.\” \”Why are my doctors always right?\”
Finally it occurs to me that in one way, I was extremely lucky. I was down for the count right next to the socket where I plug my cell phone in to recharge, and there it was, faithfully plugged into the wall and ready for me to use it. Saving grace.
The first call I made was to Will at his lab, who, fortunately for once, picked up the phone. I was still blubbering my eyes out and hysterical, so the following conversation ensued: \”Hello?\” \”Blhhalhghahbhhahh!\” \”What?\” \”Bllahahaalbblbwwwnbha sosoorry.\” \”Cass?\” \”Will! I\’ve fallen and I can\’t get up!\” \”Whoa, okay, what happened? Where are you?\” \”Bllahabbwhhw the rats table blwhahahaw bathroom blaawhhhall hallways bwwwwallllll HELP.\” \”I\’ll be right over. Hold on.\” And that was that.
Next call to make was to the college to let the scribe know I couldn\’t get there for my exam. Of course, I didn\’t have that number on me, so I had to call 411, and through my tears, try and get the phone number I needed. After four transfers I managed to get my counselor\’s voice mail, where I left a slightly hysterical, completely apologetic, run on sentence message about how I was too crippled to come in and please give my apologies to the scribe.
After that, still in tears, I did what I would have done first, had this been three years ago. I called my mommy. My mommy knows how to make everything better. \”Hello?\” \”Bryan, caaaaann I tawk toooo maaawm?\” \”Hold on.\” \”Hello?\” \”Mama! I\’ve fallen and I can\’t get up!\” My mother, who is the coolest cucumber in times of crisis that I know, managed to get the whole story out of me, was able to understand what I was attempting to say, and then agreed to call me back and leave a message on my voice mail with the phone number for my old orthopedist. My mom is the bomb.
That was my last phone call. At that point, my monitor shut itself off, and I finally looked at the time on my cell phone. 12:40. I had been laying naked on the dirty parquet floor in a two and a half foot wide space for a full half hour. Directly above me was the rat boys\’ cage, and therefore, covering the floor beneath me, were little pieces of rat hair, rat litter, and the occasional dropping of rat feces. Lying on the floor, naked and covered in rat feces, unable to move my left leg, without enough room to scoot myself to some other place in the apartment, sweat dripping down from my arm pits into my butt crack, tears running out of my eyes and across my forehead, down my nose, or filling my ears depending on the position I tried to lie in, I came to the realization that the doctors were right.
Gimp the girl needs assisted living care.
My knee has never given out on my before in a place where there was no way for me to continue to function. When it gave out two weeks ago at the Killing Joke show, it was not this bad, and I had several people to help me along. But today, alone in my apartment, naked and covered in rat shit, confined to a tiny space, there was no help. Without the telephone having been right there, it would have been hours before Will came home and found me lying there, probably passed out at that point.
My therapist lobbied for months to get me to sign up for one of the independent living centers for the disabled. Those places have apartments with all the fixtures I need when I am not doing well, such as railings next to the toilet and in the bath, dishwashers, low shelves, elevators, wide hallways, spacious rooms, and best of all, an intercom system in the apartment where you can press a button (or conversely, use your phone) and directly contact the 24 hour management, who will then send a trained medical professional to your apartment, let themselves in, and then assist you as necessary. These places even have their own vans to take you to the hospital if need be.
But I put my foot down. I didn\’t want to live in one of those places. I didn\’t want to be that gimpy. I can take care of myself, dammit. Fuck that assisted living nonsense. What do I look like, a cripple? As a matter of fact, I don\’t. And so I said, nope, not interested. I\’ll get by somehow elsewhere. I\’ve always gotten by on my own. I\’ve always managed. As sick as it has made me, as tough as it has been, I have always physically taken care of myself. Until today, I was never faced with a situation where that was not possible.
Though these self-deprecating thoughts were going through my head, I suddenly burst out laughing. Lying there naked and covered in rat shit, calling people to say \”I\’ve fallen and I can\’t get up….\” I realized that this was actually incredibly hilarious. It was going to make a great gimp the girl journal entry. On that note, I cheered up considerably, tried to find a comfortable position amongst the rat excrement, and started wiping off my tears.
Around 12:45. Will got home. Fortunately there was enough room between me and the door for him to get in. Lying there upside down, looking at his face, I could see that all the jokes we make about how neither of us look forward to the day where we might have to care for the other as they live in a wheelchair (he being twenty years older than I, and I being a deteriorating gimp) had become a reality. He had been forced to leave work to come take care of me, as I could not. My tears having barely ceased, though my kneecap had long worked its way back into its socket, I began to once again cry.
Will, though, is my rock. \”What\’ve you done this time, girl?\” he asked me lightheartedly as he picked me up and carried me to the bed. I blubbered out the story as he set me up with NSAIDs, painkillers, an ice pack, a pillow to prop under my knee, a sheet to cover me once the ice started to make me shiver, my heating pad for the pain in my ass which flares up more than usual whenever I aggravate my knee, two glasses of water, both phones, reading material, and lunch. We tried to laugh through it, but we both knew the situation was bad.
I am supposed to listen to my body when it starts to say I am doing too much, but this has been my second warning in as many weeks, and I still have not achieved anything other than some rocky starts. I missed my exam, I am missing a meeting with a photographer, and once again, I am stuck in bed for who knows how long. He leaves town for a week this coming Friday. If this happens again when he\’s gone, what then? Call an ambulance?
The sad, pathetic truth of it all, is that I cannot take care of myself. Will is an angel, but he cannot always be there. Can there be a future for a gimp and an angel, particularly when both the gimp and the angel are still in denial over the reality of the gimp\’s health, and want the gimp to do more than she currently does? Could it be that gimp the girl will move into assisted living and thereby officially seal her status as (in her eyes) completely dependent and helpless? Shall gimp the girl ever find a happy medium between the life she wants and witnesses those around her having, and the mock-life she is forced to limit herself to? And will anyone care?
Laugh while you can, monkey girl, but when your boy gets back from the dentist, you have to go to the hospital. And gimp the girl hates hospitals.
I\’m wiggy on painkillers after an hour and a half, and I think it is time to go take a nap before getting poked and prodded at the hospital. Fortuantely, we keep the computers within hobbling distance of the bed. While I\’m sleeping, find me a psychic with a crystal ball who will tell me everything will work itself out in the end.
