What It's Been Like

I remember that when I first got diagnosed with stage 3 lung cancer, I worried that I would lose my hair. "That's such a little thing," my mother scolded me. "The hair will grow back." But one of the first times I visited the cancer ward for a round of chemotherapy, I saw a young, extremely thin man coughing into a handkerchief. He was not only bald but also had no eyebrows or eyelashes. I felt sorry for him, but I also tried not to cry, thinking that I would soon lose my hair too. 

I didn't. "You have enough hair for three people," more than one hairstylist told me. My hair is long and thick, and even after multiple rounds of chemo, I still have all of it. Or I may have lost some hair, but since it's so thick, I didn't really notice. 

I remember that my doctors told me, "You're younger than most of the other cancer patients. That could prove to be an advantage in your recovery." When I went to the cancer ward for chemo every three weeks, as well as to receive fluids through an IV twice a week for three hours each time (the chemo was bad for my kidneys, which is why I had to receive fluids), I noticed that most of the patients were decades older than me. One old man sat next to his wife as she received chemo, and he held her hand for hours as she slept. All the patients looked so sad and scared, and I dreaded going to the cancer ward each time. 

What I dreaded most was the lobectomy, a surgery where they would remove part of my right lung and the lymph nodes, the area where the cancer was. It was scheduled much sooner than I expected. I was in the hospital for five days. I remember being in the operating room on the day I had surgery, with the nurses and doctors moving around briskly. And then I remember waking up several hours later, being told that the surgery was over. "On a scale of one to ten, how would you rate your pain?" the nurses asked me. 

"Twelve," I said, as I struggled to sit up in bed. Every time I sat up or even moved, it hurt like hell. A physical therapist had to help me walk for the first time after surgery; I could barely stand up, and when I did, I felt dizzy and tired. I had to use a walker the first time, and I kept wobbling as I walked. 

I remember that it was difficult to sleep in the hospital. The nurses woke me up several times a night to give me medication and to take my vitals. During the day, doctors and nurses kept coming in and out, and the woman I shared a room with, who also had a lobectomy, kept complaining the whole time.

The lobectomy was successful. They removed the tumor. A few weeks after the surgery, my oncologist had me start taking Tagrisso, which is a targeted therapy for cancer patients; he described it as "oral chemo". It's a pill that I have to take every day for three years. 

I took the spring semester off from teaching; fortunately, I had accumulated a lot of paid sick leave since I'd never taken a sick day since I first started teaching in College Town. I didn't want to take time off from my job because it was the only thing that made me feel normal when everything else in my life had turned upside down. But it was difficult to teach during my cancer treatment last semester. I started chemo last fall, and I felt nauseated after each round of chemo. I usually don't sit down while I'm teaching because I'm often writing on the chalkboard, and I move around the room as I talk. But because I felt tired and sick, I stayed seated most of the time. My students were understanding; they felt sorry for me, and one of them told me that they were praying for me. Another student gave me a card after the semester was over, and their classmate gave me a coffee mug and a card.

It was the right decision not to teach for the spring semester. I was in a lot of pain after the surgery; the surgeon said the pain would last for months, which it has. I ended up with a large scar on my body from where they operated on me.

The bad cough that lasted for months, which was what drove me to seek treatment in the first place and proved to be the first symptom of my lung cancer, went away after I started getting chemo. But after the lobectomy, I started coughing again. It's now been almost two months since the surgery, and I'm still coughing constantly. It's worse than before because due to the surgery, I still have pain on my right side from where they operated on me, so every time I cough, it aggravates the pain. My surgeon said the cough could last at least two more months and that it's a common side effect of a lobectomy because my body is adjusting to the fact that I am now missing part of my right lung. I often wake up coughing in the middle of the night. My oncologist prescribed me some cough medicine, but it doesn't help much. 

I get winded more easily now; shortness of breath is another common side effect of having part of your lung removed. I used to be able to work out for hours at the gym at a time, and now I am out of breath just from climbing the stairs of my apartment building (there is no elevator). I feel tired almost all the time, even after getting a full night's sleep. I've lost weight because I struggle to finish meals; I just don't feel hungry most of the time. Food and drinks that I used to love, such as chicken tenders, Frappuccinos, and chocolates, now make me feel sick. My oncologist said that cancer affects your appetite and even your taste buds.

I remember that my oncologist ordered tests to be done on me once a month, to monitor my kidney function among other things because I have kidney disease. The most recent test showed that my kidney function has gone way down since last month. It was always expected that my kidney function would decline because that's a consequence of having polycystic kidney disease. But it's gone down quickly and significantly since I first started cancer treatment. 

My nephrologist, who I met with recently, said it's most likely due to the cancer treatment, especially because the type of chemo they put me on was bad for the kidneys. But as I stated in my last post, he reiterated that I had to prioritize the cancer over my kidneys at the moment, which is why I had to take the risk with the chemo. He said that they would continue to monitor me. He thinks that my declining kidney function might be due to the Tagrisso pill that I have to take, and if it is, I'll have to stop taking it and take a different medicine. But Tagrisso has a high success rate of enabling cancer patients to become cancer free.

I'm scared that I'll be on dialysis years earlier than expected. It's bad enough that I have cancer, but to have to deal with this on top of that is almost more than I can bear. When I saw the results of my most recent tests, I cried in my car in the Walgreens' parking lot; I go to Walgreens often now to pick up yet another medication I have to take or to buy another bag of cough drops. 

I honestly never thought that this would happen to me. You hear stories of people with cancer, but unless it runs in your family, you don't think it could happen to you. And I never expected lung cancer, especially because I never smoked or did drugs and none of my blood relatives have it. 

Whenever people hear that I have cancer, they say, "I'm sorry," with a worried look on their faces, because they all seem to know someone who suffers from it or someone who died from it. There is no cure for cancer, and there's always the fear in the back of my mind that even after going through all of this, it could come back. And if it does, I'll be stage 4, and there won't be half as much they can do for me.

I try to have hope. I was raised Catholic, and they taught us to have faith. But sometimes, it feels like I'm losing mine. 

What about you? How do you hold onto hope when bad things happen?

I Have Cancer

It started with a cough. 

At first, I thought it was allergies. Then I thought it was a cold; I often get sick when the weather changes. But the cough started in June, and by July, it had gotten worse; I couldn't go five minutes without coughing. It was difficult to work out because I couldn't stop coughing, and people moved away from me in public because they thought I had the coronavirus. But I tested negative for the virus, and I'd already received two doses of the vaccine and the booster shot. 

There aren't that many specialists in College Town, so I wasn't able to get a doctor's appointment until August. My general care provider prescribed me some cough medicine and listened to my lungs, which he  said sounded clear. He also recommended that I stop taking one of my blood pressure medications (I take two because I have high blood pressure due to my polycystic kidney disease) because he said it might be causing the cough, although I'd been taking both meds without any problems for more than two years. His supervisor dismissed my concerns when I got upset that he didn't call for any tests and made it seem like I was the one with the problem (I wish that witch nothing but the worst, including a lifetime of stepping on Legos and being stuck behind tall people with big hair at every movie and concert they ever attend.) But my cardiologist, who I also met with in August (I regularly have appointments with my cardiologist and nephrologist to monitor my health due to my kidney disease), also recommended that I stop taking that blood pressure medication. "I don't think it's anything serious," my cardiologist said.

They were wrong. Two weeks later, I went to urgent care. I literally fell to my knees in the shower one day because I couldn't stop coughing. I'd wake up in the middle of the night and cough for several minutes straight. The nurse practitioner prescribed me an inhaler and a week's worth of prednisone and amoxycillin, which helped slightly. 

I went to another doctor, who ordered a chest X-ray. It showed a dark mass on my right lung, so then he ordered a CT lung scan. It showed that the mass was either an infection...or cancer. So he ordered a bronchoscopy, which meant they took pieces of my lung and examined it. 

If it had been an infection, I would have only had to take some pills and go to the pulmonologist a few times. But it wasn't an infection. The bronchoscopy confirmed that I have stage 3 lung cancer. 

I got the test results right before I had to go to work. My voice broke while I was teaching, and I swallowed hard so that I wouldn't cry in front of my students. I didn't understand how this happened. I had never smoked or done drugs. I didn't hang out with people who did. None of my blood relatives have lung cancer.

They did genetic testing, which confirmed that I have EGFR, a mutated gene that causes cancer. They said it was from an "acquired event", which means that something happened to me that caused me to get cancer. But they don't know what it was. 

After that, things happened really fast. I had to get a port surgically implanted into my chest for chemotherapy. I started chemo a week later, and the doctor said I would need at least 3-4 rounds. I also started taking cancer medication for nausea because the chemo made me feel sick and tired all the time. I've been going to bed earlier, but I still wake up tired. I went shopping, and I felt tired just walking around the store. 

Through it all, I struggled to keep up with my work. I was back in the classroom two days after the bronchoscopy. I also had the port placed into my chest on a day I wasn't teaching, and I was back in the classroom less than a week later. I only cancelled two classes because of my cancer treatment. When I got ready for work in the morning, I kept having to lie down because I felt so sick.

Even though I didn't feel good, I kept teaching. My work has always been very important to me, and it frustrated me that I couldn't put in a hundred percent like I normally did. It also frustrated me when I got emails that said stuff like, "Sorry I missed the last three classes, but I have a cold, so could you email me everything I missed?" I wanted to say, "I have freaking CANCER, and I'm still getting all my work done, so DON'T EVEN, okay?" But I didn't.

The chemotherapy they put me on is harmful to the kidneys, and it made my kidney function go down significantly in just three weeks. But my nephrologist told my oncologist, "What good is it to protect her kidneys if she doesn't survive cancer?" He also told me to do what my oncologist said. Because of the effects of the chemo, my oncologist kept me on the same type of chemo but reduced the dosage. He also required me to come to the hospital twice a week, every week, and be hooked up to an IV for two hours in order to receive fluids. It did help my kidney function recover, somewhat. 

I met with my oncologist recently, who told me that I have to do a fourth round of chemo. Then they'll do another chest scan to see how much the tumor has shrunk, and about a month after my fourth round of chemo, I'll have a lobectomy and a lymph node dissection. Basically, they're going to remove part of my lung and the lymph nodes where the cancer is; the surgery will be done at a hospital several hours away because there's no thoracic surgeon in College Town. 

The doctors told me that I'll have to stay in the hospital for at least 4-5 days after the surgery. I won't be able to drive for at least a month. I'll be in pain for weeks, possibly months. Because the surgery and the recovery from it will take up so much time, I made the very difficult decision to take a leave of absence from my teaching job. I will not be teaching for the Spring 2024 semester. Fortunately, I have a lot of paid sick leave because although I have been teaching in College Town for more than six years, I've never taken any sick days until now. It's harder for teachers to take sick days because if we're not there, there is no class. It's not always possible to find a substitute at the last minute, and even if one is found, they won't necessarily teach the class the way I want. 

My mother is angry at me because I won't let her be there for the surgery or the recovery. It's one thing when she's ranting/screaming/crying on the phone or when I visit (I visit my parents for a few days twice a year, although this Christmas I didn't because my doctors say I can't travel; the cancer has severely weakened my immune system). The phone call or visit will eventually end. But when I'm recovering from the surgery, I won't be able to escape her. She hasn't been any help anyway. The other day I was at the hospital, and she called me crying; she was upset because some distant relatives had found out that I have cancer and demanded to know if I'd told them, which I hadn't. She conveniently forgot that she was the one who broadcasted my diagnosis on Facebook. I told her that I was receiving chemo, but she just kept crying and ranting. 

My father got mad at me because although he'll be there for the surgery, I won't let him come with me to meet with the thoracic surgeon beforehand (my sibling will accompany me). He has given me some money to help pay my mounting medical bills, but he said that if I wasn't going to accept his help, he might as well not help pay the bills either. I told him fine and to keep his money. 

My last blog post made me wonder who would be there if I ever ended up in the hospital. All I know now is who I don't want to be there. My oncologist told me, "You have just one shot at beating cancer. If it comes back after all of this, there won't be much we can do." So now, I'm doing everything my doctors tell me to do. After surgery, I'll have to take Tagrisso, which is a chemotherapy pill, for three years. 

I don't want to die. There are so many things that I never got to do. I want to live a better life than the one I've had. And I hope that cancer won't prevent me from experiencing that.

What about you? Do you know anyone who's had cancer? Do you know anyone who's had a lobectomy and what their experience was like? 

Who Will Be There

This past winter, I was talking to a guy, who I shall refer to as Disturbing Fetish Guy, on Bumble who said, "Is that really you in your profile pictures?"

"Yes," I said. 

"I'm just asking because I've been catfished before," Disturbing Fetish Guy said.

"I'm not a catfish," I said.

"But you look really young," he insisted. "How old are those pictures?"

I've been told by many people that I look young for my age. I went to the movies recently, and the cashier asked to see my ID because I bought a ticket to watch an R-rated movie (Everything Everywhere All the Time - awesome movie! I love Michelle Yeoh!). Apparently, although I am forty-one years old, I still look like a teenager. Or maybe it was my Mickey Mouse T-shirt. 

"Well, people often say that I look young," I said. "But they're all pictures from the past two years."

"You do realize that I'm eight years younger than you, right?" I didn't like how he made a point of mentioning that, as if I'd done something wrong. If he'd matched with someone eight years younger, I doubt he would have said, "You do realize I'm eight years older than you, right?"

"Yeah, it says so in your profile." 

Then Disturbing Fetish Guy asked me what my racial identity was (he belongs to a different race). I told him, and he said, "YES! My friends and I all want to date women of your race. You're like the Holy Grail of dating." 

I didn't even fully register what he meant at first, but eventually, I thought to myself, "Annnd we're done here." I don't like anyone who tries to fetishize my racial identity. I put my profile on Bumble on "Snooze", which means that you can make your profile invisible to everyone else on the site. It also means you can't see anyone else's profiles until you deactivate the Snooze option, but at least you can take a break for as long as you want without deleting your profile.

When I first joined an online dating site, I was still in my twenties. I felt excited, nervous and hopeful that I would meet someone special. Seven online dating memberships and countless bad dates later, I don't feel hopeful anymore. 

I thought I was finally ready to date again, which is why I set up a coffee date with a guy last fall, who then stood me up at the last minute and didn't even explain or apologize. 

Ever since I turned forty, I've become a lot less tolerant of other people's b.s., like the guy who wrote this in his profile: "Respectfully, if you're vaccinated I don't want it. The nano particles from within it transfer person to person. Your DNA/bloodline is forever changed. Welcome to the new life of a cyborg." (I WISH I made that up, but I seriously did see that in someone's profile.)

I am vaccinated. I got the booster shot too. If I am a cyborg, does this mean I now have superhuman strength? Does it mean that I can pick up people who cut in front of me in line at Starbucks and toss them out the door? Because that would be awesome. (Whenever people cut in front of me, I revert back into my Chicago persona and start yelling scary nothings in their ear until they move back.)

I put my profile on Snooze not just because of Disturbing Fetish guy but because I'm just sick of it: online dating, the weird stuff that people put in their profiles, the awkward/bad/boring first dates, the unrequited crushes, etc., etc.

I spent the last few months binge-watching House on the Peacock app, where you can watch certain shows for free. I was able to watch literally every episode of the series for free on that app while I was working out. In one episode, called "One Day, One Room," a patient played by Katheryn Winnick tells Dr. House, "I'm going to base this moment on whom I'm stuck in a room with. That's what life is. It's a series of rooms, and who we get stuck in those rooms with adds up to what our lives are." 

Another thing I noticed about the show was who stayed with the patient in the hospital room while they were receiving treatment. Sometimes it would be family members. Other times it would be the patient's friend, and in one episode, it was the patient's dominatrix. It made me wonder who would be in the room with me when I go into end-stage renal failure and end up in the hospital.

I have to get tested every six months to ensure that my kidneys are still stable. I was tested recently, and the results showed that my kidney function has declined since last December. I am still at least a few years away from the end-stage, but I know that eventually, I will be hooked up to dialysis machines three times a week, for hours at a time, until I get a kidney. 

I think that the right person for me would be someone who would be "in the room" and willing to be there for me at my worst moment, and who wouldn't judge me for it. I recently binge-watched the TV series Girls (they have the complete series on DVD at the public library in College Town). I watched it and thought, Was I as self-absorbed and annoying as these characters when I was twenty-four? 

Nevertheless, it was a very good show, and my favorite scene in the show is the one (FYI: Adam is cursing a lot at the beginning of this scene) where Adam literally runs across the city to be with Hannah when he finds out she's having a nervous breakdown. (Side note: do you notice that in romantic movies and TV shows, the guy often starts running when he wants to be with his love interest? Harry did it in When Harry Met Sally, for example.) 

I thought that scene from Girls was really romantic and moving because it showed how much Adam loved Hannah, and how he was willing to be there for her at her worst moment.

There were other patients on House, M.D. who didn't have anyone in the hospital room with them, and that showed a lot about what their lives were like too. It made me wonder if I would be one of those people who would end up alone in a hospital room. I definitely wouldn't want my parents there. They would just make it worse. They always do. I still haven't told my mother that I'm sick. My father knows, but he recently told me that he doesn't want to hear about my health anymore; he thinks I talk about it too much, and he doubled down in an email he sent, where he berated me for how I'm dealing with this disease. 

My parents have been unhappily married for more than forty years. When you grow up witnessing how much your parents hate each other, it tends to warp your ideas about love and marriage. I think that's a major reason why the idea of remaining unmarried for the rest of my life does not scare me as much as the idea of being married to the wrong person just so I won't have to be alone. I think if you marry the wrong person, you will still be alone in a sense. Being with the wrong person makes you feel like you can't fully relate to them or like they won't be there for you when you need them to be. My parents were wrong for each other from the beginning, but they will never get divorced because they're both too stubborn and proud to do so. 

My mother said to me on my birthday a few years ago, "But aren't you ashamed to be an old maid?" 

"No, I'm not," I said. I wanted to say, I think you should be ashamed for asking me that question, especially on my birthday.

I try to picture myself with someone in the future, and I can't. I've been alone for so long that I've gotten used to it, and I even prefer it sometimes. As I've stated before, being single comes with a certain kind of freedom. 

Now that I'm in my forties, most of the single men my age who live in College Town (and there aren't that many of them) are divorced with children, and many of them don't want to date me because I'm too "old" for them. In movies where middle-aged women date younger men, the men are often very romantic and sensitive; they genuinely want relationships with those women, like in the movie How Stella Got Her Groove Back. But in real life, or at least in my life, younger men just want to hook up, like the thirty-year-old guy on Bumble who asked me what my bra size was and the twenty-nine-year-old guy who immediately asked what my address was and whether he could come over within two minutes of our first (and only) conversation. 

Also, now that I'm in my forties, I somehow feel less anxious about being in a relationship. For me, the "happy ending" was never really about a guy. For a long time, it was about my work because I'm a workaholic. Now it's about living my life on my terms for as long as I can. It's about getting a kidney sooner rather than later so that I don't have to be on dialysis for too long. It's about making the most of the time that I have now, while I still have it. And I think that's nothing to be ashamed of.

And I suppose it's just as well that I'm single, considering the idiotic and horrifying decision made by the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade. But I could go on for several posts about that. I'm still full of fury and fear about it.

What about you? Do you have a favorite romantic story or movie? (One of my favorites is While You Were Sleeping, partly because it's set in Chicago and also because I love Sandra Bullock.) 

Quitting

I did something that I, a neurotic workaholic, thought I would never do.

No, I didn't take a vacation. First of all, the pandemic is still a problem, especially in America, because there are far too many people who think that the virus is a "hoax" and literally throw tantrums over being required to wear masks and refuse to get vaccinated. To all of you people who are not American, we Americans want you to know that not all of us are like them. Like you, many of us shake our heads at those tantrum-throwing, conspiracy theory-believing, vaccine-rejecting jerks. We also wish that we could take our masks and shove them up their---

Never mind. 

I quit my second job. Ever since my early twenties, I've always had multiple jobs. For several years in my twenties, I worked in retail at night and on the weekends, and I taught at various colleges in Chicago during the day. I also went to graduate school full-time. It got to the point where I could never relax because I always kept thinking of all the work I had to do. 

After I earned my PhD, I thought I would finally be able to live off one income, but I had thousands of dollars in student loan debt. Two cross-country moves in two years (due to the fact that I accepted an offer to teach at a college in Small Town after I finished graduate school, and then two years later, I accepted another offer to teach at a different college in College Town) also caused me to accumulate thousands of dollars in credit card debt. After years of using public transportation in Chicago, where a guy on the El once got mad that I ignored his advances so he picked his nose and wiped his finger on my coat, and a woman on the bus told me that I was going to hell because I refused to convert to her religion where she said she was the queen goddess of all the forest animals, I had to buy a car after I moved to Small Town. So that meant years of car payments. 

That's why, for the past six years since graduate school, I've continued working two jobs: a part-time job for a website, and a full-time teaching job at a college. This summer, I finally paid off my car (I would have paid it off a year ago, if I hadn't accidentally totaled my first car in a flash flood), and I am also close to paying off one of my credit cards. I realized that I could possibly afford to quit my second job because the money I no longer have to pay towards those two debts is close to what I earn from my website job. 

I was on the fence at first about quitting. I kept thinking about my medical bills that I've accumulated because of all my trips to the hospital to receive treatment for polycystic kidney disease, which I was diagnosed with last winter. When I was first told that I would need a kidney transplant sometime in the near future, my first thought was, Oh God. How will I be able to take time off from work? I CAN'T!

My first thought SHOULD'VE been this: I'm running out of time. As a matter of fact, it was my second thought. There I was, crying in my nephrologist's office, after he told me that in just a few years I will have to go on dialysis if I don't get a new kidney right away and that the wait list for a kidney is typically 5-7 years. But there is no guarantee that I will even get a kidney, which means I might not survive that long. And I just kept thinking, I'm running out of time. 

I spent all these years working two, sometimes three jobs at the same time, because I had to. I couldn't afford to live off just one income because my monthly stipend as a teaching assistant wasn't enough to cover the high cost of living in Chicago. I could have taken out more student loans throughout graduate school like most of my classmates did, but I didn't want to complete my graduate degree with a six-figure debt when I knew that that would put me in debt for the rest of my life. I did take out two small loans towards the end of graduate school, though, when it became clear that I could no longer work three jobs at the same time.

But that day in my nephrologist's office, I thought of all the things I had sacrificed because of my work. I had worked away my youth, and I had ended up in many doctors' offices and in the hospital more than once because of stress-related health problems, the stress caused mainly by the strain of working multiple jobs. 

I also thought about all the things that I still want to do: travel around the world, write books, and make a name for myself as a creative writer and a scholar. I actually haven't even left the country in twenty years, not since I was a twenty-year-old college student, when I studied in Spain for one summer. I spent two months in a town that shall remain nameless, taking Spanish classes. I shared an apartment with three American sorority sisters from California. They lined up at the telephone every night so they could call their boyfriends and kept inviting their friends who were backpacking through Europe to stay at the apartment, so that the entire summer I had four or five roommates, rather than three. 

While my roommates spent most of their free time talking to their boyfriends or going clubbing and bar-hopping with the other American tourists, I traveled to other towns. I walked around the town I lived in and sampled local foods. I went to the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao. I watched flamenco dancers perform in Madrid. I went to Pamplona during the running of the bulls, where a bunch of drunk men kept calling out to me and grabbing at me. I literally had to fight off one particularly aggressive guy and I tried to threaten him by saying I had a knife. Except I used the Spanish word for "butter knife", which made him jeer at me and ask if I was going to make him breakfast.

I spent a weekend in Barcelona, where I rode a double-decker bus around the city and got off the bus whenever I spotted something that looked interesting. I went into tapas bars and was unable to understand most of the menu, so I pointed to dishes that looked interesting and tried them. More often than not they were delicious.

One thing I noted about Spaniards was how relaxed they were. They took a siesta in the middle of the day, where most of the shops and businesses shut down for two or three hours so that people could go home and rest or take long lunches. It's something that would never fly in America, where people typically eat a hurried lunch at their desks at work or skip lunch altogether so that they can get more work done. 

It seemed to me like many of the Spaniards I met viewed work simply as a means to an end, rather than as the center of their lives. Maybe that's why they seemed so much happier and more relaxed.

As a young, twenty-year-old woman, I immersed myself in Spanish culture, and I vowed that once I finished school, I would travel around the world and immerse myself in more cultures.

Except I didn't. I immersed myself in my work instead. And then, twenty years later, when my doctors gave me my diagnosis, I thought about all the things I'd missed out on, and how I was running out of time to live the life I wanted to live. When I was younger, I thought I had all the time in the world. But now I'm a middle-aged woman, and I know that my time is running out.

I've always hated my second job. I've had it since graduate school because it enabled me to escape retail. It paid a few bucks more per hour than retail did, and it meant that I could work from home on my couch rather than be on my feet for nine-hour shifts. When I first started working for this company, which legally prevents me from naming it online, I was paid eleven dollars per hour. When I earned my PhD, they gave me a "raise" to twelve dollars per hour. I've worked for this company for thirteen years, the longest I've ever stayed with any employer, and during that entire time, I only ever received that one-dollar raise (apparently to my employer, a doctorate is only worth one dollar). They got away with it because I was technically a "subcontractor".

"They employ a lot of academics," one of my colleagues said. "And they know how desperate untenured faculty and graduate students are for work and money, so they use it to their advantage to exploit them." 

The only way I could have been paid more was to apply for a promotion to a supervisor, but that would have only meant about fifteen dollars an hour. And the supervisors I dealt with were totally annoying, nit-picking every single aspect of my work, even though I received praise from many other people for the quality of that same work.

I still have two other credit cards that I have to pay off, and by quitting my second job, it meant it would take me longer to pay off those debts. And of course, there were my student loans. Not to mention the medical treatment I've been receiving has led to hundreds of dollars in medical bills because my insurance does not completely cover everything. I had to use my stimulus checks to cover those bills, but there will be more bills in the near future. I worried about that and thought that maybe I should just stick it out at my second job for at least one more year. 

"You have to make changes to your life," my doctors told me. "The best way to protect yourself now is to lower your blood pressure. That means exercising regularly, eating a low-sodium diet, and reducing stress in your life. If you do that you might be able to put off the kidney transplant for at least a few years."

I have been working out 5-6 times a week, and I've become a semi-vegetarian; I only eat meat a couple times a month now, and I've been eating a lot more fruits and vegetables. Working multiple jobs has been a major source of stress for me since I was in my twenties. I realized that if I budgeted carefully and lived more frugally, I could still pay off my remaining credit card debt in two years. If it wasn't for my diagnosis, I would have stayed at my second job. But I was worried about raising my blood pressure again; even though I take two different blood pressure medications and carefully monitor my BP every day, every now and then my blood pressure still goes up, usually when I get an email from a student who blew off several weeks' worth of classes but asks me to "make an exception" and still give them "at least a B."

My health is more important than the paltry income that I get from this second job. By quitting my second job, I'll get to have at least one day off a week, rather than work seven days a week for months at a time, which is what I've been doing since my twenties. I'll have more time to write and pursue publication. I actually drafted two novels and a memoir over the last ten years. But my many work responsibilities kept me from spending more time on the pursuit of publication. I did try submitting short stories and essays to literary magazines, and I have the rejection letters to prove it. But I did not try as hard to get my longer manuscripts published. I was scared of the risk of putting my writing out there because there was always the chance that all those years of writing would lead to nothing. 

But if there's one thing I've learned from being diagnosed with a life-threatening disease, it's that life is too short. And sometimes it's worth it to take a risk, especially if it means that it could lead to the life that you want to live, rather than be stuck in a life that you hate. 

What about you? Do you work multiple jobs? Have you ever quit a job in the past, and was it hard for you to make the decision to leave? 

Setting Fire to the Dating Board

Before the Model and Small Town Guy, there was the Grad Student, who I shared an office with back when I was a teaching assistant in graduate school. We shared our office with a territorial control freak who banned us from the office whenever he had appointments with other students but refused to leave when either of us had appointments. I wish the control freak nothing but the worst, including a lifetime of loud neighbors, entitled students, and colleagues who ask "just one more question" at the end of every faculty meeting.

Unlike most of the guys I've had crushes on, the Grad Student actually liked me back. We became friends after I confided in him about my struggles with my dissertation, and we hung out several times. He told me that he liked that I sometimes bought Starbucks gift cards for homeless people so they wouldn't get kicked out of cafes. He said that his ideal woman had my best qualities.

But on the night that I was in the emergency room because I got diagnosed with a neurological disorder, I tried to call him. I was scared and I wanted to talk to someone who wasn't a nurse, a doctor, or an orderly. But he said he couldn't talk. He was at a bar with his friends. 

He didn't call me to check on me until several days later. He said that I called him at a bad time. I said that I was going through a bad time and I only wanted to talk to him for a couple minutes. I didn't expect him to drop everything for me every time I needed him, but I also didn't think he would blow me off when I was in the emergency room because he was getting drunk with his friends. I'll always be there for you, he had told me before all of this happened. 

We both successfully defended our dissertations and earned our PhDs at the same time. He left for a tenure-track position at a small liberal arts college in another state, whereas I was offered a visiting faculty position at a college in Small Town. He didn't even say goodbye. 

The pandemic gave me a good excuse not to date anyone last year. But now, things are opening back up again. I thought about doing online dating again, probably on Bumble, but I'm reluctant to do so, for several reasons:

1. I'm afraid that the Model will be on Bumble again, like he was two years ago when I reconnected with him. I don't think I have the willpower yet to say no to him, and I do not want to go down that road again. Even if I got to be with him again, he'd still go running back to his girlfriend like he did last time, and I'd end up worse off than I was before. 

2. There are way too many guys on both Bumble and Tinder who are using fake pictures. One guy used Channing Tatum's pictures but claimed that his name was "Adam" and that he worked in marketing. I don't understand why there are so many "catfish" out there. Do they think that once they meet the women in person, they will be automatically forgiven because of their "great" personalities? Or do they have no intention of meeting in person because all they are hoping to get out of this are pictures of women's boobs? 

3. Now that I'm 40, I'm considered "undateable" by many guys my age, who are pursuing women my students' age (late teens and early twenties). When I was on match.com and okcupid, guys specified their age range for dates as 18-28, even when the guys were in their late thirties. I teach young women who are in the age range that these guys want, and they think that anyone over the age of 25 is old. 

4. Most of the 30-something or 40-something guys around here who are willing to date women my age are divorced with kids, and some of them are still married but claim that they're "separated" (Sure, pal. I'd believe that if you hadn't accidentally or perhaps just stupidly included your wedding picture in your dating profile). I dated a single dad that I met on Tinder; he said he had a preteen daughter and that he hoped to find someone who would be a good "mother figure" to her, before telling me that he thought she would like me a lot. (I remember thinking, Whoa, slow down! I don't even know your last name yet!)

5. I've literally tried almost everything to meet someone. I joined a youth group at my church when I was in my twenties, where I had a crush on a great guy who fell for someone else in the group. I went to a speed-dating party. I joined not one but seven online dating sites, some of them more than once. I dated more guys than I care to count, and I failed to make a real connection with all of them. I became friends with Small Town Guy and fell for him, and then I watched him fall in love with someone else. I met several guys through a Meetup group here in College Town that met at a bar every week to play board games, but they were more focused on playing board games than socializing. 

I know that there are good men out there. One of my colleagues married late in life, to a man who works at the college where we teach. One day, she texted him and remarked that she forgot to bring her favorite dessert in her lunch. Without being asked, her husband went to one of the dining halls on campus, bought the dessert, and dropped it off at her desk as a surprise while she was teaching. Small gestures like that gave me faith that not all men are like the ones I dated. 

But I didn't think that making a real connection with someone would be this hard, especially since it came so easily to so many other people. I know someone who literally took a walk and met her future husband (she went hiking and met her husband in a park, where he worked as a park ranger). 

I always thought that by the time I was 40, I would have met someone special by now. "You'll meet Mr. Right someday, when you least expect it," people always said. But I never did. 

After the Model broke my heart, I briefly went to therapy, though with a different therapist since my former one still lives in Chicago. I couldn't afford to continue, but the therapist said something that struck a chord with me: "I think that your difficulty letting him go has something to do with the way your mother treated you."

I was surprised because I'd barely mentioned my mother during the therapy sessions. But then afterwards, I remembered the time I came home from my first school dance in tears because no one asked me to dance. The next day, my mother got mad at me for something, and she said, "No wonder no one wants to dance with you." 

When I was a kid, I was different from the other kids because I wasn't good at cheerleading or sports. I was always reading, and I kept to myself. In grade school, the other kids made fun of me. They knocked me to the ground and threw balls at me extra hard at recess (we weren't playing dodgeball). They called me names and laughed when I cried. "It's because you have a bad personality," my mother and father said. "There's something wrong with you." They later said the same thing when they talked about the fact that I was the only one of their friends' grown children who was still unmarried. 

For a long time, I believed that my parents were right. I thought that the fact that I stayed home on prom night (and on the nights of most school dances) and didn't go on my first real date until I was in my twenties meant that I was unattractive. I'd look in the mirror and think, No wonder no one wants to dance with you. 

So, I became a workaholic instead. I focused on earning three degrees, including a bachelor's, a master's, and a PhD. I became a good teacher and taught dozens of classes in writing and literature. I kept my nose to the grindstone for so long that one day I looked up and I was thirty-six, and my youth was long behind me. I didn't get to enjoy being young, I thought. And there was the Model, with his irresistible grin, holding his hand out to me. He was the kind of guy I'd always been attracted to but who never even noticed me, and yet he did. It was flattering, especially after all those years of loneliness and rejection. I knew he was wrong for me, but then again, the guy who on paper was perfect for me (Small Town Guy) didn't want me. So, I went against my instincts and said yes to the Model, and well, if you've been reading my blog for a while, you know how that turned out. When he broke my heart, my mother's cruel words echoed in my head all over again.

The first time I read the definition for an "introvert", I felt a sense of relief. It made me think that maybe there wasn't something wrong with me because there were other people out there who were like me, people who disliked parties and preferred to be on their own most of the time. 

Fans of the TV show Sex and the City often compare themselves to the four main cast members: Carrie, Samantha, Miranda, and Charlotte. But I think that I'm actually more like Mr. Big. When Carrie asked him what he wanted, he replied, "Exactly what we have. You have your own place. I have mine. We're together when we want to be, and we're apart when we want to be." 

That, to me, sounds ideal. I prefer to live alone, where I don't have to quarrel with anyone over whose turn it is to do the dishes or clean the bathroom. I prefer to have full control over my finances rather than share an account with someone, so that my partner won't say something like, "You spent how much on Taylor Swift concert tickets?" 

I also don't want to devote every weekend to whomever I'm dating. I don't want to spend every night with him. I don't want to spend hours on the phone with him every day. 

When I was applying for teaching positions at various colleges, I liked that I could apply wherever I wanted without having to worry about how it would affect someone else. I liked that if I got a job offer, I had the freedom to just pack up my things and go, rather than turn it down because my partner didn't want to move. 

I also like that if I want to travel somewhere on vacation, I don't have to go visit in-laws or go somewhere that I have no interest in. I have the freedom to go where I want to go.

After I got diagnosed with a life-threatening disease for which there is no cure, it made me realize that I want to spend the time I have left focusing on what makes me happy. Dating did not make me happy. I did it because I didn't want to be alone and I thought that my "happy ending" included true love, as is shown in so many movies, TV shows, and books. But I've started to think that my destiny is not tied to anyone else and that maybe there is a reason I kept striking out. Maybe on some level, I didn't want to be in a relationship with anyone, but I was in denial about that because it went against the "happy ending" so many people wanted. Maybe true love is not in the cards for me. That makes me feel sad because although I do prefer being alone a lot of the time, I don't want to be alone all the time for the rest of my life. But at the same time, maybe it means that there's something else meant for me, something that could make me happy. 

On the one hand, I don't want to remain celibate and live like a nun for the rest of my life. This is surprising to many guys my age, who are looking for relationships and someone to settle down with, whereas I just want to have fun (does that make me like Samantha? I don't think I want to have that much fun.) But on the other hand, I don't think I want to do online dating again anytime soon. I'm pretty burned out on dating altogether. I don't want to spend more hours poring over guys' dating profiles. I don't want to make boring small talk on first dates. I don't want to get my heart broken again.

Maybe I could still find someone special by chance, like other people over the age of 40 have done. But I'm not holding my breath. In the meantime, I want to focus on the other things in my life that are important to me: getting published as a scholar and as a creative nonfiction writer, achieving more success in my career, maintaining my health, paying off my debts, and traveling around the world. I could still have a full, happy life, even if it's a life where I am alone. 

What about you? Do you believe in soul mates or the idea of a romantic destiny? What does your "happy ending" look like?

A Life-changing Diagnosis

 Last winter, I went to the doctor for a regular check-up. I ended up in the emergency room that same day. 

When the nurse took my blood pressure, she said it was too high. The doctor took it again to make sure, and she said it was dangerously high. She said that I had to go the ER right away or I might have a stroke. 

I ended up staying in the emergency room for more than ten hours. At first, they put me on a gurney and hooked me up to an IV and an EKG. They gave me blood pressure medication and took my blood pressure every fifteen minutes because they were trying to get it back down. The blood pressure cuff hurt because it kept squeezing my arm. The gurney was left in the hallway so I had to just sit there while nurses and doctors bustled about. 

After a couple hours, they finally put me into a room where several other patients were, but our beds were separated by curtains. I heard an old lady across the room who kept complaining about her bowel movements, and she literally kept yelling, "POOP! POOP! POOP!" over and over again. One of the nurses' cell phones had the Batman theme song as its ringtone, and it kept going off again and again, to the point that if I wasn't still hooked up to the IV and EKG I would have jumped out of bed and thrown the cell phone down the hall, shrieking, "MAKE IT STOP! MAKE IT STOP!"

I was scared. I didn't know what was happening. It made me think of the time I ended up in the emergency room six years ago, when I was diagnosed with a neurological disorder and I almost went blind. I have recovered from that, but I suffered from permanent hearing loss in my right ear as a result. I can hear a little bit out of that ear, but I mainly rely on my left one now. I can't watch TV without subtitles (why does everyone on TV sound like they're WHISPERING these days?), and I often ask my students to repeat themselves when I'm teaching. 

The doctor and nurses couldn't tell me what was wrong with me, but they told me to go to another doctor the next day. After more than ten hours, one of the nurses told me, "OK! You can go home now!" 

I stood up, but I felt really dizzy and disoriented after lying down that whole time. The nurse looked concerned and asked me, "Are you OK?" 

"Oh, I'm fine. I'm fiiinnne," I mumbled, before I literally passed out on top of her. It was like that scene in the movie Elf, where Will Ferrell fainted on top of a shrieking elf. 

Then the nurse helped me up and said, "Uh, I'm going to put you back in bed for a while." She gave me some graham crackers and apple juice because I hadn't eaten since breakfast. After another hour, I finally got to go home, and fortunately, I didn't faint on top of any other nurses.

Since then, I have been back to the hospital fifteen times. I've had an echocardiogram, a renal artery duplex, and a kidney ultrasound. I have to go back to the hospital several times this summer. I am currently being treated by a team of doctors at the local hospital in College Town, including a cardiologist, a nephrologist, and a primary care provider. 

It turns out that I have polycystic kidney disease, which I inherited from my mother. She had a kidney transplant when she was in her late forties. My nephrologist said that I will most likely need a kidney transplant by the time I'm in my late forties or early fifties (I'm 40 now). But the wait list for a kidney is at least 5-7 years, sometimes more. My kidney function is already low, but when it gets dangerously low, I will have to be on dialysis for years while I wait for a kidney. If I don't get one, I could die before I turn sixty.

I also have to stay on medication for the rest of my life. I am currently taking two different medications to control my blood pressure, and I have to monitor it by taking my blood pressure with a digital monitor twice a day (which is why my arm is perpetually sore now). One of the medications made me cough incessantly, to the point that I kept having to buy cough drops. I couldn't drink cough syrup because it didn't work well with my blood pressure medication. 

The doctor finally took me off the one that made me cough and prescribed a different one, which fortunately does not make me cough. The medication I'm taking causes birth defects, meaning if I get pregnant, my baby will be born with birth defects or it will be born dead. So, I will never be a mother. I don't have the money to hire a surrogate, and no adoption agency is going to give a kid to someone who may die before the age of sixty without a new kidney. I wasn't planning to become a mother, but I sometimes think about what it would be like to have a child. It makes me sad when I see parents leading their small children by the hand because I know that that is a path in life that has now been closed off to me forever. 

The nephrologist recommended Jynarque (have any of you ever heard of this, and if so, do you know anyone who's taken it?) to protect my kidneys. But it can cause liver damage, so I'm like, NO!

I lost my temper with my doctors and nurses because they kept insisting that I come back to the hospital for more treatment or yet another medical procedure. I couldn't afford to take time off from work because of the mounting medical bills (which I had to use my stimulus checks to pay), so I had to stay up late every night to get my work done. The doctor even prescribed me a new blood pressure medication that cost more than sixty dollars for a 30-day prescription, which I couldn't afford, and he only backed down after I proved to him that it kept making my blood pressure shoot way up after several weeks of taking it. I hate my nephrologist because he's been a jerk about this whole thing, but there are only two other nephrologists in College Town, so I don't have a lot of options.

I made the mistake of telling my father about this, and he has not been helpful at all. The other day we got into an argument over the phone because he told me not once but six times not to get so worked up about my health. Then he called back and told me six more times. I should have known better than to think that he would be there for me.

I still haven't told my mother. She screamed at me over the phone and blamed me for my health problems when I ended up in the emergency room six years ago (so did my father), and she always makes everything about herself. She will call to cry, rant and rave every day if I tell her. So, despite pressure from my father, I've refused to tell her unless I get worse.

I just feel really angry, sad, and scared. I've tried to be a good person my entire life, and yet I feel like I'm being punished somehow. Other people like the Model and his girlfriend literally scammed the entire country (which is another post in itself, and I will write about that later), and they not only got away with it but got everything they want. But I never did anything like that, and I'm the one who ended up in the hospital. It's scary because now I know how I will die. I will most likely die of kidney failure. Even if I get a transplant, the new kidney won't last forever. I will most likely not live a long life because of this disease.

I confided in one of my friends about my fear of not living a long life, and they said, "Well, if this is God's plan, you just have to live out the time that you have left." That did not make me feel better; it made me angry. I haven't been very religious in a long time, and I don't want to believe that God's plan is for me to have a short life. 

I don't want someone else's kidney. I don't want to have surgery. I don't want to go on dialysis. I don't want to keep going back to the hospital again and again for the rest of my life. I don't want to die. But none of that is up to me. All I can do now, according to my doctors, is maintain my health so that I can hopefully put off the transplant. I've been exercising 5-6 times a week, and I rarely drink soda anymore. If I buy coffee I get decaf. I rarely eat fast food, except for the sandwiches at Starbucks because they're a lot healthier than burgers at Wendy's or McDonald's. I've lost ten pounds, and my blood pressure has gone down. So I still have hope. Maybe I'll be one of the select few who doesn't have to get a kidney transplant. 

Sorry about the depressing post. This whole situation is partly why I haven't blogged in a long time. 

But this whole situation has made me have a different outlook on life, and it's made me more determined to make some changes. I'm going to write about those too, so stay tuned. 

Beyond My Control

Every few weeks, I meet with my doctors to continue my medical treatment for my neurological disorder. I have to meet with more than one doctor, due to the fact that I am suffering from various symptoms. Every time I go, I feel scared.

Whenever I visit the clinics and the hospital, I feel very small. I see blind people wearing sunglasses and walking with canes, and I see others being led by Seeing Eye dogs. There are patients being pushed in wheelchairs, which always gives me a flashback to the night I spent in the emergency room, and orderlies pushed me around the hospital in a wheelchair to get me from one unit to the next. At the hospital, I catch glimpses of people lying in bed, hooked up to machines.

I feel sorry for them, and I wish that I could heal all of them. However, a small, selfish part of me hates seeing them, because I can't help thinking, Am I going to end up like them? Is that my future? 

Since September, I have been to more doctors and undergone more medical procedures than I can count. At first, I got worse, and the neurologist who was treating me increased my medication. She told me that if the medication didn't work, I would have to get brain surgery. If that didn't help, I would go permanently blind.

I've always hated that medication. It made me feel tired all the time, and I lost weight because I barely had the energy to finish a sandwich. It also made me sick on a regular basis. I hated that I was dependent on that medication and on my doctors. One of the things about being a Type A personality is that I am a control freak. The fact that my health is beyond my control frightens me.

When I go in for my treatment, I try to focus on getting better. I try not to think about how my life (and my work) will change completely if I get even worse. The problem with a neurological disorder is that if something goes really wrong, that's it. It's not like I can get a brain transplant.

I try not to think about going blind, but I can't help that either. If I went blind, I wouldn't be able to see Lake Michigan, the Chicago skyline, or Grant Park anymore. I wouldn't be able to just go into a bookstore and browse, unless they had books available in Braille. I wouldn't even be able to see the words on my computer or in my journal, which would change my writing process.

I also try not to think about the anger I still feel at my parents for blaming me for getting sick, even though my doctors said they were wrong. I say nothing to my parents about the fact that they haven't asked about my health in months.

I do think about how grateful I am to all of you, for leaving positive, encouraging comments on my blog when I wrote about my diagnosis. I am grateful to those of you who sent me nice e-mails to let me know that you supported me. When I went to the emergency room the first time, I felt so alone, lost, and scared. Reading what you all wrote made me feel better, and it helped me cope with the anger I felt at all the people in my life who weren't there for me.

My doctors say that I am finally getting better, though I still have to stay on the medication (a reduced dosage, at least) and come in for regular medical treatment. They say that what I have is chronic and can't be cured; it could always come back, and then I really might go blind the next time. That's why it's imperative that I find a full-time job with good health insurance that would cover more medical treatment.

I don't know what's going to happen in the future. I hope that I will continue to get better. Thank you to all of you who have been so kind to me. I really appreciate it.

What about you? Have you ever felt like something was beyond your control? How did you deal with it?

An Uncertain Future

This year I have applied for full-time teaching jobs at eighty schools all over the country. So far, I have been rejected by thirty of them.

It's discouraging, to say the least, to open my mail and find yet another rejection letter. It also makes me scared about what's going to happen in the future. I have just enough money to pay my basic expenses through August. But what will I do after that?

I started working when I was sixteen, as a cashier in a grocery store in the small Midwestern town I grew up in, where I routinely had to tell customers to put shirts on so they wouldn't be made to leave the store (and I tried not to stare at their farmer tans as I told them). I've had a variety of jobs, everything from stuffing envelopes, to resisting the urge to strangle rude customers with the clothes I was trying to sell them, to breaking up fights among troubled high school students, to resisting the urge to fling undergraduates' cell phones out the window.

I've never been unemployed, though I have been underemployed, underpaid, and overworked. When I couldn't find a full-time teaching job after I got a master's degree, I started working as a part-time adjunct instructor at various schools. Adjunct work is difficult because the pay is low; there is no health insurance or benefits; you're hired on an as-needed basis, so you could have a full course load one term and no classes the next. That's why I also worked in retail, and I took on a part-time job for a website.

Despite the fact that I'm a workaholic, I never liked working multiple jobs. I was tired all the time. I was screamed at and disrespected by some of my students, my customers, and my supervisors. I accepted it because I had few other options, though I often cried privately when it got to be too much. The harder I worked, the more my personality hardened: I went from being cheerful, friendly, and optimistic to stressed, antisocial, and cynical.

Now I'm close to finishing my dissertation, and I'll be defending it in about a month. If it doesn't get approved, you'll hear me screeching like a howler monkey from thousands of miles away. If it does get approved, I'll finally have my PhD. But the question is, what happens next?

I've applied to large research universities, small four-year colleges, and community colleges. I've applied to posh boarding schools, because they occasionally hire PhDs. I've even applied for tutoring jobs at university writing centers, even though they pay tens of thousands dollars less than teaching jobs do. But with the exception of one school, who was interested in hiring me until they found someone with more impressive credentials, I have no other job leads.

It bothers me that even though I am a good teacher with hundreds of positive evaluations from my students, someone with a longer list of academic publications and awards is much more likely to get the job. What most of these search committees are looking for is someone who has excelled as a scholar, while his or her teaching record is much less important. I think it should be the other way around, but I'm in the minority on that issue.

The chair of the English department at my school told the PhD candidates that it was normal not to find a tenure-track position within the first year and that the search could take at least two more years. Even after that, we still might not find one. But in the meantime, I still have bills to pay, and I can't even get a job as an untenured, full-time lecturer at a community college in the Middle of Nowhere, USA.

It's depressing and scary to think that I could be rejected by fifty more schools. After I get my PhD, it'll (hopefully) be easier to find a job. But in the meantime, I may have to go back to work in retail (if I do, you'll hear me screeching like a howler monkey from thousands of miles away), continue working as an adjunct, and increase the hours at my website job.

Even if I worked three jobs again, I wouldn't necessarily have enough money to live on. As an experienced salesgirl, I would get paid more. But I would get fewer hours, because it's cheaper for the employers to give hours to the ones with less experience. Adjuncts make little more (or in some cases, less) than retail workers. For example, I was once offered a teaching job that would have paid less than a hundred dollars a week (before taxes). I could get health insurance as a salesgirl (but not as an adjunct instructor), but it's very basic insurance, which wouldn't cover the specialized treatment I need for my neurological disorder.

But I will do what I have to do. I will NOT ask my parents for money, for reasons that are better left unwritten. I've heard of other untenured faculty who had to live on food stamps, but hopefully I won't have to do that. I may, however, have to sign up for Medicaid.

Right now I'm still waiting to hear back from those other schools that haven't rejected me. A lot of them just posted their ads in March and April and won't start reviewing applications until May, so I won't hear anything until June at the earliest. The uncertainty is the worst. I just want to know, one way or another, what's going to happen, so that I can figure out where to go from there.

What about you? Have you ever had difficulty finding a job in your desired field?

Go Fund Yourself

Recently I read an article about a guy who started a gofundme campaign so that he could buy a plane ticket to Florida, where his girlfriend had gone on spring break. He was worried that she would cheat on him during the trip. He even got upset that a swimsuit picture she'd posted online got 200 "likes." (Jealous and insecure, your table is ready.) His campaign was successful; he took the trip to Florida, and his girlfriend didn't think he was possessive AT ALL.

I also read that almost a million dollars has been donated to a gofundme campaign for the owners of Memories Pizza in Indiana, who suffered a huge backlash after one of the proprietors said that he "chose" to be heterosexual and that he believed others "chose" to be homosexual. The owners also said that while they would still serve pizza to gay people, they would not cater a gay wedding.

Who would serve pizza at a wedding? (The only people who would like that are probably the people who don't think it's necessary to wear a shirt when they get married, like the ones I saw on a reality show recently.) I think the owners said that to make it clear that they supported that "religious freedom" act. I thought about the kind, funny, and good people I've met in Chicago, who are gay. None would choose to be homosexual, because why choose an identity that motivates other people to discriminate against you, beat you, or renounce you? While people have a right to practice their own religions, I don't think they should be given thousands of dollars for discriminating against other people who are different from them.

I wrote a blog post about Karyn Bosnak, who asked for money on the Internet (before gofundme even existed) in order to pay her $20,000 credit card bill. Many people responded with money and gifts. At the time I thought it was cool. Countless gofundme campaigns later, I'm not so sure.

I like the idea of strangers helping each other. There are legitimate campaigns out there. For example, I donated a small sum to a campaign for a homeless man who did not want to be separated from his dog, because the dog was all he had left. Both the man and the dog no longer have to live on the streets, thanks to the kindness of strangers.

I've heard of other campaigns where people ask for money for lifesaving surgeries, or they ask for help when they are struggling to support their families. It's great when people show compassion for each other.

I hoped to travel this summer, either to make a second trip to New York or to travel someplace else I've never been, like Boston or Seattle. I need a new laptop, because my current one keeps breaking down. I'd like to move out of my 300-square foot apartment, with its cracked walls and constantly non-functioning shower and fridge. My neighbors leave beer cans in the elevator and steal my magazines, and one especially loud neighbor is either an amateur porn star who streams videos from her apartment or just really loves her boyfriend.

But this year, my health problems (which I'll write more about later) were very costly. Even though my insurance paid for most of my treatment, I was still on the hook for more than a thousand dollars. My student insurance will end once I complete my PhD (which will hopefully be this summer), but I still need health insurance for ongoing treatment. I also owe thousands of dollars in student loans. I have barely enough money to get me through this summer. After that, if I don't find a full-time job, I'll be screwed.

Will I start a gofundme campaign for myself? No. I hated that I even had to sign up for student loans. I worked full-time for as long as I could. I think that some people give gofundme campaigns a bad name, like the guy who started one in order to go to a comic book convention, students who want money to enroll in study abroad programs, and a couple who wanted a vow renewal ceremony.

I think that people should continue helping each other, but everyone has their limit. What about you? Have you ever donated to a gofundme campaign? What do you think of these campaigns?

Saving Face

I was supposed to give a major presentation to the entire English Department at my school recently. I cancelled it. I am trying to think of things to say to all the grad students, lecturers, and professors who will want to know why I am the only Ph.D. candidate who cancelled her presentation (all the candidates are required to make individual presentations). Here are some of the things I might say:

Grad School Nemesis #1: Why didn't you do your presentation? Where were you that day?
Me: I don't know. Why don't you ask your boyfriend?

Grad School Nemesis #2: Why did you cancel your presentation? I know you were nervous, but that's really not an excuse to cancel something like this.
Me: I'm not nervous at all. I just earned a black belt in karate. Allow me to demonstrate some of my moves on you.

Professor who once referred to my work as a "disappointment": You do realize how important these presentations are, right?
Me: Are they as important as the days when Garrett gives out free popcorn?

I didn't want to cancel this presentation. I felt nervous, scared, and stressed out about it, as everyone else did when they presented their work. But I was anxious to prove that I WASN'T a mediocre scholar. For years, I've been told that my academic work was not good enough, which made me feel like I was not good enough.

I always envied and resented the other grad students for their academic accomplishments, especially because some (though not all) made me feel bad about my lack of awards, fellowships, and publications. I remember confiding in one classmate about how awful I felt after our professor and the entire class tore apart my paper. She responded, "Well, the professor really liked my paper. You should see all the great comments she wrote on it."

I was an A student from the first grade through the master's program. Everyone always told me that I was smart. But once I enrolled in the Ph.D. program, I didn't feel smart anymore. I just felt tired, stressed, and stupid.

Since this is supposed to be my last year in the program, this presentation was my last chance to prove to the entire department that my work really is good enough and that I really am smart. In academia, reputation is very important, especially when you are networking.

But I had to cancel it. Ever since my doctor increased my medication, the side effects have gotten worse. It affected my appetite, and I lost nearly ten pounds. I still feel tired all the time, and I get sick on a regular basis. One of the other side effects is that it makes my feet feel like they're falling asleep, and I often wake up in pain in the middle of the night. I'm not able to exercise as much as I used to. I still hear that whooshing sound in my ear. I'll ask my doctor to reduce my medication, but I'm scared that she'll tell me that a) I'm still not getting better; b) I'm getting worse; c) I'll have to stay on this medication indefinitely; d) I'll have to get surgery.

I have managed to get some work done. For example, I've applied to teach at more than two dozen schools around the country. I still have my website job, which I need to pay for these medical bills (my insurance doesn't cover all of them). And of course, I still have to work on my dissertation. So even though I don't have a lot of energy, I can't stay in bed all day.

As a workaholic, I always kept working, even if I got a cold or felt tired. But this is different.  I don't feel like I can tell the other people about what I'm going through. My dissertation committee knows, and they understood when I told them I had to cancel my presentation. But I don't know what to say to the other graduate students, and I don't think they'd understand anyway. Even though I am very sick, I don't look sick or act sick. If any of them tries to criticize me or question me too much about why I cancelled, I just might scream at them.

What about you? Have you ever had to cancel something that was important to you? How do you answer questions about private issues like health problems when you don't want everyone to know?

Crying in Public

Last week I was waiting at a bus stop after I left the hospital (I had another doctor's appointment). I saw a small bird on the street, and it was hardly moving, but I knew it was alive. I thought maybe its wing was broken, but I couldn't be sure. I stood there, watching the bird, not sure of whether I should go out and try to help it or what I could do to help it. Suddenly, to my horror, a car drove over the bird and killed it.

I screamed. Several people heard me scream and kept walking, their eyes averted from my face. One guy who had also seen the bird die tried to comfort me, but I couldn't help it; I just started crying.

I read somewhere that one of the things about living in a big city is that you can cry in public and no one will notice. I've found that that's true. I cried the whole bus ride home, and no one looked at me.

I hated myself for not saving that bird, for not running out to the road, scooping it up in my jacket, and bringing it to a vet or an animal hospital. If I had just done that, that poor bird might still be alive. That bird looked so small, and it must have felt so scared, lost, and alone out there on the road. I kept thinking of what I had seen, and I couldn't stop crying.

I wasn't just crying about the bird. I cried because the doctor told me she was "concerned" about what she saw after she examined me, and she significantly increased my medication (which means the painful and uncomfortable side effects have only gotten worse since then). I cried because that meant I wasn't getting better, and I wasn't sure if I was ever going to get better.

I cried because I was scared. I want this medication to work and to cure me, so that I don't have to get surgery. I don't want to get surgery, and I don't want to go permanently blind if the surgery doesn't work. And I only have student health insurance, which I don't think would cover the entire surgery anyway. I'm having enough trouble trying to get referrals from my primary doctor so that my insurance company will cover all these doctors' visits and medical procedures. The insurance company is trying to make it so that I have to pay for everything myself. I don't have the money to pay for everything, and I don't think it's fair that I should be denied surgery and go blind just because my insurance company is full of jerks.

I cried because of all the work I have to do. I have to give a huge presentation to the entire English department in less than three weeks, and I'm not ready. I haven't had time to work on it. I've been undergoing all these painful medical procedures, struggling to stay awake due to the drowsiness caused by the medication, and spending hours waiting in doctors' offices, clinics, and hospitals (they won't let me use my laptop in there). I also haven't had enough time to send out all my job applications and missed an important deadline for a school that I really wanted to work for.

I cried because I'm supposed to get a fellow graduate student to make an introduction for me at my presentation. I've been to the other grad students' presentations, and they usually get their friends to write introductions that are filled with praise for their work. I asked several people to do my introduction, and they all said no. I rarely socialize with the other grad students, because I don't like going to the bar that they all hang out in (I don't like bars, period. In hell there is no "closing time" at bars.). And it's not like any of them invite me most of the time, anyway. Anyway, I can't even drink alcohol or soda due to the medication I'm on, so I don't really feel like drinking a glass of water and watching everyone else get drunk. I'm dreading getting up in front of the entire department and having no one do my introduction (even my own advisor was unwilling to do it), which will make it painfully obvious that I am an outcast.

I cried because I was angry. I'm angry at the people who refused to do my introduction for me. I'm angry at the people who claim to be my friends and that I can talk to them, but they won't even return my calls or my texts, even though they know what I'm going through right now. I'm angry that even if I send out all my applications right now, my chances of getting hired are slim to none because the fact that I'm a good teacher means nothing compared to the fact that I am an average scholar.

Most of all, I'm angry that even though I don't look sick or act sick (though I'm thankful that I don't look or act sick), I really AM sick. I don't deserve any of this. No one does. I don't know why this is happening to me. I've always been relatively healthy, and I always feel frightened every time I go into the hospital. (This is why I'm glad that I never went to medical school. I doubt my patients would have been okay with the fact that their doctor was more terrified than they were.)

I thought I would be able to go off the medication soon and that it would work. I thought I would get better. But I'm not getting better, and it just makes me furious at the whole world.

I'm sorry that this post is pretty depressing. I try not to write about such dark topics, but sometimes writing about what I'm going through helps me deal with it, if only a little bit. But I'll try to write about something less depressing next time.

What about you? How do you deal with it when you feel mad at the whole world? Also, do you know what you're supposed to do when you find an injured bird?

Friday Night at the ER

It started with a whooshing sound in my right ear. It sounded like my heartbeat or like what you would hear during a sonogram. I heard it constantly, even when I was trying to sleep (which is why I hardly slept for weeks). When I sat next to other grad students at lectures, I was convinced that they could hear it, though they gave no signs that they did.

I went to the general practitioner that I normally go to. "It's just ear wax," he said. He cleaned out my ears, which was very painful. "The sound will go away in a few hours." It didn't.

He referred me to an ear doctor, who said that my eustachian tubes were stuffed up due to a minor cold I'd had. She made incisions in my ears to clear up the tubes (a procedure that was also very painful), and then my ears were in pain for several days afterwards. She said the sound would go away in a few weeks. It didn't.

Then my vision became impaired. It became a strain to watch TV, even if I was just sitting across the room. It was difficult sometimes to see everything outside without squinting. I thought it was the sunlight and that I needed to wear sunglasses. But one night I was walking around outside and I realized that the lights were blurry even then.

I also had headaches every day. I realized that it was time to see another doctor. This time I went to an optometrist at Lenscrafters for an eye exam. "This is what your eyes looked like last year," she said, showing me the pictures. "This is what your eyes look like now. You need to see a specialist right away."

That same day I went to a specialist who wasn't covered by my insurance. He charged me two hundred dollars for a ten minute consultation. He said that I needed to go to the emergency room right away, because there was something seriously wrong with my eyes. That was when I got scared.

That day I spent more than ten hours in the emergency room. I went there at 2:30 in the afternoon and didn't come out until almost one in the morning. I didn't get to eat lunch OR dinner. A kind nurse felt sorry for me and offered me some graham crackers and juice, but the doctors wouldn't let me have any; they said I had to keep my stomach empty in case I had to undergo more procedures and take more medication.

There was a lot of waiting (and freaking out, on my part) at the ER. I was freaking out because at first I couldn't get a straight answer from the many doctors that I talked to on what was wrong with me. They did another eye exam. Then they did an MRI, because at first they thought I had a brain tumor. For the MRI, they put my body in a noisy machine, where I wasn't allowed to move for an hour. I lay there the whole time, terrified.

It turns out I don't have a brain tumor, but I do have a neurological disorder. I'd rather not say what it is, but I will say that it is the cause of the whooshing sound in my ear, the impaired vision, and the headaches. It's also not a psychological problem; it's physical. The doctors did a spinal tap, meaning they put a large needle in my spine and drained fluid out of me; it was very painful (I now think of September 2014 as the Month of Painful Medical Procedures).

They prescribed me some medication, which comes with several side effects. One side effect is that my feet feel like they're falling asleep all the time. Another side effect is that soda is tasteless to me now (which SUCKS, because I love Coke). Another side effect is that it makes me tired all the time, which means I can't get a lot of work done (did I mention I have to make a huge presentation to my department next month, and my job applications are due soon)?

I left a message for one friend that I had to go to the hospital. This "friend" never responded. I left another message for another friend, who didn't respond until several days later because she was "busy" with her other friends. I managed to text a third friend, who disappeared for a long time in the middle of our conversation and then immediately changed the subject of my health to something else. With friends like these, who needs enemies? I won't be calling them again. Ever.

I even Tweeted about what was happening to me. No one Tweeted a response. Celebrities can Tweet one word, like "Uh" or "What" and get a hundred responses from fans. I Tweeted about being in the ER and being sick, and no one asked if I was okay.

My father said that I brought my neurological disorder on myself and that I am to blame  because I am so neurotic (which contradicts everything the doctors said. They said that my disorder is very rare and happens to otherwise young, healthy women.). He said I must have worked myself up into a frenzy and that's why there's something wrong with my brain now. He argued with the ER doctors over the phone and forbade me from getting a spinal tap because of the risks involved. I told him that I am a thirty-three year old adult and that my decisions are MINE, not his.

My mother was very upset with me too, and she called several times to let me know how angry she was at me. The only people who showed me any compassion were two of my professors, who I had to tell because I wasn't able to meet all of their deadlines due to the fact that I was seeing more than a dozen doctors and was in and out of the hospital for more than a month.

Right now I'm feeling sad, scared, alone, and lost. The doctors are optimistic that the medication will work. BUT if it doesn't, I may need brain surgery. If THAT doesn't work, I may go permanently blind. If I wasn't neurotic BEFORE...

What about you? Have you ever dealt with something like this? How did you deal with it?