Medicine: when the side effects are worse than the symptoms
So I did have a sinus infection and secondary infections in my ears and tonsils and a weird eye thing… then I get my medicine. And suddenly I have a painful spastic hacking cough.
The flu medicine has several side effects, including the above cough, night wakefulness, and dry throat. The instructions say to DRINK SUFFICIENT FLUIDS in big bold letters, an order I followed. Last night I drank 18 ounces before taking the medicine (in a ten minute period) and another 8 after (in a twenty minute period) and was up all night with the cough and needing to use the bathroom.
Gr.
So today I weighed my options, and figured since the flu medication is for congestion and inflammation and the hacking cough is certainly not helping with the second, actually making it worse, along with making my ribs sore and my back ache… well, I won’t take it today and see what happens. I’ve got twelve hours to see just how bad it gets, and I’m guessing that since the antibiotics are what REALLY matters, as they are treating the cause and not just the symptoms, that everything will be okay.
It just annoys me when the side effects of medications are worse than the symptoms they are supposed to treat. Take, for example, constipation. A guy gets constipated, so he takes a stool softener that has side effects such as “persistent diarrhea” , so then he gets diarrhea and takes an anti-diarrheal which has the odd side effect of… wait for it… CONSTIPATION!
Or the case of a friend of mine who got a sinus infection and had a reaction to the antibiotics, so they switch medications and give him a second round of pills to treat the symptoms of the first round, to which… he has a reaction. So then he is taking a medication to control his reaction to the medication to control his reaction, at which point he laments not having tried nasal lavage and homeopathic treatments.
The irony of life carries on.
Attraction and Potential
While physical attraction is based solely off looks, romantic attraction is based off of potential. First I’d like to talk about the old standard “women are emotionally attracted and men are physically attracted”. I think that is far too simplistic. I don’t think that every married man out there today married his wife solely based off of her physical appearance. At some point his physical attraction to her must have morphed into a deeper longing. Women may hit this curb more quickly, causing the stereotype, but both men and women eventually get to the place where they want both the body and the potential for deeper relationship.
I think one of the things that causes the stigma against homosexuals is the thought that homosexual men are somehow solely physically attracted and stimulated. Thus heterosexual men feel odd about the thought that homosexual men may be physically appraising them. I find it a little humorous that the same fear of physical attraction doesn’t create a stigma against single heterosexual women, who likely also feel an initial physical attraction to a man who is physically attractive.
No one can help feeling appreciation of an attractive person. That rush of endorphins does not mean that one suddenly feels an urge to have sex with someone, especially when one has the knowledge that there is no potential for any fulfillment. I have, at times, noticed the physical attractiveness of married men who are not my husband. That initial attraction never developed into a crush or any desire. Before I was married I would be attracted to men, but yet all of that attraction never developed beyond an acknowledgment that they were attractive. Why? Because there was no desire on my part to develop a relationship.
Gay men don’t want to steal heterosexual husbands and fathers away from their families. Sure, maybe there are a handful of gay men out there who would do that, just as there are heterosexual women who would like to steal husbands- but is it the norm? As a gay friend of mine famously said to our congregation, “gay men don’t want to have sex with you. You aren’t their type.” He joked about young fathers with potato chip bellies and burp rags on their shoulders. Sure, they may be attractive, especially to their wives, but gay men are looking for more than a bump in the coat closet. Most of them would like there to be some mutuality beyond sex- and they aren’t going to find that with a heterosexual.
I have more I could say but I’m starting to get tired, so I’ll stop it there. Thoughts, comments, additions?
sick. waaah!
Okay, so I haven’t posted since Saturday. And I am very sorry about that. This past weekend has found me with a sinus infection that felt parental and thus birthed secondary infections in my tonsils, ears and eyes. The eye thing is clearing up so I can stand to look at the monitor, except the swollen tonsils and ringing in my ear are making it really hard for me to CARE.
Which I do regret, but I can’t really change.
Fortunately I have a cadre of little pills to take, and they’re already kicking in, so maybe by later tonight or tomorrow morning I’ll be able to summon up enough emotion to write more than “Be nice to each other. Seriously.”
Although the above is really good advice. Being nice goes a long way!
Take care of each other.
More than just “attraction”
I can clearly remember the first time I felt attraction towards a boy. I can remember the rush of adrenaline, the sinking feeling in my stomach, the way I couldn’t meet his eyes and my tongue turned into rubber and I went home that night and hid my head under the pillow. How I felt a simultaneous feeling of, “oh, so this is what the poets write about” mixed with, “I don’t ever want to feel this ridiculous again.”
I was just a kid. What I felt was not in the least sexual in nature. I wasn’t thinking about kissing, even, just about holding his hand and talking to him and having him really pay attention to me. It wasn’t physicality, but a young girl’s concept of what a relationship could be. I wanted shared trust and secrets, togetherness, whatever it is that kids think relationships are.
In fact that sexual part of me was pretty crippled. I would end up being eighteen before I ever pursued a relationship, and even then the physical aspects of that relationship would be bribed and forced from me, because what I wanted wasn’t sex. What I wanted was interest, shared reasoning, walks to the store, companionship, someone to call at night just to unwind before bed. Attraction for me still wasn’t based off of physicality, it was based off of emotion. Even my relationship with my husband started out not as romance but as intimate friendship, the romance being an unexpected side effect that rather shocked both of us. Our mutual attraction could not have been further removed from sexuality, it had far more to do with similar goals in life, similar alienations and friendships, shared literary and musical interests, both being obsessed with movies and culture…
I think we underplay the importance of attraction when we portray it as a purely sexual function. We downplay the importance of romantic relationships when we excessively exaggerate the role sex plays in them. Not that sex and sexuality are not fundamental parts of the human experience- but who we are is far, far more than who we have sex with. The true value of attraction is not found in the sexual aspect, but in the emotional and personal components of what attraction mean. Ask the average person what attracts them to a life partner and often times you won’t hear physical features listed, but instead things like “compassion, drive, humor, wit, shared interest, similar life goals”, etc. Because what we want, at the end of the day, is more than a nice bounce on the mattress. We all want someone with whom to share our lives, someone to witness our everyday existence, someone with whom to spend both the good and bad hours of the day, to share with in misery and joy, someone whose hand we can hold and whose butt we can kick when needed.
No one wants to live a life alone.
Sex is just the cherry on top.
The rule of Law
Another day where I have a lot on my mind, but simply cannot find the words to say things outright. So Science Fiction Saturday today will be another one of those parables, another one of those stories where my true morals are hidden under the layers, waiting to be found.
Perhaps you will find them.
* * *
I joined the Intergalactic fleet shortly after I finished secondary school, partially because I wanted to make something more out of my life, partly out of a sense of patriotism but mostly because flying out between the stars may finally give me a sense of belonging somewhere other than in my home.
I hadn’t known what to expect, but who ever does?
My job, as I was not physically prepared to be a fighter pilot and not emotionally equipped to be a soldier ended up being as a medic. It was a fine job as it was peacetime and the most extreme injury I saw was when a galley boy dropped a pot of potatoes on his foot. The stress of my job came not from the people I treated, but from my immediate supervisor.
Jennalee Soren was a pretty woman in the third decade of her life, she had deep brown skin and fine hair that was always pulled back into a utilitarian bun. Unlike many of the women of the fleet she took no time for beauty, instead she wore a uniform that was cut more like a man’s and her face was always bare. She had a severe kind of prettiness, the kind that you saw not because it was apparent but because everyt ime you looked at her you thought of who she might be if only she were more feminine.
Her lack of femininity extended to her profession. The Code Enforcers were almost ninety percent male, as it was their job to write up deviations from the code with absolutely no sympathy. If I handed out more painkillers than were standard I was handed a slip. If I spent more time with a patient than was alloted I was handed a slip. If I gave more than a single free sample I was handed a slip. Any slight deviation was noted, and if my deviations reached a point that Jennalee felt was excessive, I was immediately docked pay. Often I would rail on her about her lack of heart, about how the code could not account for the humanity of the people I was treating, about how if I were earthside her job would not even exist. Jennalee would appraise me coolly and say “but you are not earthside, and the rules are here for a reason. What if we were called to war and we ran out of supplies? What if you have fifty patients to see in a day and you dallied because you felt badly for one?”
I would smirk and turn away.
Then one day as I was closing down my workspace for the day it happened. A young girl came in, in tears, her face bruised and bleeding and her whole body trembling. She wouldn’t tell me what happened, but I could tell from her injuries. Rape was a serious offense planet side, but in the fleet it could be punishable by death. The poor girl probably felt some sense of fear on behalf of her attacker, hence the silence.
I felt irritation with her lack of communication. I wanted to slap her back to her senses, to yell at her that she had to be honest with me. I found it hard to care for her properly. I eventually turned to Jennalee in consternation and bitterly asked her what the Code said I should do.
Jennalee looked at me with an unreadable expression. She sat down on the table beside Isa, took her hand, and told her to cry. Jennalee sang to Isa softly, like a mother, running fingers through her hair. Jennalee spoke to her like a priestess would to an acolyte, reciting an old Soren proverb that one must cry away their grief to leave room for hope.
I saw then in Jennalee’s face, her hands, even the way her toes seemed to curl in suffering, that she felt for Isa, this girl she knew by name alone. I saw in her eyes a sense of profound hurt that seemed foreign to me.
It was Jennalee who calmly coaxed out of Isa the details, it was Jennalee who laid her down to sleep. And as Jennalee sat down to write up a report of the events she looked at me with that suffering still in her eyes. “Every day you ask me how I can treat you with such a distinct lack of compassion. You claim the law is without feeling.”
I said nothing, there was nothing I could say.
“The law is compassion for Isa,” Jennalee said.
And for once I understood.
Are Marriage Rights “Special”?
So something we have all heard is that Gay people aren’t just asking for civil rights, they are asking for “special” rights.
In light of California’s recent ruling, I thought maybe we can all talk about that a little. First off, I would like to address what Marriage is in religious and civil terms. In religious terms, it is two people consecrating themselves before God and entering into a holy union, going on a journey through which they will be taught more about love and temperance than through any other relationship they have. In civil terms, a marriage is two people combining possessions and resources, and being afforded several civil rights. Marriage means being on each other’s insurance plans and being able to visit each other in the hospital and being able to make decisions about the way in which their children are raised and educated.
Now… Here is where things get sticky. One could give gay people “equal” rights through affording them every civil right that marriage encompasses, but calling it something other than marriage. When gay people say, “hey, hold on, why can’t we just get married” people get irritated. Sometimes the reply is, “what, are you trying to make society put a stamp of approval on your relationship? What, you’ve got to have special rights?”
That infers, then, that marriage is special somehow. Because homosexuals aren’t asking for rights above and beyond what heterosexuals have been afforded, they simply want the same thing we have. So is what we have really so special?
One can point to thousands of years of tradition in which marriage has been between a man and a woman. Okay, that makes sense. But let’s also look at what that marriage between a man and a woman was. A man needed children to inherit his wealth, or work the fields, or keep the family name alive. A man could not get that through another man. So marriage was both “holy” and a civil arrangement that met certain needs. And throughout the ages men left their wives to carry on relationships with other men.
Our society has grown beyond marriage being defined by the production of children. We marry for love now, something which throughout history was not a primary concern when it came to heterosexual union. Were marriage solely about procreation, obviously homosexuals could not enter into it.
But if it is about love and unity, they can.
I’m not going to give a ruling on what I personally think. I just want everyone to ask themselves a few basic questions:
- Is the marriage certificate awarded by the State a stamp of approval on heterosexual coupling?
- Is civil marriage truly equal to religious marriage?
- If homosexuals were to be awarded every right afforded to heterosexuals but we simply called it something else, would what we have still be a special kind of “marriage?”
- Or shall we not give homosexuals all the same rights?
Just think about it.
Cereal and Deception
My daughter, whom we shall here on in refer to as “Spanky”, is starting to learn deception. This morning she came into the kitchen where I was prepping a bottle for her brother, and she walked right by me to dump the remains of her cereal into a bucket and hide the bucket. (Why not just use the trash?)
She then holds the empty bowl up and says, “I’m still hungry.”
“You want more cereal?” I ask her.
“Yes.”
“What about that cereal?” I point at the bucket.
“It doesn’t have marshmellows any more,” Spanky replies.
I let out a big sigh and ask her if maybe she’d rather have an orange than a bowl of cereal she’ll only eat a fifth of.
Spanky replies, “Oooh! Oranges!” and our kitchen drama ends.
But it made me think. My little girl is learning deception. Sure, it’s not great deception, but she figured out that an empty bowl is more convincing, and she artificially emptied it. It really doesn’t take long for the shine to wear off of innocence. And it’s not because we are cruel, or devious, or innately evil- it’s simply selfishness. We prize our own desires more than truth or sincerity, so we lie.
Through my children I have learned that everything is learned. They come out knowing nothing, not even knowing how to purposefully get a hand to their mouth. A great deal they learn through trial and error, they learn a bit from observation, but mostly they are taught. And now I embark on another teaching adventure. I teach my daughter that sincerity and truth are prized more in this household than her desires are. It’s not a lesson I really want to give, as I know it will hurt her, but it’s one I have to give, so I will.
And in that way, she is also teaching me about God.
Life is so… like life. There’s nothing else like it.
Shared pain, shared experience
Pain is a gift.
I realize saying that may make a few people stare at me oddly. And people currently in the throes of pain may resent me, but it’s a topic worth addressing. We need to get past the stage of suffering where we eagle-eye focus in on ourselves. We need to get to the point where we think of our pain in relation to each other. Think about what pain really does in our lives- not simply the part where we feel our pain, but the part where we open up to each other, learn to depend on each other, and learn to hold others who are crying.
Without the pain, none of these experiences would be possible. If Billy couldn’t feel physical pain, and then a friend of his scraped a knee, how do you think that Billy might respond? I can only imagine the conversation:
Billy: Why are you crying?
Timmy: Because I scraped my knee.
Billy: But it’s not even bleeding. Why would you cry?
Timmy: It hurts.
Billy: Hurts?
Timmy: (pinches Billy) Hurts.
Billy: Why did you do that?
And so on, and so on… Because Billy’s lack of pain bars him from imagining his friends pain, and that lack of imagination bars him from sympathy. He may intellectually rationalize that his friend is reasonable, and therefore must have a reason for expressing agony, but he cannot truly empathize.
Our pasts are our gifts to our future friends and family. All of our shared experiences bind us together in a way we could not be bound if it weren’t for mutual suffering and mutual love. Every blah day and every dreary evening make up part of a bigger global picture, one in which we are part of a universal community. Our microwaved lunches and lemonades on the porch, or tearful arguments and celebrations are all part of the picture that makes up humanity.
Cherish it. Cherish the heartache and the bliss. Cherish the doldrums and the excitement. Cherish even the pain and agony, as that pain reminds you of your humanity. And it reminds you of something greater, of the Son of Man come down to earth to walk in our skin, to share in our humanity, and even to suffer.
The Word became Flesh, and dwelt among us…
Perceptions, labels, marginilization
I live a “heterosexual lifestyle”. I dated and then married a man. I gave him two children, a happy home, and homecooked meals every night. The fact that I am heterosexual is present in my life, every day. While I may not be fully aware of this fact, it colors how people relate to me and how I am percieved in society.
Fortunately for me, the average person has no innate bias against twenty-something young married mothers. When I am in the grocery store, I am met with smiles. People I have never met before (and may never see again) want to talk to my kids and pat them on the head. My heterosexual lifestyle is a good one.
There are other sides of me, other “lifestyles” I’ve lived, that have had less fortunate consequences. When I was sixteen I went on a bit of a terror, I dyed my hair vampire red, painted my nails black and borrowed my brother’s t-shirts. I became one of those “creepy goth kids”. The greater misfortune was that this personal transformation of mine happened in concert with such events as the Columbine school shootings. It is rather unfortunate that a teenager who molds their physical attributes to reflect the internal isolation they feel is, in turn, isolated because of their physical appearance. My friends that knew me well rolled their eyes and bore with me. Strangers were terrified of me.
A few years later my “goth” look softened to a more all-around punk-rock fiesta, I had pink and blue hair and sometimes simultaneously pink-and-blue hair. I patched my jeans with safety pins and bought my clothes solely at goodwill. I wore beat-to-the-bone keds sneakers and carried my bible on my back in a hemp backpack that smelled faintly unpleasant. My personal heroes were people like Jay Bakker, tattooed punk Christians that didn’t mind getting their hands dirty.
I, myself, was a tattooed punk Christian. One could crassly call this a new “lifestyle” of mine, but I think that’s unfair. I think that the “lifestyle” tag, when applied to any aspect of someone, is cruel. Either someone is a certain way, as in I am a tattooed punk rock Christian, or they show behaviors, as in she goes to rock shows in bars and hangs out in tattoo parlors. Neither of those things are a “lifestyle” either they are who I am or they are what I do. Don’t underplay their value by making it sound as if it’s merely something I tried on at a certain time in my life.
After all- the fact that I have pink streaks in my hair or a ten inch long tattoo on my back (MISERICORDIA, the latin word for mercy) is not only an aspect of my appearance, it affects how people on the street percieve and relate to me. It tells you something about who I am, if you care to listen. And the fact that I married a man, have his children, live with him, have chosen to sacrifice personal goals in order to be a housewife- these things aren’t just a “lifestyle”, they are who I am. They tell you a story about me and my priorities, my needs and my ability to love.
Now- think about the people we marginalize with labels. We call someone an emo punk or goth, and we forget to think about who they are beyond what the label encapsulates. We call someone a sinner, or lost. We forget to think about every aspect of their life that moves beyond how we percieve their spirituality. We refer to the homosexual “lifestyle” as if homosexuals somehow do not have relationships of value, need and sacrifice. We talk about sexuality in terms of good or bad, forgetting the way it colors our lives.
We judge off of taste, appearance, short glimpses that do little to address entire realities. Humanity comes in a myriad of shapes, colors, sexualities, needs, occupations, backgrounds, ethnicities, abilities and desires. None of them fit neatly in labeled spaces. Instead they jumble up against each other frantically, like a basketful of kittens each fighting for the superior spot where they can be seen and touched.
This week, forget labels. Forget simplicity. Talk to the kid with eyes lined in charcoal long enough to define them beyond your assumptions. You may be surprised at what you find there.
Faith Exercise: Checkout Line Gospel
As a former youth pastor I have a lot of rather simplistic “faith exercises” tucked into the recesses of my mind. One of my favorites is the checkout line gospel.
The explanation goes like this:
Someone you’ve just met finds out you are a Christian. It is fairly obvious this person has little understanding of the Christian faith (or perhaps they are just very, very inquisitive) and they ask you, “what does the Gospel (or Jesus) really mean to you?
You’ve got a limited amount of time in which to speak (perhaps you are in an elevator or checkout line) and you want to be sure that all of the relevant points get across. So what, precisely, would you say?
Here are a few pointers for people who haven’t been subjected to this kind of mental torment before:
- Make a note of what about faith gives you the most hope. Is it not being alone? Is it knowing you are loved? Is it a sense of permanence of eternity, or tradition?
- Make a note of what about the story in the Gospels means the most to you. Is it the miracles? The Virgin Birth? The Resurrection?
- Make a note of what about your particular “brand” of faith has meaning to you.
Now burn all of that. There isn’t enough time. You’ve only got a few seconds, and you need to say something that won’t sound like rhetoric.
And remember: “Christian Speak” will likely only confuse and/or infuriate a lot of people. So avoid it.
This is what I say:
God is everything about other people that you want but may never find. He is pure love and mercy tempered by justice. The Bible says “perfect love casts out all fear” and through Jesus I have found that to be true. I no longer have any reason to be afraid, because even if I died the second I walked out that door I would have experienced a kind of love that most people go their entire lives longing for and never finding. And because God is eternal, this love will never die.
I realize it doesn’t say that much about the Bible, or Christ’s death or resurrection, but for me that’s the point. People have heard the basic story. It’s not that unfamiliar to them. Rah, rah, Christ, and here’s a fish for the back of your car! What most people are curious about is why, in this day and age when logic and science and self-indulgence reign, would any reasonable person want to cling to something as archaic and forbidding as faith?
So tell them.
In 300 words or less. 
