adventures in health, money, and vandalism
As some folks know, I'm dealing with health issues. I have a long history of fibroids and have become symptomatic again, which leads me to believe that I have I have new tumors. They've also caused me to become anemic. This all means that I've got pretty low energy and tire easily. I'm taking iron supplements and eating a little more meat. I have an appointment Monday with a new Gyn to get a diagnosis and a referral for a sonogram. I'm also having weekly acupuncture at school and seeing a wonderful herbalist. This all feels like good stuff to do.
I was pretty exhausted this week. Late nights at school and long hours. My dean agreed to have a conversation with the T'ai Ji teacher about his affected Chinese accent. Our class has become more cliquey this semester, maybe because we're broken up into groups more often. I'm worried about my classmate B. who has to re-take one of the comprehensives and seems to always be on the verge of failing the program. We had a fun party for all the acupuncture students last night before class. I got to meet some of the new students and they seemed like good people.
Clinic remains wonderful and fascinating. The intern I assist wants to do a Chong Mai treatment on me, a deep constitutional level treatment that works well for fibroids (among many other issues.) She asked me if there's anything emotionally related to these symptoms and recurrence, and I started to realize that it feels really connected to anxiety about our finances (which are better now.) My fears about it have been big: scared I might need to leave school, that we might lose our apartment, etc. And the realities have been hard: needing to borrow from elderly and ailing parents, not being able to buy textbooks for school, and running out of food money a couple of times. I'm happy and grateful that things are better now, but I think I still carry the repercussions of this recent time in my body. Maybe my body (meaning ME) is creating and holding desperately on to things it (I) doesn't/don't need because there's been comparatively so little material stuff out there to hold on to. The timing of my symptoms matches the timeline of our financial crisis, too. More here for me to think about.
In other news, the management company of our building tore up our sidewalk to kindly make space for the expanding roots of the elm tree outside my window. They laid down new cement over part of the area last night, and I found my neighbors surreptitiously sneaking outside at 11PM to carve out names and love declarations on the soft sidewalk. It was a sweet and homey moment. I made my own contribution, but this morning the construction guys came back to finish the job and wiped out all our messages. That's OK, we'll all have a fresh chance today, on even fresher and new cement *