(no subject)

I spent the first half of the day mostly hiding behind closed doors, so the kids wouldn't see that I wasn't coping well with INSANE abdominal pain. I can only compare it to contractions during transition: but it wasn't like that, just a pain level similarity. I came out periodically, gritting my teeth, to ask Ananda and Aaron to do things I'd never ask them to do normally, like diaper and dress a naked Elise, finish making the oatmeal that was almost done, and make sure Jake didn't go outside. I talked to Laura and to Grant on the phone, going in a couple of hours from "I don't know what's wrong...but something is wrong" to "I need help...NOW".

The second half of the day I spent in the ER, which was sort of a relief, because I knew my kids were in the capable hands of my sister, I could lean on Grant (though I couldn't actually LEAN, as that was agony...), hospitals automatically make me dissociate, and I knew there was strong pain medication on the agenda for the very near future.

THEN...I had to lay on my back while a doctor palpated and generally tortured the hurt area. I nearly screamed, which is A LOT for me. I lay there trying to recover for awhile afterward, before being taken to x-ray, where I realized...it didn't hurt anymore.

The pain was just...gone. After my tests it was time for the pain meds the examining doc had ordered and I remembered wanting so badly...but I was like...there's no reason. I don't need them now?

I have experienced this same pain, right up front in the middle by my diastasis, for an hour or two several times over the past week, but it's never been so severe or stuck around so long. I was really weirded out to suddenly have my appetite back and be reading a novel in triage, after NINE HOURS of misery.

My diagnosis is "intermittent obstruction". The theory being that some intestines or what have you are slipping through the big hole in my muscles, and then I eat or whatever and they swell and can't come back through, and then it hurts really bad until they're freed up again. Which laying flat on my back and having the doctor push and prod them apparently did. And I am supposed to muster the fortitude to do that myself should this situation arise again before I get a reparative surgery. Thus far I do not have intestinal inflammation or infection or death from lack of circulation, as my white count is normal and things look ok on CT scan.

Good News: They really think I can get just a normal hernia repair, like cut open skin, sew muscles shut, sew skin shut. It's sometimes outpatient, or a single night stay. Nothing like a full on tummy tuck REMOVING excess skin and fat and shaving muscles down and so forth that takes six weeks to recover from.

Bad News: I have to get it done pretty damn soon :/ They say I've "gotten lucky" so far that the obstruction keeps clearing. A doctor actually said to me, "You cannot get constipated, you'll end up in emergency surgery".


So here I sit in the house my sister cleaned very well while I was away, after largely unattended children had completely trashed it. With all my kids tucked into their beds, I'm feeling strangely anticlimactic, relieved, confused, burdened, and emotionally exhausted. Somehow I don't see sleep coming so easily.

(no subject)

When I was a tiny toddler in Key West, my dad had me in the grocery store, and there was a very large black man in the produce section, near us. We lived with my extremely predjudiced Cuban grandparents at the time, and having listened to them talk so often, I immediately piped up, "DADDY! That is ONE BIG N*****!"

My Dad is "only a little racist" and raised his hands to the man he was looking up at in a gesture of surrendur, saying "I'm sorry man, that's not me, she hears my parents talk like that".

My Dad is only 48 years old, but in his remembered life, there were segregated water fountains in Key West. He was progressive for telling me things like, "Tina, black people aren't just born bad, I mean if you put a black baby with a white family they'd grow up totally normal and be just like you one day".


It was a family scandal when my sister had a black "boyfriend" in elementary school. I never talked about how all the black girls in my 7th grade homeroom loved to do my hair every morning, at home, because my stepdad was a real southern fool who thought he was some sort of martyr for saving a little black boy's life just as if he were white, when he happened to be there after a car wreck.

It was so strange, to realize as a teenager that CUBAN IS PART AFRICAN. There is some genetic junk going on there, the term "afro-cuban" exists. There's a reason my hair is more coarse and curly, my nose is so wide, and my curves are so pronounced. I've seen black men that look exactly like my Dad, except for pigment. This is not the sort of thing I could ever talk about with my Dad, though, or my mom, who resolutely crossed the "H" off my emergency contact card from school every year to write in, "white". OTHER Hernandez's might be Hispanic, but not US.


So anyway I've been sort of in the closet in my beliefs on equality, in my real life. My white grandparents were HORRIBLE about it, and I lived with them while I went through my big Harlem Rennaissance reading obsession, and they never knew. I lived with my mom and stepdad again when most of my friends at work were black...but they stayed at work. Periodically there'd be a heated argument but mostly it didn't seem worth it, with family. On the internet or in class ok, fine. But it just sucks to argue with your racist family, and once every year or so started to feel exhausting. Most everyone but my sister and I have moved away from South Florida because of "all the Julios" and variations on that theme, while I am actually grateful everyday to raise my kids in such a diverse area. I actually want them to hear other languages and see different skin, and there's just no way to explain that to someone who will stand there ranting to my Mexican brother in law about the damn Mexicans as if it isn't even rude.



The point of all this is...I'm so glad equality is coming ROARING OUT OF THE CLOSET. So glad for all the kids and grownups out there (HELLO julierocket) who've had to bite their tongue a million times because the times they don't are so disastrous. So glad that it's not just coming at them from us anymore. I'm so glad that my parents, stepparents, in-laws and grandparents will all have to deal with having a black president running this country. I'm so glad my kids get to see it as normal from the time they're young. I love it that A and A are across the street talking to our redneck neighbors (who are all pro-McCain in not a pro-life or a conservative way, but a "let's be real here", uncomfortable with a black man way), telling them that we voted for Obama. That's right, we LIKE him. We even endorse him! And we aren't even embarassed! I love having a husband who calls me from the car where he's been listening to the speech to tell me he was getting goosebumps and almost crying, like damn the man can talk. Not "damn the man can talk for a ...." or any other stupid thing, but just wow, what an intelligent guy, what a relief after these last few years of speeches.

A trend-setting, really smart, independant black first lady. How awesome is that? Obviously smart and charismatic black children living in the White House. It makes me all giddy.

I'm so glad my vote had some small part to play in bringing about this awesome historic day.

And I am so personally invested in desperately hoping the man lives through his term(s) :/ Because I can hear the hatred and the jokes and the fist-slamming in my head, in the voices of just about every man who raised me, and I feel so afraid that just ONE guy out there has to be so passionately hateful that they're willing to die for it, and that would be that.

It's awesome that Obama is willing to stand there in bullet proof clothing behind 8 foot bullet proof glass and address the nation that's elected him.

But it's sick that he has to.