Women Do Something (Continuing the conversation)

A couple of weeks ago I attended an event called Women Say Something and, naturally because I tell you guys almost everything, I blogged about it.  Thanks to that first event and the wonders of Facebook I am now hooked in to some super cool active women, the kind of women who get off their arses and make an event like this happen.  It seemed natural that I would go to the follow up event, after all it was free and I am broke, it's about feminist issues and I'm a feminist.  Best of all the event was attended by the fabulous Kimberly Dark.

Kimberly is a sociologist and a story teller.  She uses humour, irony and anecdote to open our eyes to the strange and interesting diversity of thought and perspective in our world.  I feel privileged to have had the opportunity to attend and to enjoy her work.

Me under the star with the star of the show, Kimberly Dark.

Lots of very interesting topics were raised and discussed by the group.  Many would be worthy of exploration and commentary.  The thing that resonated with me most intensely was the need to hold to our beliefs and represent our points of view every day in as many situations as we encounter.  One articulate young woman pointed out that thirty or forty years ago there was a huge gap in equality, it was blatant and gaping.  It was easy to see the cause, to know what was needed in the fight for Women's Liberation, for the Women's Movement, for Feminism.  So many things have changed and so many barriers have been broken down that it is more difficult than it was back then to simplistically categorize the target.  Yet inequity still exists in every arena.  As the young woman put it, "there are many small gaps rather than one large one".

I can't remember a time in my life when I did not believe that we influence the world one person at a time.  Mostly, on a day to day basis, I just try to make people smile in the hopes that they too will make someone else smile.  Long before that disgusting schmaltzy movie "Pay It Forward" claimed the high ground I believed in the difference small interactions can make.  As a lesbian I have always been "Out and Proud" in virtually every situation I have lived through.  This is how you combat homophobia.  You keep showing people that gay people are just normal everyday people like them, they/we are their friends, co-workers, family etc.  I don't think anyone has ever said this better than Hilary Clinton did recently at the Human Rights Day in Geneva, here courtesy of the Huffington Post is a transcript of her brilliant speech..  I digress...

Feminist is (as Girlwiththecane said in a comment on the last blog) still a dirty word..  But I don't really care what we call it (though it would be convenient to have a title that symbolically represented basically the same thing to everyone) but I do care about women and equality.  I believe we need to not shirk the day to day responsibility of having the courage of our convictions.  The courage to clearly state what we believe and why it matters to us.  I believe that we need to be Out and Proud as women and as feminists (regardless of the title).  We are 51% of the population, the world over, and we own less than 1% of the world's property.

Courtesy of Girl's Guide to Taking Over The World

This fight has not been won.  

This struggle is not over.  

This complacency is killing us.  

Every day in every interaction, we, the ordinary people not just the high profile organizers and activists, WE need to take this debate to our friends, our co-workers, and our families...

Stand up and be counted or stand down and be trodden on.

(As an aside some of the women were kicking on for a drink at my old stomping ground The Imperial but unfortunately I was starting to get that urge to be horizontal so I gave it a miss... maybe next time!)

The Marriage Equality Rally

You guys are going to start thinking I am a professional protester!

I got the most wonderful parking spot, on the edge of Hyde Park, only maybe 100 metres from the rally stage.  I was alone.  Well alone with about five thousand people.  This is the first time I have been to Hyde Park since I moved back to Oz three months ago and it was a beautiful day.  I couldn't resist taking a few pics.

This is the Archibald Fountain and St Mary's Cathedral I just liked the way it was framed.

For some reason Apollo pointing at the spires of the cathedral appealed to my sense of the irreverent being that I was at a marriage equality rally.

The speakers were a little difficult to hear at times but the crowd was wonderful.  I listened to a conversation between a mother and her little boy who looked to be under 3.

Boy "Why are all these people here?"

Mother "For a rally darling"

Boy "What's a rally?"

Mother "It's a way for people to gather and show everyone what they think"

Boy "What do these people think?"

Mother "The want everyone to be able to marry whoever they love."

Boy "I don't want to get married"

Mother "Well maybe one day you will and you might want to marry a man or you might want to marry a lady and these people want you to be able to choose."

I caught the mother's eye accidentally and we exchanged a smile.

The entire time I was there the thing I heard more than anything was people on their mobile phones trying to direct other people to where they were.

"I see you - keep walking and then turn right."....

"Are you walking towards the fountain or away from it?"....

"I'm to the north side of the stage"...

On and on this went.  These people (most of whom were quite young) will never know the anxiety and irritation of searching for your friend in a big crowd, nor for that matter the excitement and pleasure of finding them!  Technology giveth and taketh away.

The speakers led the crowd in a selection of chants that would be used during the march.

"Gay straight black white - marriage is a civil right"

"Julia Gillard ALP - we demand equality"

It wasn't too long, maybe an hour, before the crowd headed off down Market St on the way to Darling Harbour to where the Australian Labor Party was having it's National Conference.  I decided not to walk along, I was a bit wobbly and it seemed a little far for me, I also would have had to come back to the car.  This is one of those times when it would be handy to have a scooter.  I followed in the car for a while taking note that all four of the mounted police were women (not the horsemen of the Apocalypse SotA girls!)

The four mounted police women at the back of the march.

I kind of tried to get down to Darling Harbour to meet the march at the end point but it turned out to be virtually impossible with the terrible traffic and the lack of parking.  By then I was feeling a bit pooped too so I headed for home.

I really wish TLOML had been here to go with me.  It would have been a lot more fun if I was sharing it.  This blog will have to suffice.

The Sophie's Choice of Illness...

I had an interesting conversation with the Immunologist today.  We were discussing the possible use of steroids to alleviate my pain.

He was a REALLY cool guy and I totally appreciated his direct, human approach especially when he said, after listening to my description of how I feel, "So you feel like shit?"
"YES!" I responded with more animation than my energy level appreciated.  I was just so, bloody, excited to have a specialist (a professor no less) really listen.

Anyway, the steroid discussion...  Now remember by now we have a rapport and I think he is shooting straight with me...

"Would you take ten years pain free if it meant that you would develop diabetes and die prematurely?"
"Ooooh, I'm not sure about that.  I only recently lost a close friend to complications from diabetes and it was not pretty."
"I would.  But that's just my personal opinion, it's an individual choice."


This is a conversation I could never in my weirdest, most intoxicated, most bad-acid-tripping dreams have imagined being a party to.

Fortunately for the moment it is a pre-conversation and I don't have to make that decision right now.

Tomorrow more bloods,  The pathology request form is literally so full of things he is testing for that he wrote in the margins and in the space above and then drew a big circle around it to make sure they knew they were all tests,  He chased (I use the term loosely because a greyhound really doesn't have to chase a snail) me out to the reception to add a few extras that had just occurred to him.  Some of the things he is testing for are pretty scary and for now I really don't want to get too freaked out about things like brain-eating antibodies and cancer-companion-inmuno-oddities,  so we'll just have to wait and see.  He did seem pretty interested in Sjogren's.  The good thing is he is looking and it could be good news if he found something and it could be good news if he didn't and it could be terrifying if he found some other thing and depressing if he finds nothing... so win/win - lose/lose who knows?

He is also sending me for an MRI of my brain - which no one has bothered to do before,  I know there is a brain in there, I have a picture to prove it, because I had an ear infection they thought was eating into my brain back in 2007 and they did a CAT scan then.

I think I will call him Professor McCool 'cause he was really a pretty cool dude, I might start calling him HOUSE if he figures this out!...He spent an hour and fifteen minutes with me and I think that is pretty amazing, all on the government health care system.

Any of my US friends who think that Universal Health Care would give you a lower standard of care than the system you have now is Captain Rats (sorry, you are certifiable).  In the USA I NEVER, even with full medical insurance, received this level of care or this degree of genuine inquiry AND in spite of paying huge amounts of money for coverage every paycheck I was still co-payed to death!!!  Health care is a business in the US and a service here... the whole mindset is different!  Not that it is perfect here, nothing is.  But a public patient nobody, like me, can still get in to see the best and brightest in the country and that is really quite impressive.

(PS Just Kidding about the acid trips)

When bad news is good

Today I saw Dr McLovely again, I actually told her that I call her Dr McLovely in my blog and, living up to her name, she blushed!

She had all my test results back and there were some not so nice results.

Quincy MD I'm not, so my grasp of the significance of all these things is tenuous at best but here is the upshot...

Whatever indicates a possible auto-immune disease was elevated.

Something to do with my thyroid was wrong and she said my brain was having to work very hard (no news there) to try and get my thyroid to produce enough of whatever makes my metabolism metabolize.  This makes perfect sense because I have always been what the old cow cockies (beef farmers) would call an "easy keeper".  I don't eat very much but I don't lose weight either.  I'm not the size of a barn or anything but I am generously proportioned.

The thingy (that is a technical term for those of you who are uninitiated) that indicates Celiac Disease was high.  Potentially this could account for the fatigue and what I had presumed to be a touch of IBS.

My sugar levels were elevated on a fast test which could indicate diabetes.  I told her about my weird sugar stuff from when I was pregnant.  I used to go to my pre-natal checkups every month and every month my sugar levels were elevated on the pee test so dutifully I would trot across the road to the path lab for a blood test and every month my blood sugar was fine.  Dr McLovely is an expert at that breeding stuff, pregnancy, family planning etc and she laughed when I told her this and informed me that I had had Gestational Diabetes which apparently makes a woman predisposed to develop real diabetes later in life.

There were few other odds and sods... apparently I have at some time had glandular fever (news to me!)  Naughty cholesterol is high, nice cholesterol is too low (the bad guys are in the lead in the cholesterol Stupidbowl apparently).

NOW - a "normal" person might come out of the surgery reeling from news like this, they might be HORRIFIED or even TERRIFIED!!!  But, as anyone who has dealt with Fibromyalgia symptoms knows - we are far from normal!  When you live your life with a myriad of unpleasant problems that have no known cause and no known cure it does strange things to your mindset.  It makes you sometimes almost wish that you had one of the trendy, clearly defined, conditions.  Something that is easy to explain to other people; something that has a well publicized name; something that can be nailed down with a specific test; something that potentially can be CURED!

I'm not very keen on the idea of having diabetes; I lost a very close family friend (almost a sister) through complications of diabetes earlier this year at the tender age of 52.  I'm not keen on having thyroid issues or Celiac Disease.  I'm particularly not keen on having some kind of auto-immune disease (the idea of my white blood cells attacking some part of me is like a bad B Grade horror movie in my mind).  Still, let's face it Fibromyalgia is not a pic-a-nic with Yogi and Boo Boo either.

In spite of blood tests up the wazoo over the last two years no one has ever seen these results before, maybe Dr McLovely ordered a more comprehensive series of tests, maybe Aussie path labs are better, maybe all these wonderful problems are all new... I don't know.

The possibility is that some of these things might explain some of the fibro symptoms and that some of these things might be manageable with diet or meds, some of them might even be curable...  Of course I have been dancing with chronic pain for most of my life... long before Dr MingDynasty decided to call it Fibromyalgia so I don't really hold out much hope that these things are INSTEAD of the FMS.  Most likely they are in addition to FMS... but still an explanation, however limited, is a welcome piece of news.

Wouldn't it be cool if they could up my thyroid dooverhickey (another technical term - look it up!) and increase my metabolism?  Maybe I could become trim, taught and terrific and all the eligible lesbians in Sydney would suddenly be bashing down my door!

So back for more blood tests in the morning - glucose tolerance etc...  I made an appointment with the Immunologist, I think it is for January 2031 (He is a VERY important person).  They told me they process their cancellations every Friday morning so I have set an alarm to remind myself to annoy them weekly.  They asked if I wanted to see him about chronic fatigue or allergies...  I said I have fatigue and auto-immune irregularities and this stuff is ruining my life and that 2031 is just not soon enough!  Hence the suggestion to call on Friday mornings (silly woman telling me that - she'll rue the day!)

Just a side note - anyone in Sydney or environs there is a rally to Re-Occupy Sydney at Noon this Sat at Town Hall and if I can drag my exhausted arse out of the house I will be there!

NB - My lovely American friends I was only kidding about the Path Labs
and
The immunologist appt is 2012... ok forgive me, so I exaggerated a little!

Occupy Sydney - yesterday's blog at last

While I was thinking about what to write here about the Occupy movement I am VERY sad to say that this Sydney Protesters Forcibly Removed happened.

I went to the rally yesterday and it was respectful, peaceful and well organized in spite of rows of riot police lining each end of the area and preparing to 'kettle' the protesters.  Kettling is the term applied to the act of police forming cordons across the paths out of an area and thus either containing the people within it or forcing the use of a particular (police chosen) exit.

You can see the rows of Riot Police behind the "Cop It Sweet" street theatre group who were doing the very Aussie thing - "taking the piss" out of the coppers.

Now for those of you who may not know this I used to be a Constable in the NSW Police Force.  I went all the way through the Police Academy, including running obstacle courses and hill sprints in the snow during two nasty Goulburn winters and spit polishing my shoes.  I spent three years working in General Duties at the lively inner city station, Newtown (ironically now the lesbian hub of Sydney).

I really understand the importance of doing your job regardless of your personal beliefs and attitudes.  I took a very low key approach when I was dealing with people, even when I knew I was going to arrest them, I reasoned with people when I could and requested compliance before demanding it 99% of the time (the other 1% was too urgent.)  I was only ever assaulted twice, once by a 10 yr old boy I caught prying the change boxes out of public phones and the other time by an old crazy woman, and wow is that ever another story.  The HUGE blokes I hauled out of pub brawls always stepped meekly into the back of the truck.  Anyway, I digress...  I get it.  I understand both sides and I can't appreciate either police who use unnecessary force OR protesters who get in the faces of cops and stir up trouble.

I went to Occupy Sydney yesterday because I strongly believe that there is too much disparity between rich and poor; I believe Wall St in particular, and corporate America in general, directly caused the recession in the US and the collapse of the housing industry; and I believe that the 1% has continued to rape and pillage like pigs at a trough while EVERYONE ELSE (yes EVERYONE, the other 99%) has struggled to tighten their belts!  Furthermore, I believe that if you don't show your face and get yourself counted (if you possibly can) then you deserve what you get.

On the way into the downtown area I met a lovely young man (my god I sound like my grandmother!), Andrew is 17 and he has no idea what the Occupy movement was about, but he was interested.  He sat with me on the bus and then waited while I got my ticket at the train station so that he could wait with me for the train and then sat with me there too.  He had been refereeing basketball all morning and was on his way home.  I tried to explain it to him but to say it is a protest against corporate greed is just scraping the surface.  I would have had better words on my way home (except on the way home I was really tired and might not have struck up the conversation in the first place.)

The best speaker was a bloke from the MUA (Maritime Union of Australia) whose name I unfortunately didn't catch.  The MUA was there with a portable cafe making free sausage sandwiches for all comers.  They took a vote and approved a resolution of solidarity with the Occupy Sydney movement and they have been on board and helping since day one.  Their speaker was interesting, informative and passionate he talked about Shell Oil whose profits amount to $35,000 a minute, yes A MINUTE.  How the MUA is struggling with Shell for tiny pay raises and improved safety and conditions on the Shell tankers when Shell earns more than the most highly paid seafarer on their ships every three minutes.  He talked about another CEO who was getting a 71% pay increase (to over five million dollars a year) when the same company was fighting against a 5% pay increase for employees, unfortunately I couldn't hear the details in this case.  It is JUST WRONG!!!

The Occupy Movement is rather esoteric which makes it hard to clearly define the objectives and even to elucidate a desired solution.  In a masculine, goal focused, society this makes it a bit hard to understand.  My old friend, who met me there, tells me this is an integral part of the ideal, in that by not having specific demands the movement is open to evolve and morph into whatever it needs to be without the confines or structure of an imposed objective.  (I hope I got that right mate - please correct me with a comment if I screwed up).  Ergo the system is broken but the fix may not have revealed itself yet.  Oh and BTW my old friend was great, it made me smile to think how unchanged she really is after 30 years of not seeing each other.  Yet again I am reminded of what terrific friends I picked all those years ago!

Just an update, I did take a cane/walking stick with me.  I never really realized before that it is like having a private portable banister or handrail whenever you want it, which is kind of cool.  (I have been a huge handrail user for years since a few falls down stairs, due to crappy balance, drummed it into my thick head.)  I was feeling pretty damn good yesterday and I really didn't need the cane though I must confess to giving it a lot more use on the way home when I was starting to get seriously tired.  Last night was one of those nights when the need to be horizontal overwhelmed hunger and thirst and was only trumped by the need to pee!

Storytime and Occupy Sydney

About seventeen years ago when I finally decided that constant pain was really worth mentioning to my GP he put me on an anti-inflammatory drug called Orudis (Ketoprofen) which is a Non-Steroidal Anti-Inflammatory (NSAID).  One pill a day which suits a busy slacker like me (my son was about 1 at the time).  He also said, "Welcome to middle age" which I thought was a bit rough seeing as I was only around 32 and most women live well past 64!  The first few days this drug was like a miracle for me, for the first time I was pretty much pain free.  Then, on about the third day, I got depressed... flat lined... no joy (even with my wonderful absence of pain) and started to cry... and cry... like a willow I wept!  On around day five I went back to the doctor who rapidly consulted his MIMS and found that in some infinitesimal percentage of people depression is a side effect.  Of course we immediately discontinued.  This was the real eye opener - the depression lifted and the PAIN came back, it came back in spades, with friends (whole tour buses of painful friends tap danced on my joints and muscles).   I was astounded by the level of pain that I had been living with... acclimated to...  Unfortunately, as an aside, further attempts at NSAIDS revealed that I have a reasonably serious allergy to them and because for some reason the doctors are worried about anaphylactic shock I am not allowed to take anything from an aspirin on up.  It's a real pain in the arse (and elsewhere in this case!).  So I am left with over the counter paracetamol/acetaminophen or narcotics and one is useless and the other twists my head.  I think the only reason I am dribbling on about this is that I had to fill out the questionnaire for the pain clinic today and it was a pain of its own kind.

I want to go to the Occupy Sydney rally tomorrow, even if I have to go alone I want to go.  I might even meet a friend there who I have not seen for 30 years (another story no doubt) which would be really cool!  Naturally there is a but...  I'm stressing out about walking too far and standing too long.  I think back to the anti-uranium rallies I attended as a girl in the 70's and I remember an aching back and sore feet from standing for so long (and I was a pretty fit athletic kid!).  I'm stressing out.  I tried to write a sentence on facebook chat to tell my old friend and I wrote and erased four times before deciding not to mention it.  I don't have any mobility aids (I used to have a cane in the US but it hurt my hand/elbow/shoulder too much to use it so I never used it, not even once) and I look resoundingly healthy (which makes my GP question my veracity when I tell him it hurts everywhere) but I am scared, I feel very vulnerable.  This is a VERY unusual state of affairs for me.  I am actually thinking of buying a walking stick before going in the morning.  In truth I have been thinking about getting one for a while but I have been resistant, very resistant...  I must say I was using the putter when I got exhausted on the golf course, the other day, and it did help.  My balance is not all that flash, I lurch along like an old drunk even on the rare occasions when I am sober! (just kidding).  Over half of the severe pain I get is such that it impacts my walking until it passes, at those times a cane would really help...  Why am I so resistant?  Why is this causing me such anxiety and concern?

Is it my ego or concern for my image?  It never bothered me when friends and former lovers used aids, am I that shallow?

Am I concerned people will think it is unnecessary or attention seeking?  Because after all I can get by without it most of the time.

Is it just plan stubborn cussedness that makes me not want to let go?  This is hard, it is another step of acceptance, one I may not be ready to take...

Am I going to let something like this stop me from contributing to a cause I believe in?

I really don't know what I am going to do about this but I am not going to decide tonight.  I will think about it , and if I am so lucky as to hear your opinions I will think about those too... I will make up my mind in the morning.

It's a pain in the arse!

No, I mean it... it really is a pain in the arse!

Just a little background on the way Fibromyalgia (or AUSRRIWCP as it will forthwith be known (NOT)) affects me from a pain perspective.  I ache, everywhere from the tips of my toes to my hair follicles, it's a base line low to middle level pain that is OMNIPRESENT!  Things hurt all the time and they hurt more when they are moved, flexed, stressed, touched, pushed, pulled, caressed and generally whenever there is any kind of stimulus  either from the interior (me asking my body to do something) or from the exterior.  If you know what it feels like when you have the flu and you ache all over and your skin hurts then you have some idea of the constant baseline of pain.  Then there are the floating sharper more insistent pains and these ones wander around my body with no rhyme or reason.  It might be one hip flames up and walking becomes excruciating (I would use a cane but that hurts my hands wrists and shoulders), it could be a shoulder (can't lift my arm), neck (can't turn my head), back (let's not go there) etc.  The regular offenders in this area for me are hips, ankles, back, shoulders, knees, wrists and hands.  Right at this moment, in spite of the fact that I am relaxed and as comfortable as I ever get (and have taken pain medication), my left hip, my right shoulder and MY ARSE are in substantial pain.  Yes my arse... Not like haemorrhoids (I have given birth and I fully appreciate the epee up the butt joy of that kind of pain - but that isn't it) no it is my coccyx - lucky me!  This insignificant, ignored little joint, that has the range of motion of a steel girder at rest, has decided to assert its need for attention.  It's been extra insistent for the last few days and I know it was not helped by waiting over two hours to see the doctor this morning.  So if you see me walking even more strangely than usual or sitting delicately sideways on a chair you know it's just my resident pain in the arse!

Now the doctor .... hmmmm....what a frustrating morning...  I need the doctor to fill in a form for the government - he won't fill it in until I am assessed by a pain clinic - the pain clinic has a twelve month waiting period.  I can feel a catch 22 coming on here...  My alternatives:-

• Get another doctor
• Get the current doctor (please don't make me wait another 2 1/2 hours!!!) to give me a referral to a different pain clinic and hope their wait list is shorter, OR
• Give up.

Now anyone with Fibromyalgia knows how immensely appealing it is to just give up.  Lots of people who have Fibro suffer from chronic fatigue syndrome and I'm not sure if I do or I don't.  Certainly I don't have much energy and my vim (whatever that is) and vigour are probably rating about 20 % or what they were even five years ago - so maybe I do...  What I do know is that being in pain is really tiring, it wears you out. I could spin that in a more exciting way and suggest I am constantly on an adventurous quest for a more comfortable position and it is exhausting - no that didn't work... looks like my marketing skills are abandoning me.  But if I give up... well, that will cause other, perhaps more serious, problems.

I've decided to try and get the doctor to give me an alternative referral and in the mean time - if I can summon up the energy I will look for a better and more helpful doctor.  

All in all - the whole thing is just a giant pain in the arse!