tactics

As most of you know, I am going in for an MRI on Wednesday the 15th. The idea is that this will allow my ENT to rule out the two most serious possibilities of my illness: an auditory tumor or early multiple sclerosis. The technical jargon on my script for the MRI scan says that I am having an MRI of the Internal Auditory Canal and Brain. Luckily, I am having an "open" MRI, which means that I won't have to be stuffed into one of those long tubes--instead the machine is more like a cone that my head goes into. Unfortunately, I have to have a contrast injection, which will introduce a chemical into my blood that will make my vascular system light up on the scans. That way, they'll be able to tell if I have a blood clot or other blockage in any of my major vessels. Most auditory tumors are operable: they use something called a "gamma knife" that shoots radiation through your skin into the tumor to destroy it. So, probably the worst possible thing I could be diagnosed with is MS, since it's progressive in later age, and requires a lot of invasive treatment to manage. My ENT says the only real reason they're checking me for it is because I'm the right age for onset of the symptoms.

After the MRI (assuming it's clean), I'm being sent to an experiemental audiology lab at UB, where they'll do tests on me to try to determine what's wrong. The major theory is that the carbon monoxide poisoning I suffered almost five years ago has caused some neurological damage to the nerve endings in my inner ear. They might possibly put me through a hyperbaric chamber to force out any CO that's still in my body (this should have been done years ago, but the people at the ER didn't tell me when I went in for the poisoning). Other than that, I'm not really sure what else might happen: maybe balance and auditory tests where they put electrodes on my face and then put water into my ears to see how my eyes move when the nerves are stimulated.

One weird thing I didn't know was that tattoos can cause some problems during MRI scans. Since there are sometimes trace metals in the inks used for tattooing, the MRI (which uses a magnet so powerful it weighs several tons) can react with the ink and burn your skin. The technician at the MRI lab said that mine shouldn't be a problem, since I'm only having my head done. I'd be more nervous if I was getting a full-body scan!

My symptoms have been a little more manageable for the last three days, so maybe things are looking up. I dunno. I will let everyone know how the test comes out as soon as I get the results. The radiologist should be able to go over the scan with me right after it's done. I'm not really nervous yet, just sort of relieved to know that I'll be able to stop worrying about whether or not I have brain cancer. I'm sure I'll be much more nervous later on...

--Q

Buddhism 101: It's a Hard-Knock Life

Being sick the way I have been for the past 2 months has been a trying experience. There is nothing like a chronic illness to force the realization that so many of the things we believe to be "true" about ourselves and our lives--so many of the things that we are attached to--are completely impermanent, and can vanish in an instant. This might sound pessimistic, but it's not: It's the plain truth about life, and realizing it is the first step toward cultivating the absence of painful delusions. It's because we cling to impermanent situations as if they ARE permanent that we suffer when they are altered. Of course, this doesn't mean that we shouldn't appreciate the wonderful things about life, but that we shouldn't stake our appreciation on whether they last forever, or whether we can possess them--because nothing does, and we can't. Even this illness will end eventually, one way or another. This may seem like an otherwordly philosophy, one that might prevent us from forming deep relationships with others because of the truth of impermanence. But the exact opposite is actually true: We realize an even deeper appreciation for others precisely BECAUSE we and they are impermanent. This can also be applied to an investigation of the "self." Who are you once you strip away all of your attachments? When you're challenged with something like a chronic or life-altering illness, many of your attachments to the concept of yourself (and to life itself) are strained or even broken. I never realized, until I became so sick, how much I relied on the belief of my being completely capable for my own self-worth. Without being able to keep up with my work, or to spend hours reading and writing every day, or to handle the little mundane things that had seemed so easy before, I felt completely lost. I also felt potentially cheated out of the fantasty future I had created for myself--professorship, book publications, many long years with my wonderful partner. But instead of bemoaning the possibility of losing all that (how can you lose something you don't even possess?), I should be focusing on the value of each day, and working as hard as I can to improve my present situation. Thinking in terms of loss and injustice and failure is just too exhausting, and becoming exhausted is what causes you to give up.

R.I.P. Xena

Well, anyone reading this is probably thoroughly depressed by my recent lugubrious entries. The truth is that I do feel like crap in a paper bag right now, but that's not all that really matters. I'm still in relatively good health (I hope), have a job, a place to live, friends (although those who punked out on my Halloween party are on a "naughty corner" list), and a super awesome girlfriend who takes care of me and listens to me whine with the patience of Mother Theresa. It's just that having these unrelenting symptoms has broken almost every regular pattern I have in my life, which is almost as disorienting as the vertigo itself. Added to that is the dislocation I feel now that I've finally reached the end of my Xena marathon. As you know, dear Readers, I take my geekiness very seriously, and latched onto Xena once I had sucked the Buffyverse dry--including all five seasons of Angel. Now, Buffy is clearly a superior product, but I was in no way prepared for how attached I would become to Xena, who is much more my style of hero than Buffy Summers herself, who is still blonde and skinny and pretty in a Stepfordish kind of way. Buffy never looks like she's relishing a fight the way that Xena does. Buffy can't admit her bloodlust: Xena does. She actually ENJOYS killing people, which Buffy could never permit herself to do. There are very few television or film characters that embody the sort of bold, heroic, female masculinity that I find so intellectually and aesthetically appealling, and Xena probably tops the very short list (which would also include Ripley from Alien(s) and Roz from Chopper Chicks in Zombietown). It was painful to watch Xena die, because I've watched similar characters die over and over again in a lot of our mainstream media. These sorts of women just aren't permitted to survive, and their deaths are a message about the value we place on masculine women in our culture--they get to save prettier, more feminine women from harm, or sacrifice themselves for the lives of children. That's usually it. Anyone who doubts me should watch that recent embarassment of a movie, Silent Hill. So, having six seasons of Xena out there is incredible, but it makes it that much harder to come to the end of the fantasy world in which women like Xena roam the countryside, kicking ass, foiling evildoers, and seducing virginal blonde troubadours. Where do I go from here? My love for Buffy is unswayed, but it's a much more intellectual attraction than my love for Xena, which is rooted in my fantasies about what sort of world I would choose to live in. It would be a world with Amazons, definitely.

(Oh, by the way, anyone who doubts the cultural importance of Xena: Warrior Princess should know that scientists at NASA are considering naming the recently-discovered tenth planet Xena. And what is the proposed name of its moon? Gabrielle. I'm not making this up. Seriously.)

doing my time

I'm having a pretty miserable weekend, buried under nearly a hundred shitty response papers, and suffering from some fairly nasty vertigo, which seems to have gotten worse in the last week, instead of better. It appears that the physical therapy is not working. I'm not sure what this means, but it probably isn't good, since BPPV is my most desirable diagnosis. After that, it's a tumor or early onset Meniere's disease, which is progressive, incurable and causes deafness. I really don't know what to do, or how I'm going to continue doing my job and working on my dissertation if I get much worse. I have about two fingers on the windowsill as it is. Everyday is just like the last; I wake up hoping I'll feel better, and I don't. This sucks.

hungry ghost

Perhaps this makes me a "bad" Buddhist (there isn't really such a thing, I guess; just poor actions and reactions), but the last few days have really been an onslaught of tiny annoyances piling higher and higher until I feel like I'm going to choke. Really, I suppose I'm letting them pile up and choke me, but doesn't it just feel better sometimes to play the role of the victim, even if you're really the victim of false consciousness? This is precisely why I started practicing Buddhism--because I get so tired of my default settings and the ways in which I allow myself to wallow in poison. If my life were an overly simplified Buddhist cartoon series, the hero would finally track down the villain and unmask him, only to realize that THEY WERE BOTH THE SAME PERSON. GASP! The problem is that, even though I know that I am the villain in theory, I still suffer and I still feel the need to complain. And Buddhism isn't theory: it's a big fat pile of hard work, changing the mind. So, I suppose I am really in some over-educated but still pre-Buddhist state, where I know how I should be thinking, but it's not at all natural. What's natural is to whine and cry and generally act like a 135-pound baby. Sometimes I wish I could put my working life on hold to really, deeply work at my practice, but monasteries and retreats aren't really an option for those of us struggling in the Western capitalist machine. You have to somehow balance an entirely mental practice with the emotional and temporal demands of postindustrial life and its kabillion distractions. So, even although I know all about impermanence and the problems of attachment, I am compelled to continue...

--First of all, hardly anyone I invited came to my Halloween party, and even though I know many people were just too busy, it feels a bit like a blow off. I invited a LOT of people. Like 25. And 4 people (who were totally awesome) came. No one even called me to apologize for not showing. I think this might be the beginning of my totally lame adulthood (minus, of course, the money and respect that are supposed to accompany it).

--The Great Ear Mystery continues, unscathed by the many doctors who have poked and prodded me over the past 7 weeks. I've been going to physical therapy, but the results are inconclusive. I've also had to sleep sitting up in bed, which prevents me from getting any real rest and makes my brain scream about each separate and unrelated detail in my life like a crazed Broadway theater director. Add the vertigo, and the whole thing is exhausting.

--I am beginning to hate each and every one of my 65 students with the fire of a thousand suns. Freshmen are like a curse from the angry, vengeful God of the Christian Old Testament. They cannot come to class or hand anything in on time. They cannot follow even the most rudimentary of directions. They cannot take suggestions and fix mistakes. When they fail to do all the above, they still cannot understand why their grades aren't higher. Also--according to M who overheard some of them talking--they think I'm "mean" because I make them take their fucking EAR BUDS out of their ears while they're in class! I'm beginning to understand why people just give up on their politics and send their kids to private schools. The mediocrity piles up and crushes them into middle-class escapism.

--Basically, my new job is a ton of bullshit work, and I have to put up with the professor I T.A. for doing absolutely nothing and pushing all of the work he should be doing onto myself and the two other lowly assistants--if you call being an "assistant" having three times the amount of students and grading as the actual professor, who has yet to give a single lecture in his class and just shows films instead of teaching the students anything. He's getting paid around 80,000 a year: I'm making 10,400.

--I haven't spoken to my family in two months because I couldn't even begin to explain what's wrong with me, healthwise. When I tried to tell my parents about the Great Ear Mystery earlier this year, they pretty much just shrugged it off, like they do about everything they don't know how to deal with. I am considering not traveling to P.A. for Thanksgiving if I'm not better. It's embarrassing, but my family sometimes disgusts me. Everyone (with the exception of my deadbeat bodybuilding brother) is overweight, and although most of my family members are fairly well educated and intelligent, they lack the spark of passion that you feel around people who actually give a crap about things other than themselves. Plus every once in a while there will be a moment where they all swoop in on an issue--like affirmative action--and pontificate about it in this terribly ignorant way. I usually run and hide in the bathroom when this happens.

--Then, of course, there's the recent injustice of having this great state of New York pass on approving gay marriage, when only months later it has now been adopted by frigging NEW JERSEY! Where the fuck am I living?

.....................................Q

The human ear: you don't want to know what can go wrong!

Those of you who know me probably also know that I've been struggling for the last four years with an inner-ear condition that produces lengthy (a month or longer) periods of vertigo. Well, after going to about a million doctors, I might finally have found something that works. To the left is the physical therapy movement that I've been doing, called the Brandt-Daroff exercise--apparently named after a couple of scary German gym teachers. It's stupidly simple to do, and takes only about 15 minutes a day to perform. I look exactly like this when I do it, too--except my boobs aren't as huge and floppy. Interestingly enough, almost every single image of this excercise on the net depicts a woman flopping over, rather than a man. Is there something particularly sexy or feminine about this? I certainly don't feel very hot while flipping around like a dying fish on the edge of my bed. Anyway, after only four sessions of it, I've been noticeably better, if not immediately perfect. This could be a fluke, but for now I'm going to take it as a sign that I might not have a napoleanic tumor invading my ear or inciting a coup in my brain. However, I still don't have a diagnosis because I failed the determining diagnostic test that would tell the physical therapist if I definitely have BPPV, as described below:

"Benign paroxysmal positional vertigo (BPPV) or "Benign paroxysmal vertigo" (BPV) is a condition caused by problems in the inner ear.

Specifically, it is due to the malpositioning and inappropriate accumulation of particulate matter in the semicircular canals of the inner ear. The primary symptom is the sudden onset of severe vertigo that occurs exclusively with head movement in the direction of the affected ear. Patients often describe their first experience occurring while turning their head in bed. The vertigo is brief in duration -- less than 15 seconds by definition. It is often associated with nausea. Patients do not experience other neurological deficits such as slurred speech, numbness, or weakness, and if these symptoms are present, a more concerning etiology such as posterior circulation stroke, must be considered.

The condition is diagnosed by performing the Dix-Hallpike (aka Barany) maneuver which is diagnostic for the condition."

So, no one's really sure why I failed the Dix-Hallpike, but it might be because I have a very mild form of BPPV, or because I am so far into the attack (8 weeks) that the "particulate matter" may be nearly dissloved, or because I might have displaced matter in a very unusual place in my ear. No one is certain. But I'm going back to the physical therapist next week to retake all the balance tests and see if I am, indeed, improving. If I don't show real diagnostic improvement, I will probably have to have an MRI or a CT scan, which is a chilling prospect. Anyone who's ever seen television knows that only dying people get these tests (Mark Green on ER and Joyce Summers on Buffy are only two examples). They get them, and then they die before the season ends. Very foreboding. But I'm not there yet, so it's flopping like a fish for now.

the little death

Ok, this is totally M's discovery, but everyone needs to go to www.beautifulagony.com, which is an entire site of people filmed while orgasming, BUT from the neck up. It is an amazing experience to look right into the eyes of a stranger you'll never meet while he or she jerks off. It's a complete violation of public/private distinctions, and it will initially make you very uncomfortable to watch, but that eventually fades away...(ahem). The other really interesting thing I realized while perusing this site is that we live in a money-shot obssesed culture. I mean, it takes some of these people SIX MINUTES or longer to come! That is a long time to sit, looking into someone's eyes as they rub one off--and you find yourself thinking new thoughts. This is total anti-porn, but it's still sexy! There's even a section called "overkill," in which they have videos of people who are overacting and screaming and thrashing around, which is basically hilarious.

--Q