Sick and Tired

I am sick and tired of being sick and tired. I just want to bitch and be a bitch about it. I want to scream and wake up every sleeping neurologist and tell him or her to wake the fuck up and get back into that lab and fix this shit.

I can’t do one damn thing without feeling dizzy or light-headed. My doctors always say, “Make sure you sit up very slowly when you first wake up in the morning. You might feel dizzy and you don’t want to fall.” Then I get that smile that drives me crazy because if I could raise the volume in her head I would hear, ” You poor pathetic thing.” Then she shakes her head and sucks her teeth like she just found some washed ashore seal.

I keep my cool and reassure her that I’m taking everything very slow and cautiously. As a matter of fact, by the time I get on my feet and have a good grip of my bedroom dresser, I can make it to the bathroom in two hours flat. Dressed in three and out the door in four. Meanwhile the world of able bodies just passes me by. Conversations and weekend plans elude me. I’m in the slow lane where everyone has on sensible shoes, elastic waistband pants and the grape jelly at the diner is all the buzz.

You want to help me doc? Find me a man who will want to sleep with a woman who needs a solid sixty minutes just to sit up in bed. Or call a producer and tell them one of your patients is a black woman with Parkinson’s and a really good actress and tell me the address of my audition. Get me off this medicine so I can stop looking like a junkie counting pills every three hours in my not so private purse.

Give me one day when I don’t feel like it’s my last.

Then I remember that for seven years I fought this disease alone, and now I have you and we are trying to kick PD’s ass together. You pause for a minute more just in case but I’m done. I’m tired. I’m going home. I will see you in a couple of months. “Hey, are any of the doctors single?”

Can’t blame a girl for trying.

Victoria