learning out loud

Sometimes I wish I didn’t learn quite so out loud, with tear streaked face and an obvious ache. But when it comes down to it I am also glad that It still messes me, that im not always in control. I don’t want to be able to answer everything I don’t want to be able to box all my experiences without a bit of trouble. It feels more realistic to me to not have the answers. On the odd occasion I grin at the floundering.

patch

This morning I wake up smeared across our suburbs, saliva and hands in each others pockets, our pictures on each others walls, a crick neck from this mess of people and bedding. I stumble morningly into your housemates and we share that awkward moment of well meaning and not quite having our people antenna’s on yet. Coffee on the pavement and shoes on. Awake is what they call it but I am fog yawning and stretching. We congregate in lumps of shared coffee and that gentle unsurity about what it means to be who we are and just how to do it.
Later it is sharing food and giggling trying to do headstands on the train, It is chalk and spraypaint and running, it is epic bike rides and rooftop conversations.
And occasionally it is bleeding lips and faces smeared with sadness, arms like thin jumpers wrapped round each other to try and contain a whale of ache. It is jittering limbs and attempts to distract.
Now it is reflection and words for the page and the inevitable rolls out ‘thank you, thank you so much for not letting me go just yet’

hung up on ok

At 5:30pm ‘c-u-lunk’ we both hung up. I heard you and then followed suit. What preceded was a non-fussed exchange of ‘see-ya’ and ‘bye’. The kind that is confident in its lack of longevity despite any plans to the otherwise. We mentioned some ribbons of time, that could end in several places: my house, your house, breakfast, dinner, writing essays together.
I don’t know if either of us will brave the rain, will decide that we can study together, despite quite firmly confirmed knowledge that we can’t. I revel in the not knowing, the concept expands and I apply it to everything I can think of, because I don’t really know anything. There is an assumption that I will get up and pee soon, but it could be wrong, there is an assumption that I will finish my degree and be a nurse next year, but really, who knows, maybe I will instead decide to live in a coal power station with my friends, or travel around with a tape recorder and a book and a camera. Or fall asleep and never ever wake up again.
The creeping possibilities need to stay about I think, if I am to remain un-ashen in my cheeks and the trills of thoughts speeding through my circuitry. It’s a reason I need these phone times. These splattering shakes of thought and possibility, never really needing to be coupled with plans, but more as reminders and inspirers, as jumpstarts for idea’s that will curve through like water eroding rock. That will ensure the rock does not win me over, till I am under it [Capitalist. Consumerist. Disconnected. Undone. Unfun.]

rrramble

Some days everything leaves,
and you have to go look for all the answers again
Start off with a friends jumper, a bike and a pen

Looking into the sky, tree’s crowd over my eyes
My back flat on the leaves
Lips mouth a million questions,
all the world does is move the sun over a little
Tells me
‘your cold, go home’
People walk their dogs by,
Tired and chattering
There are no answers apparently
Hidden in the tree’s in Sydney park
In the period between 2:45 and 4:30.

Just a confused girl
With some lonely obsession
Breaking twigs and counting clouds
Deciding whether to get along with herself.
And which way to go next.

Home reaches out
With pots and veggies and the rumble of friends.

Perhaps it will be back tomorrow.

post Surgery post

It all seems like a funny game, I keep grinning as I get into the little white gown that ties at the back, laughing at the splashes of flesh shooting out through gaps in hospital gowns and curtains, mum says, ‘now this is the point where you become a patient, not a student nurse’. i feel like i know what’s going on, what all the medical staff are doing and why, it just feels like another hospital experience, where i am just an observer, and don’t expect anything to go wrong.
Mum and I have a good chat, we talk about assertivness and my fears about nursing, and I tell her my newest theory about myself. She is caring and lovely and doesn’t seem to mind talking all about me, yet again. we laugh at how hairy I look against the expanse of white sheets.


When the theatre nurse comes in she repeat herself a bit and I wonder how she is, she says, ‘we are going to theatre now’ I say ok, grinning, mum asks how long they think I’ll be, the nurse rekons only half an hour. As they wheel me into theatre we pass a sign that says you must get all gowned up past this point, I feel excited, I can’t help grinning as they wheel me to the waiting bay for Operating Room #3. they leave me there and say they will go look for the Dr, I sing to myself and watch the OR room, look at all the equiptment around me, and watch an asshole of a Dr yelling at my theatre nurse, she is crying and several other nurses comfort her, which I think is nice. I am annoyed about the Dr. I drift off but try to be awake when anyone comes in. They come in later to tell me the Dr forgot daylight savings, he is an hour late, I am amused. My Nurse has stopped crying and comes in to chat to me, I ask questions and she is happy to explain some of the equiptment and things to me, later I am glad to have had the extra time to chat to her before we go in.
People seem fascinated by my growth, some ask questions like ‘why did you let it get that big?’ I explain politely but think they should get some tact. (in my nursing pracs I have noticed that there is a general increase in sensitivity among nurses with younger patients and especially with body image stuff).
The aneasethtist comes in, looks at my finger, puts a drip in my right arm, hooked up to antibiotics, he tells me I will have a general anesthetic, i was supposed to have a local and he says he thinks general would be better, he will talk to the surgeon.
he leaves, my arm feels weird and I need to pee, I keep moving my arm to try and get it comfortable.
When the surgeon gets there it is all rush, they take me in to the operating room, he tells me I will have a general anaesthetic. i am kinda happy about this because i am starting to get anxious and not sure If I could handle watching it, or the pain. i get onto the operating table, and the nurse gets a warmed blanket for me (this is nice, when I come out my body shakes like anything when I get up, I am quite cold but don’t notice.)
I am glad she is there, she touches my arm and helps me get sorted for the anaesthetist. The anaesthetist tells me to put my chin up and smile, i am already smiling because I am happy and nervous about being operated on, he says ‘this will hurt’ and ‘keep smiling’ and I do. Then I don’t know what happens… my thumb is cut, stitched up, the bag of fluid I started with must have finished as I have a different one when I wake up, hartmanns, maybe because I lost blood, and my body is on a different bed, although I didn’t help that happen.
I wake up in recovery an hour or two later, laughing and thrashing, and pulling off my mask, I hear the nurse saying ‘you’re a happy one aren’t you?’ and ‘I think we’ll keep that on’ tightening the mask. When I stop giggling I start asking questions, ‘whats that?’ ‘what my blood pressure?’ the nurse answers me, asks about my pain and gives me some phenergen, and tells me to stay still she says after my next set of obs I can go through to day stay recovery. I don’t remember that she is the nurse that had me before the op for a long time. Back in recovery mum comes in, kisses me and informs me I look pale. After iv drunk and eaten a bit she takes me to the toilet on my slow funny legs, with my body shaking vigerously without my recognition of being cold at all. Mum and I giggle as I do a huge pee, and then we just hang around, get stuff sorted and go home. Where I crash a bit.

I wish I knew what happened, more about the operation, it is so funny imagine the roll that you do for an unconscious patient being don’t on me, and me havigg no memory, I want to know how the surgery went, and if they knocked me out partially because they didn’t want me asking questions…
The anaesthetist came to see me and asked how I was, when I said sore he said he wasn’t surprised as I was ‘heavily anaesthatised’ and still moving my arm :)