Take these lemons and shove it.

It has been a long time since I posted to this blog. So much has happened, it is impossible to write it all down and not make everyone reading want to jab sharp objects into their eyes. Life has handed me some seriouslybitter lemons in the last twelve months. I could make lemonade as some suggest, but really I want to throw them at someone or something. Anything to vent the rage at what has been taken and suffered this year. Could it be worse? Well, yes of course it could. Should I look on the bright side of life? Well, yes I could. Should I be grateful that I survived? Well, yes I am.

But really, it was bad enough that worse would be pretty damn hard to find. The bright side of life is currently escaping my notice. In fact, I think it left on vacation a while ago. I am glad I survived. But I am filled with rage and disappointment that I had to survive this at all. People say I was so lucky they found the clots, so lucky I had such an amazing surgeon, so lucky I didn't die. They don't say how unlucky it was to have those two enormous clots in my heart, sitting side by side, biding their time, killing me by their sheer presence. Or how the surgeon who put the port in that caused the clots should never have put the line into my heart. Or that it took being near death for them to even look at me as anything other than just a chronically ill person who just got sicker. No one says what I hear in my heart, which is that I could have, would have, should have died but for asking for the one test that saved me.

The truth is that I am a disabled woman. I am overweight. I do not work. My value is low in our society. That extends to attitudes in health care. These are not specious assertions, they are supported in plenty of medical research. So yes, I am happy I didn't die, but so sad that I was dying, and would have been allowed to die by the medical community I rely upon. I look at the ragged scar on my chest, the one that transects my sternum, the one that was left to remind me that I cannot trust my care to anyone ever again. It is to remind me how close I came to being killed by apathy and disregard.

So for all the people out there with chronic disease, remember you are a human being with value. Be your own advocate. Ask for that test before it becomes too late. Demand that treatment before they forget you even exist. And know that you are something wonderful, a living breathing part of the universe, a person who loves and is loved, and never let the world forget it. Never let them give you lemons, and tell you that is the best you can get. Demand the whole damned lemon-meringue pie.