Medical Mystery

The italics represent different voices/perspectives looking at the girl who is ill. The normal text is my own voice.

Medical Mystery 

Appears to be,

sick girl.

Why? 

Don’t know. No answers. Trapped in limbo.

Money eating tests, pills,

Father’s wallet vacuumed.

Eastern, Western, any in between, 

they try. 

Hypochondria by proxy,

buzzing hive of anxiety,

storm with intent.

Sword and shield no harm can come beyond:

My first born,

My poor baby girl.

So helpless…her, I? Both.

Stillness, waiting, unbearable,

Veins painfully crackling electricity, running out of breath.

The little one, baby bird needs food,

baby bird needs attention,

I can’t, I can’t, I can’t, help me, help me please. 

Hands dance, mind erratic searching frantically for answers, answers, answers.

Heart hurts to look at her,

A ghost, 

Please come back,

I have to get her back. 

Calm spring day, offering warmth,

a grizzly bear, tough and cuddly.

Steadying roots, 

and a comforting campfire:

Sick? Just tired, maybe?

No interest in getting thwapped over the head,

the words stay in my mouth. 

Does it matter? 

far-out testing--kaching--pills, liquids, serums--kaching.

Waste? 

Child struggling, 

Mother struggling for her, 

“Sick”, does it matter if she is?

What can I do to help? 

Reliant baby bird, 

Gray, overcast 

with a 50/50 chance of rain or sun.

All is well enough, until the hurricane hits:

In depth of heart,

Belief,

In shallow pools of blood,

Resentment flows,

walled from springing forth,

by the anger directed in,

for resenting in the first place. 

A lazy sloth,

A miserable england drizzle. 

Sour and musty,  color of disgust: 

How sad she looks,

Vacant and blank,

essence sucked out.

Depression? Or laziness?

Attention seeking, middle class problems.

Terrible weakness, 

falling after rising.

mere task of holding a cup,

trembling.

Poor thing,

shame to know nothing.

Robot, 

Clacking on a keyboard,

Data 1212121212

Sharp smell of bleach and alcohol,

Knifes up your nose: 

#####

Patient 0021

Walking I see,

Breathing I see,

Young I see,

Just fine I see,

Goodbye.

--what they don’t know: 

Fucked up, 

Insecure, 

Neurotic, 

Emotional--

Online personality quiz

Congratulations you are_____

Based on ten questions 

you didn’t answer honestly:

You,

My illness?

No, the whole you.

Lists and lists.

Categories,

more categories,

Who are you, 

within these parameters 

of course. 

An art, not a science.

No single answer, 

Cause irrelevant,

Treat the symptoms. 

Heavy mass of brain swapped for cotton,

balloon floating away, anchored by stones of bone.

a still lake, 

distant, 

not even a single ripple across the surface.

Sinew and muscle melted, 

only bones, 

useless and dangling, 

like a puppet on strings.

Belly pregnant with angry acid whirling in a blender. 

Fresh air, 

release from a tunnel filled with sleeping gas: 

I’m sorry,

I’m so sorry.

Guilt 

is a worse disease than the debilitating weakness knocking me off me feet,

a random hammer 

coming down at it’s pleasure. 

You keep shoving money in,

nothing comes out,

like that arcade game, 

the one where you try to grab a stuffed animal with the clawing machine. 

So light, 

as if I could float away,

Up to the stars I wish upon on dark nights.

Fall backwards instead.

Down, down, down, into sleep, so tired.

Can’t. Head pulsating, pounding a rhythm with my pulse.

I’m done, don’t care.

Let go. 

Sorrow like the broken innocence of a fairy whose wings are shorn by jealous earthlings, ethereal beauty sobbing in the moonlight and pouring rain.

A live death, unnatural stillness of thoughts, time is a slow tick, like watching the clock in a high school math class, last period of the day. 

Withdrawn into the deepest cave, only familial agony or death would possibly be enough to beckon back to life.

Residing in the dark space between the stars: 

To all those who suffer from illness unknown,

trapped by a missing label,

judged a strange anomaly without hope,

written off as easily fixable to protect the superatorial air and pride of doctor____

eat better, exercise more, get some sleep, don’t be so stressed. *Bullshit

To all those searching for answers,

Don’t give up,

not for you, or those who will inevitably come after.

Never doubt each other,

those who suffer know,

wish wholeheartedly, 

soul deep, 

for the illness to abate.

What do we want? 

belief.

Days with enough energy and strength to enjoy them.

Stop burdening our loved ones with worry and bills,

Start paying back endless shining love and kindness received

to those who matter most. 

Author's Note

The order: bare bones of the story, mother, father, sister, stranger, western medicine, homeopathy, me, and lastly the voice of many.