People Are People

 

 Note: I don't know who wrote the comment for August, but it didn't make any sense. The comment was about being left-handed, and that somehow being a bad thing. I am proudly left-handed and it hasn't caused me any undue problems. In fact, I feel that it has made me better at problem-solving. However, the August post had nothing to do with handedness.  

 

“People are people, so why should it be you and I should get along so awfully…”

This Depeche Mode song has resonated with me since the first time I heard it in 1984.

I am a contemporary of Ruby Bridges. She is a year older than I. I admire her and her family, and am deeply sorry for the difficulties and outright horrors she experienced in school.

Even though she didn’t entirely believe it or live it, my mother taught me that you shouldn’t judge people based on race, religion, gender, ethnic background or, by my own extension, sexual orientation.

I know she didn’t live it. Every time I pointed out something my parents allowed my older brothers to do that they didn’t let me do, I was told, “That’s different; they’re boys.” It was never that they were older. All you had to do to qualify was to be a boy.

I assume she wanted me to be better. Whether or not she realized she had her own set of prejudices, despite what she tried to teach me, I don’t know. Perhaps she assumed that, just living life, I’d pick up the same prejudices she had somewhere along the line. I didn’t. I took to heart what she taught me. And I hated the “Do as I say, not as I do,” philosophy.

Of course, it’s all very well, coming from a lily-white neighborhood, where everyone on my block attended either the Catholic church or the Methodist one on Sundays to say, “Don’t be prejudiced,” or “I’m not prejudiced.” The idea is never tested; it’s only a theory.

My mother’s first-generation Scotts-Irish mother was Protestant, but since she had married someone who was a first generation but of Irish Catholic descent, part of the marriage agreement was to raise the children Catholic. That particular grandmother (I never knew her; she died the same year my parents married) did an excellent job of keeping her promise, and even had a good friend who was a priest. Granted she was Episcopalian, which some people jokingly refer to as “Catholic lite,” (no offense intended to any faith), which probably made things a little easier, given the similarities of the two faiths. (I’ve been both.)

When my grandmother was on her deathbed, her priest friend asked her if she wanted to convert. She did not, or at least she didn’t think it was honest to do so on one’s deathbed, considering she’d lived her life in a different faith.

I attended the local Catholic school. Two tests of what my mother said she wanted for me happened there.

In the first instance, I became a rebel at six by refusing to believe what the nun who taught our first grade class – impressionable 5 ½ to 7 year olds – told us in Religion class. According to her, only Catholics could go to heaven.

First of all, there were the tales of my Protestant grandmother, whom everyone said was a saintly woman. Even her priest friend said he wished he was as sure of his place in heaven as she was of hers.

Second, I could not believe in a God who created an entire planet of people, most of whom would be relegated to eternal damnation. It simply made no sense.

Fortunately, several years later, when someone in my class asked a question of a visitor to our class about why someone would be another religion when they knew it meant they would spend eternity in hell, the teacher was so upset and embarrassed by the question, especially since the guest in our class was of a different faith, that she told him he was wrong, and where did he ever get such an uninformed idea? The entire class proceeded to tell her that we had been taught that very thing by Sister Attila the Nun in first grade.

The teacher quickly, with all due apology, escorted our guest out of the room. After lunch, one of the parish priests came for a visit to disabuse us of such a notion. He told us that the church never taught that. So, I was back on good terms with God after that.

Two years after that first grade teaching, when the Civil Rights movement was getting into full swing – shortly before the JFK assassination – we had our first black family attend our school. There were three boys. One was in first grade, one in second, and one in my third grade class.

My third grade teacher thought nothing of doing what is now called peer teaching, but which had no name at the time. I was in the first reading group. Until that year, we only had three reading groups. But that year we had a fourth. It consisted of three or four boys, one of whom was our new black student.

Another student and I were assigned to help the fourth group with their English assignment, since the teacher couldn’t quite get through to them.

I had two of the boys, a boy who disliked me as much as I disliked him, and our new student. The first boy stood as far away from me as possible, and at one point said he understood the points of the grammar lesson, and returned to his seat. I continued to work with the new boy, and suddenly I saw his face brighten as he actually finally understood what I’d been trying to teach him. I was glad.

He looked at me and said, “When I grow up, I’m going to marry you!”

My reply was, “Well, I don’t think my parents will let me marry you.”

Stop right there. It isn’t what you think. Yes, it was prejudice – my parents’ – but not because he was black. I couldn’t imagine my parents allowing me to marry anyone from the fourth reading group!

I only learned that my parents expected me to pick up their prejudices several years later. When I was 12 or 13, the movie, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner premiered. The film ratings had only just started, and that film had an R rating, so none of us was old enough to see it. We were also too young to be allowed to date. However, my teacher that year used dating and that film as a pretext to gauge racial prejudice in our class.

She explained the premise of the film, and then asked would we date someone of another race. Most of my classmates who answered the question gave what I considered the lame excuse, “Well, I would, but my parents wouldn’t let me.” They wanted to sound aligned with the times (1967), I suppose. I don’t recall anyone saying they wouldn’t, but I imagine there were at least one or two who felt that way.

I had finally had enough of what I considered bigotry hiding behind adults. I raised my hand and told the teacher my parents wouldn’t have a problem with it, and told her what my mother had taught me.

I was proud of myself when I came home and told my mother. She was horrified. I couldn’t understand why. Her response was, “What will their parents think of us?”

Well, who cares? I thought what my mother had taught me was more aligned with Christian teachings than bigotry. As far as I know, there were no repercussions.

The “Who cares?” attitude came from years of being told, when I was denied the opportunity to do what everyone else was doing, “And if everyone else jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge, would you jump in after them?”

I was always – and probably still am – considered a dork. I took in the strays, the kids no one else wanted. I didn’t always necessarily want them, either, but I usually stood up for them against what others were saying or doing.

Case in point, in our final year of elementary school, a new set of twins, a boy and a girl, were coming to our class. They moved in next to a girl in our class I didn’t particularly like. The new girl would be in our class, and the boy would be in the other eighth grade.

Well, this mean girl came in one morning filled with venomy gossip about the new girl. She already disliked her. She proceeded to turn everyone against this as yet unmet student: she was fat, she smelled, she had bad breath, she stood too close when talking to people, she wasn’t very smart, etc. This mean girl wasn’t exactly a confection of perfection herself, and it just made me angry that the new girl wasn’t even given a chance.

So, when the new girl arrived and everyone avoided her like the plague, I introduced myself and chatted with her. I think she was so grateful that anyone gave her the time of day that, from that moment, she clung to me as a lifeline. It didn’t matter that what the mean girl had said was mostly true. It was too unkind to turn people against her before they met her.

She wasn’t my favorite person to be around, but she was far better than the petty, self-righteous classmates who lived to make fun of others.

By the time I reached university, I had a whole new set of people to form an alliance with.

University was a seismic shift from what my life had been up to that point. I lived in a dorm that was, at the time, an experiment: a co-ed dorm. When I mentioned to my parents that I’d signed up for a co-ed dorm, their reaction was, “Oh, that’s nice.” The rest of my relatives were somewhat less than enthusiastic about the idea, immediately assuming sex and drugs and rock-n-roll.

“Your parents are letting you live in a co-ed dorm?!” (I was 18.)

“Well, I come from a co-ed family,” was my usual response. (I come from a very sarcastic family.)

Not satisfied with the fact that I wasn’t embarrassed by their questioning, my relatives and others would often try to drive their intention to embarrass me home further.

“I understand there’s a lot of sex going on in the co-ed dorms.”

That got old fast, along with asking if my roommate was a guy. The way the dorms were set up, either one floor was girls and one guys, or in the case of the L-shaped buildings, one wing was girls and one was guys. We had to have separate bathrooms, after all. It wasn’t Amsterdam.

So, I would explain that, no, people generally didn’t even date people from their own dorm, since that seemed almost like incest. That shocked them. I don't think they knew I knew that word.

One woman who wasn’t a relative decided to butt in on the discussion. She said she wouldn’t allow her daughter to live in a co-ed dorm. She lived in a no-visitation dorm, to which I countered, “I understand most of the women in those dorms are lesbians.”

While not very PC at all, I wanted to make a point that she was making unfounded judgements about me, my dorm, and what does or does not go on at college campuses.

I used to tell people I went from an all-girls’ Catholic school to a co-ed dorm. To everyone else, it seemed shocking. To me, it was simply a point of growth. But there was another point to be made. Of the first 10 people I met in college, half of them were gay.

It didn’t bother me. How could it? I grew up with cartoons starring Snagglepuss, the pink, theatrical lion, and Gene London hosting a children’s program.  My parents even watched Liberace on TV. Even though I didn’t understand as a child what the subtext was, I knew they were not like the people I knew at the time. They were different. And they were interesting.

One of the major interests of most college students is drinking. I attended college in Pennsylvania, where the drinking age is 21. At the time the drinking age in New York, New Jersey, Delaware, West Virginia and Ohio, the states adjacent to Pennsylvania, was 18. Penn State, the university I attended was in the center of the state, or as the brochures stated, “Equally inconvenient to all parts of PA.” Going to a nearby state wasn’t a possibility just for a drink since they were all at least 4 hours from the school.

But, there was a gay bar in town.  Except on the weekends, they didn’t card (for the uninitiated, that’s requiring proof of age identification with photo). So, I met several people and made new friends with a population I hadn’t been acquainted with before. And unlike the whispered comments of the ignorant, they didn’t have horns, didn’t try to “convert” me.

I’m sure I asked embarrassing and ignorant questions in my effort to understand who they were and how they were somehow “different.” My new friends were patient and gracious. They answered my questions, referred me to novels I should read to gain a greater understanding. And they weren’t different. They were people just like me. They included me in their plans. They didn’t care what my sexual orientation was, and I didn’t care what theirs was. “People are people.”

One of my roommates got “burned” by trying to date someone from our dorm who was a friend of mine. I tried telling her he wasn’t her type, so she assumed I wanted to date him. I hadn’t been given permission to out him, so I simply tried to steer her in another direction. When she found out he was gay, she not only shunned him, she immediately asked any guy I introduced her to if he was gay. Totally rude. Needless to say, I had more problems with roommates than with anyone else I encountered in college.

I defended a gay couple in my dorm who roomed together and minded their own business. I didn’t know them well, but I believed they had a place at the table. A bigot, who must have been very insecure in his own sexuality came around with a petition to have them thrown out of the dorm simply for being who they were.

He made the mistake of knocking on my door, and he got an earful of what I thought of bigots. I also told him if he ever bothered me again, I’d report him.

Naturally, he tried to spread it about that my roommate and I (the aforementioned burned girl) were lesbians. Anyone in the dorm who actually knew either of us or cared had a good laugh about that one.

I have continued to take people as they are throughout my life. I like them or not based on who they are as people. I’ve met many people of different faiths, races, genders ethnic backgrounds, socioeconomic statuses and political viewpoints who are simply lovely people, and just as many who aren’t. No one group holds the golden ring. People are people.

I may not have turned out quite the way my parents expected, but then, I never really did the things they expected me to do. And I didn't jump off the Brooklyn Bridge after my friends.

 

 

 

Overcoming the Status Quo

 

 

Double standards have always been a bone of contention for me. I’ve argued against boys being allowed to do things for no better reason than that they’re boys; likewise, I’ve walked away from any group that takes a “girls are better” stance. I’m not looking for # 1. I’m looking for equality.

No, I’m not saying guys should be participating in the Miss America pageant, or that women should be playing in the NFL, but if men want their own pageant, go for it. There is no gender limit on beauty. And if women want to play football, let’s organize teams. Some things, of necessity, need to be “separate but equal” rather than inclusive for the sake of safety.

Someone once called me a misogynist because I expressed a distaste for something that was uber-feminine, and I didn't care to participate. I am not. I have no issues with women and girls. I simply don’t wish to participate in some of the things I consider prissy.

When someone starts a sentence with, “Men are such…” and proceeds to a derogatory word, I have been known to snap, “Sorry, I can’t accept that from anyone who propagates the myth of PMS.”

That shocks some people. I’m not negating some people’s true pain. However, I have worked in all-women departments, and every time someone was in the mood for a candy bar or a pretzel (or both), the comment came back, “Oh, you must be PMSing.” How about, no, I was just hungry, and a candy bar appealed to me at the moment?

In that same department, the women seemed to enjoy announcing their periods to the room, as if they expected a prize. I once asked someone who did that, “Tell me, do you come out of the bathroom and announce which bodily function you just performed, too? That’s the same thing!” Personally, I don’t want to know. I don’t care to think about those things. At least when we had a guy in the department, that nonsense stopped. I was sad to see him go.

By the same token, I hate hearing guys refer to women and girls as “bitches,” or worse, the C word. It makes me wonder what barn they were brought up in that they were never taught that is unacceptable. Yes, occasionally an individual can act like a bitch, but the generalization is what I find repulsive.

I once went to see a comedian I wasn’t much interested in at a club. My friends thought he was fabulous. Once he opened his mouth, I thought otherwise. He couldn’t say more than two words without dropping an F-bomb. I’m no prude; I’ve been known to use the word quite liberally at times. But really, someone buy this guy a thesaurus. To add insult to injury, his jokes were entirely about women. If you were just learning English, you’d never know that. He never once used the word woman or girl. They were all bitches and c*&^s.

I can’t imagine that this guy ever had more than one date with anyone. I was so tempted to shout out, “Do you kiss your mother with that mouth?” but I didn’t. With his attitude, I couldn't imagine he had a wife to kiss.

The problem was, he wasn’t funny. Even if you substituted the word woman where he used other words, his “jokes” fell flat. I think shock value – which faded after the first five seconds – was all he had. My husband was with me at the time, and even he was offended by this guy.

I’m not miss prim and proper. The occasional vulgarity doesn’t bother me, as long as we’re not standing in a classroom full of children.

I find that people like that comedian tend to be the same ones who want to limit me because I have a second X chromosome.

It was enough that I had to struggle through my childhood trying to be allowed to do things without having outsiders trying to limit me as an adult.

My parents were definitely the chauvinists typical of their generation. That’s just who they were. While I was allowed to do some things with my brothers, I was prohibited from doing other things, even if other girls were allowed to do them.

When my brothers were between 5 and 7, there was a free gymnastics class for that age range, an attempt to get local children interested in gymnastics, I would assume. I couldn’t wait to be old enough to do that. It looked like so much fun. And of the three of us, I was the uncoordinated one. If anyone needed something like gymnastics, I was it.

When I turned 5 they had raised the age to 7. By the time I turned 7, they had discontinued the program. My parents made no attempt to find something similar for me, even though my brothers had organizations they belonged to, like Scouts.( And they’d participated in the now defunct gymnastics program.)

I was told there was no gymnastics around for kids my age. So, I turned to the next best thing: dance. My best friend was taking ballet, and she was younger than I was. I didn’t actually want ballet. I wanted to learn tap. No.

The first excuse I was given was that my mother didn’t drive, so I had no way of getting there (Let’s just ignore the fact that my best friend’s mother did drive and lived across the street). The dance studio was less than a mile away. It involved crossing the main street in our town, which I was allowed to do to go to the post office, and taking two back streets to come out on the road alongside the tiny shopping center it was in. I could have walked or even ridden my bike. No.

My brothers would have been allowed to do that much, which I pointed out. I was even allowed to ride my bike to my piano teacher's house in summer for lessons with my brother, and she lived farther away. Out came excuse number two: we can’t afford it. That was the excuse for anything my mother didn’t want me to do.

Scouts was the next thing. I knew lots of people who were in scouts. Both of my brothers were in scouts. I couldn’t imagine a reason my mother wouldn’t say yes.

She found one. No, I couldn’t join scouts. What do you want to do that for? (Oh, I don’t know, socialization? Learning to do interesting crafts? Camping?)

She wouldn’t allow me to join scouts because the only troop I could join that didn’t involve her driving was, according to her,  run by a group of women who sat around gossiping while the girls ran wild.  She didn’t want to get involved with that sort. To this day, I can’t imagine that’s the truth of it. What girls would stay? It sounded like some exaggerated tale she heard from a friend because someone they didn’t like was running the troop, and my mother ran with it. The irony was, after my mother learned to drive, and after I was in high school, she actually took over a scout troop when her best friend moved up to the next scouting level to be her daughter’s troop leader.

Then there was Civil Air Patrol. I could join that at 13. My brothers were in that. I was excited at the idea of finally being in something.

When the time came, I was excited to finally be a member of something. Yes, the older kids who were in charge of the various groups I was in had been in my position under my brothers, and used the situation to take their frustrations out on me. Yes, we had actual classes (after being in school all day) on airplanes, and flying, and things that didn’t really interest me, but I was waiting for their version of camping, SAR caps, which was training for going on search and rescue missions. Civil Air Patrol goes out on search and rescue missions, especially things involving plane crashes where planes and people are missing.

At the time, girls weren’t allowed to go out on Red Caps, which were the actual search and rescue missions, but they were allowed to go on the practice ones. This never made sense to me, but you do what you can.

For a year and a half, I attended my once a week meetings, the marching, trying unsuccessfully to learn left from right, the boring classes, just for a chance to go on a SAR cap that never seemed to happen. When one finally happened that wasn’t cancelled, it was the weekend I had to take my placement test for high school. Kids in public school don’t have things like that, but Catholic high school put people in tracks according to their academic level. So, I missed the SAR cap, since I couldn’t reschedule the test.

But that was okay. There would be others. 

There was a trip to Cape Kennedy scheduled. We would get to tour the facility, see the space ships and Mission Control, and everything else involved with space flight.

There were two weekends that they were sending people there, in the summer, so it wouldn’t interfere with school. I was set to go the second weekend.

The first weekend, something went wrong. I think it was either a hurricane or some serious storm, and the first trip was cancelled. Oh, how sad! I was glad I was in the second group, but I did feel bad for the first group.

I could have saved my empathy. When they told us about it, they also told us that they rearranged who could go on the second weekend. Only those who had been on the SAR cap were eligible, and this included people from the cancelled first weekend. They had a list of people schedule to go, and alternates for anyone who didn’t show up in time. Since I hadn’t been at the SAR cap, I was immediately eliminated. I was crushed. I tried explaining to the squadron commander that I had only missed the SAR cap because I had to take a high school placement test. Sorry, rules are rules. I, who never got to go anywhere, once again didn’t get to go.

The meeting after the second trip, the squadron commander came in to where everyone was assembled at the beginning of the evening. He was extremely angry. As it turned out, not everyone who was supposed to go showed up. And none of the alternates had shown up, so there were empty spaces. It turned out that if I’d gone to the airport they were leaving from, bags packed, I could’ve gone to Cape Kennedy. But there was no reason to suspect that would be the case, so I wasn’t there.

I was probably angrier than the squadron commander. He was the one who told me I couldn’t go. I had been eliminated even though I would have shown up no matter what, had I only known.

That was pretty much the last straw for me. I quit. I wasn’t going to put up with all of the slights and meanness of the older cadets for nothing. And when they asked me why I was quitting, I told them. I was kicked off the trip the weekend I signed up for, for no reason. I was tired of being the also-ran. My brothers got to do things. I did not.

At least when I went to high school, I was allowed to join some of the clubs I was interested in.  Because I was in Glee Club, I got to sing at the Academy of Music in Philadelphia at 15, long gown, opera gloves and all.

My mother still wouldn’t let me join the outreach club that worked in the poor neighborhoods near the school, since she didn’t want me “rubbing elbows” with “those people.” (What was it you taught me about not judging people?) I wasn’t allowed to join any peace marches, although she remained silent about the school having a peace moratorium over the Vietnam War, which was basically an assembly that took place by the flag pole in front of the school for about 45 minutes. That was a whole school event on the school grounds.

The one thing I did get to do that she wasn’t pleased about was when the glee club went to a school in, I think it was West Philadelphia, to join with their glee club and get to know each other, and teach each other songs that we performed. Our glee club took a school bus to the other school, in the middle of our school day – we were excused from class – and when we arrived we were welcomed. The school was in a black section of Philadelphia, and we were, while not segregated, a school from a white suburb. I think at the time one student at our school was black, and she wasn’t in the glee club.

It made no difference to any of us. The two glee clubs mixed together. We learned several new songs, and taught them a few that we were performing. Once everyone knew all of the songs, we had a performance, and had the best time. That afternoon was one of the highlights of my high school career, and one my parents almost didn’t let me participate in. Only the fact that our entire glee club was going allowed me to go.

Those of us who were in high school in the early 1970s were a tenacious bunch. We were determined not to let our parents’ prejudices stand in our way. Some of us, at least, didn’t want the efforts of people like Ruby Bridges to be in vain. We were outraged by the events at Kent State. We believed in the possibility of a better world, where color, ethnicity and gender wouldn’t be a barrier to anything. I just hope it wasn’t a dream to be shattered forever.

Itches and Twitches

 

 

I’m not sure if I always was a twitchy person, or if this is something that happened over the years.

When I go to bed or try to relax in a comfortable chair, it takes me a long time to get situated, find just the right position. Even then I tend to move around quite a bit.

One thing I do know, and I’m not sure whether or not this is a form of claustrophobia or something else entirely, is that I can’t stand to have both hands taken out of commission at the same time.

I first discovered this when I was 17 and had been in a car accident.  In those days seatbelts were only just coming into use beyond the high end luxury cars. The car I was in was not one of those, so there were no seat belts (and don’t even think air bags. They simply didn’t exist). Anyway, the car I was in rear-ended another car and I was thrown forward, hitting my head hard enough on the windshield that the glass cracked.

I didn’t lose consciousness, but a concussion was suspected, and they took me out of the car, put me on a stretcher, and loaded me into an ambulance. The EMTs put a blanket over me and then strapped me onto the stretcher for safety. Unfortunately, both arms were trapped under that strap. Immediately, my nose began to itch. Then other parts of my face. It made it hard to stay still because I was trying to free my arms so I could scratch my face.

Even though one of the EMTs tried to scratch whatever was itchy on my face – apparently, this isn’t a reaction that’s novel to me – it was a very uncomfortable ride. While she meant well, another person can never adequately calm an itch.

I don’t recall the situation being more than a bit uncomfortable, and once at the hospital, my arms were freed.

In more recent times, I’ve noticed more severe, almost panic attack level issues.

At night, especially once I’ve gone to bed, I get itchy. Not everywhere all at once but more like an Old MacDonald’s Farm variety of itchiness: here an itch, there and itch, everywhere an itch, itch… I will scratch one place, only to find another crop up as I try to settle into a comfortable sleep position.

Yes, it may partially be due to dry skin, but sometimes, especially if I try this just before bedtime, putting on lotion or cream of some sort makes things worse, especially in summer. I suspect sweat or humidity have more to do with it in summer. So, it takes a while, between itchiness and being fidgety to find sleep.

While that’s not panic attack level, a few other things are. And just to be clear, I am not on the spectrum.

I’ve had two very mild cases of Covid-19. The entire first few years of the pandemic, I was blessed to be free of the infection. In fact, both times I had it were in 2024. Both times it lasted about 24 hours, except for the cough.

During that 24 hour period, everything seemed to bother me. Clothes that felt like they were strangling me or twisting on my body when I lay down, when sitting in a confined space, trying to sleep, walking any distance, and so on. I sometimes felt as if I were going to suffocate.

Since then, the lingering issue with clothes and confined space has been a challenge. No, I don’t mean I can’t wear clothes. But sitting on a bus, either at a window seat (which used to be my favorite) or in the middle, which I’ve never liked much, I have to have the chance to get situated before anyone sits next to me. I’ve found that if I’m wearing a coat, I have to take the coat off or I start to feel like I can’t breathe.

I’ve also noticed that I can no longer wear turtle neck shirts or hoodies – unless they’re zip front. Either of those things feels like I’m being strangled. While it’s easy enough to simply not wear that type of clothing, it’s resulted in my having to give away several things that I used to like to wear. It isn’t the texture or the material, it’s the way it sits on my skin and closes in on my neck.

The other part of Covid-19 that affected me was the cough. I’ve had coughs often in my life, and they never much bothered me. But this one is a heavier one, one that forces you to work very hard to get it out. Sometimes I’ve had to stand up to make the cough effective. Of course, my doctor prescribed me medication that wiped it out in a few days.

Unfortunately, I spent the last year trying to get rid of such a cough when it came back. I didn’t have Covid-19. I tested and the test was clear. I only had a cough, not even a cold.

My original doctor died suddenly in 2024, and I had to find a new doctor. Unfortunately, all there are now are groups: revolving door doctors where you theoretically have a main doctor, but when you make an appointment, you never know who you’re going to get.

After the cough coming and going for several months, it decided to stay. I made an appointment. “My doctor” wasn’t available, so I got someone else. I told her what my previous doctor prescribed. She smiled and ignored me. When I left I had a prescription for something else.

The prescription did nothing for about a week, then began to work until I finished the first container. I renewed it. The renewal, the exact same thing, stopped working. I gave it a couple of weeks, but nothing.

Back to the doctor I went. A different one of the group. I had to start from scratch explaining everything because they apparently don’t read the notes of previous appointments. Since the prescription didn’t work, and she thought it should, she prescribed me something else. It did not work at all.

A third time I tried to make an appointment, but no one was available, so I had to go the tele-med route with my medical group. That doctor, even though yet again I went through the history of the cough, and once again told her what my previous doctor prescribed that worked, wrote me a prescription for something else. When I asked why no one was giving me what I knew worked, she told me that they don’t prescribe that for “someone your age.” Last year I was only a year younger. It didn’t cause a problem then. Why would it cause a problem now? Still, she insisted on something else. It didn’t work.

By the time I had waited a few days for it to not work, we were up against the weekend, when doctors no longer have office hours. Having not slept in two days because of the cough, and the walk-in clinics having no hours left, I went to the ER. There, I was given an x-ray, which they said was normal, and two pills containing some cough suppressant and codeine. I suppose it got rid of the cough for the night. I know it knocked me out by the time I got home. I was supposed to get a full prescription of it the next day at the pharmacy.

Before filling the prescription, I called my primary doctor, and she was actually there, and made an appointment for me for that day. She didn’t want me taking codeine, so she prescribed something else. She also wanted me to see a pulmonologist and a gastroenterologist.

Well, her prescription was as useless as the others. But now I had other doctors unnecessarily involved, and I was also told I needed to see an ENT. The ENT gave me four prescriptions and scheduled me for a CT scan!

Somewhere along the line, with pretty much none of the prescriptions doing anything but taking up counter space, someone finally prescribed what I had said on the first visit worked. Lo and behold, within a week, the cough cleared up.

But I had a bunch of unnecessary (and expensive) tests done, all because no one would listen to me. I was given about a dozen useless prescriptions because someone decided that what would work shouldn’t be given to “someone my age.” I could understand that if I’d never taken the drug before, but considering I’d had it a year earlier, that platitude was meaningless.

I understand that the doctors wanted to find out what was causing the cough, but none of the tests showed that. And the cough itself just generated more panic-attack like behavior. I reached a point where, despite constant exhaustion, I practically feared going to bed because it usually meant a resurgence of the cough. I developed rituals to help me relax and sleep. And when I get in one of those uncomfortable situations, like being in the middle seat with my coat on or some similar clothing issue, my reaction is to start coughing. That’s not the cough I was being treated for, it’s simply a reaction, a fight or flight type of thing. That cough goes away as soon as I can move out of that situation.

I really thought I was over that until the other day.

I had signed up to donate platelets, something I’d never done before.  I thought it would be much like donating blood except that they return everything else once they get the platelets. I was wrong.

I was led to a “bed” if you will, that is somewhat U-shaped, with a horizontal section for your legs. It was tilted back, so the patient is semi-reclined, not a position I’m comfortable in to begin with. It was slightly worse than being in the middle seat on a plane.

I discovered that I would not have just one arm hooked up to needles and tubes, but both arms. For two hours.

I knew I only had one arm with reliable veins. The ones in the other arm tend to roll. I told them that. They were sure they could make everything work. While they were working on the first arm, I was my usual twitchy self. I had to ask one of the phlebotomists to fix the leg of my jeans because it had inched up and the hem was digging into my leg. She was happy to do so.  For a while I had a hand free to scratch various itches, but I was desperately uncomfortable the way I was positioned. They got pillows and wedges to get me in a generally comfortable position, although I wasn’t sure it would remain that way for a full two hours, even with a movie to watch.

I’m not generally all that picky about things, and I don’t often complain in situations like this. The people there were quite kind, very professional and very willing to do whatever I needed to feel comfortable.

But when it came time to stick the second arm, things quickly fell apart. They found a fantastic vein. They stuck. For about a minute, things looked good. Then there was a lot of blood and they had to remove the needle. The vein had rolled. There was a nearby vein that was just as good, but because the first vein had bled into the space between the two, they couldn’t use it. So they went lower down my arm, and finally settled on one in my hand.

This time everything seemed fine. Then it wasn’t. While the other arm was all hooked up and ready to go, the phlebotomist suddenly asked if my hand felt all right. It did. Then it didn’t, and there was a lot of pain and the area around the needle started to swell up as the vein decided to roll and they once again had to remove the needle.

At this point they realized the procedure wasn’t going to happen. They kept apologizing because my veins kept rolling, which wasn’t their fault.

In a way I was relieved. I wasn’t sure I could manage two hours of not being able to scratch any itchiness or move, really. I’m just too twitchy an individual.

Will I go back? To donate blood, sure. To do the platelets? No. Much as I like to help people, I have limits. I simply don’t think I’m the right person for that kind of donation.

It was a learning experience, but not one I’m ready to repeat.