Love Simple

So if there are lupies reading this, I assume that I am not the only lupus blog you read, in which case you saw the title of this post and thought "JEEEEEEEEZ this girl is behind the times," but I'm going to go ahead and throw my two cents out fashionably late.

For those who don't know, the movie Love Simple got a lot of attention around the lupus-blogosphere a little while ago. It is a simple (hur hur) romance where Boy is lying to Girl because Boy lives at home with his sick dad. Girl is lying to Boy because Girl has lupus.

The opening of the movie shows Adam bringing a girl home with the logic "I just wanted to get the scary stuff out of the way." But being in his dad's creepy house with his dead mom's Victorian dolls practically spilling out of the living room, and, on top of that, creepy dad-with-oxygen-tank staring from the doorway, the girl leaves. Then we cut to Seta who is sitting in a suspiciously un-busy waiting room with an ugly rash across her face, apologizing to her date. He asks her, "So does this happen often?" gesturing at her rash, and she says "not this bad usually, I just wanted to be on the safe side." But his response is "But how often? Every week? Every month?" and when she comes back out from seeing the doctor he's gone.

So we have set up Reasons for Lying. The Adam character has a harder time getting around the I Live at Home thing and as such ends up being kind of obnoxious for me, because his lies are so constant. It just doesn't feel equal at all. He pretends like he's been to Africa and a year of med school, stuff like that. She just tries to say that the bottle of pills he finds belongs to her friend. I would actually have been a little more interested if Adam hadn't hidden his sick dad. If he had actually be honest about how he felt (he HATES having to take care of him. At one point he says "whatever girl I find better be fit as a fiddle" with regards to having to Take Care of People), though that, I suppose, might've just ended the romance before it started.

I read a few complaints on lupus blogs about the simplification of symptoms but as someone who has tried to portray the disease in writing, I can at least testify to the fact that it's really hard. Because we're portraying people who MOSTLY can carry on a semi-normal life, you don't want to hit every symptom over the head. That over-dramatizes something that's not that dramatic. You want to somehow portray how it affects the person day-to-day without getting in the way of your story, because the disease isn't getting in the way of their life. Too much. So when I write about it I usually pick a symptom or two. Once I did the rash and hair loss, another time swollen knees and fingers, and I try to allude to the other problems without making my characters sound completely crippled.

So they chose rash and fever, and hinted at sun-sensitivity. I think they also hinted at soreness, though maybe you'd have to have the disease to see it. When they first meet and he asks if she wants to take a walk, she hesitates in a way that made me think her knees must be hurting her, and at one point he steals her sun hat and she tries to chase him up a jungle gym but after climbing up one rung of the ladder gets back down and just waves her arms around.

So by normal movie standards, like, if Seta hadn't had MY disease, I wouldn't think this was a very good movie. It was fine, but it wasn't very funny, the script wasn't that good, and even the plot was a little shaky. But one thing Seta said when the two were finally coming clean (and briefly breaking up) was "I've figured out how to stop this from taking over my life; it's everyone else who can't get past it." I was thinking today about how hard it is to know when I'm allowed to talk about it - something that exists all the time, that I think about a lot even when I'm not upset by it, and the other day someone said to me "let's talk about something else, this is depressing." I think we all want to not have to hesitate when we have something to say, whether it's that we're in pain or just to tell a hospital story or spew a weird lupie-fact that ONLY WE KNOW (bwahahaha) without it negatively affecting those around us. When we feel as though we're a burden we're extra sensitive to how others react and we (well, I - let's stop using the royal 'we') can test the water and tell pretty quickly who I can talk to and who I can't. And the ones I can talk to are the ones who don't act like I need taking care of. Seta's best friend has a good no-nonsense manner when she's over helping Seta through a flare-up. You don't get the sense that there's pity behind the help.

So yes, the movie did not give a particularly full account of lupus, the way it would have been able to if it had, for instance, focused more exclusively on Seta. But on the other hand, lupus is an "invisible disease" and to get it across in any way is certainly a start. She didn't feel like a prop or like she was disease-first, person-second, and I commend the movie for that.

(I really will tell you about Mexico sometime. Maybe.)

Back from Guadalajara

Hey all, back from Mexico! I was planning to do a longish post about cool things there + traveling w/ lupus and all that kind of fun I AM INFORMING YOU THINGS NO REALLY type stuff, only I am really, really tired and my cat is in the emergency vet place because she abruptly stopped walking on Thursday so I am not in the most expansive mood ever.

I will update sometime before I go back to school on Thursday, though, I believe.

(One thing about Mexico, if you didn't already know. They're very Catholic, and there's a lot of sun. Also papaya. I like papaya.)

Le New Year, it is happy

obligatory happy new year, resolutions, etc.

By which I mean, I love you all and hope everyone's having a fantastic beginning-of-2011!

Well, I was taken down over Christmas by a killer case of the flu. It would have sucked a lot more if it hadn't gotten me out of things like decorating, which I do not enjoy doing. For the first time we did Christmas at our house instead of at my Christian grandparents' house and we learned that when you let the Jews do Christmas really odd things happen, like my mother puts wreaths on the paper mache (incredibly creepy) babies and then lights them from below with only red lights so it looks as though Julian (the creepiest of the babies) is presiding over some sort of intense dark-magic.

We really got into the spirit of things.

Managed to de-flu myself in 8 days and am now mostly as good as new except for being very tired. I go to Mexico on Tuesday which is...is...oh, terrifying, that's the word. Terrifying. I tend to get sick when I travel (like lupus-sick not airplane-sick because that'd be a whole other can o' worms) and so that is making me anxious. Though of course I also tend to get sick when I get anxious. Found a vicious cycle. Found it.

We will therefore pretend as though we are not traveling in two days and instead take a shower and go to bed and ignore the fact that our brother's cat is yowling because she is confused and refuses to eat in a room that is not sufficiently lit. Because she is batshit insane.

Happy new year! Hope everyone's potential resolutions are going fabulously. I'd said something about eating more healthily but then I ate 13 mini ice cream sandwiches the past two days so I think I'm just about ready to say "screw that" but I HAVE been writing 500 words of Something every day which was the important resolution anyway.

Hello five in the morning, how are you today?

This is why stress is bad, lovelies! Although I appreciate that my body waited till after finals to go batshit.

I turned in my last final (creative writing) yesterday, which was very excited, and I plan to start driving home in approximately four hours. All my friends left yesterday so I had what was actually a really pleasant night eating a lot and then I went to bed at 10, which is pretty much unheard of. I can't figure out if it's just too many hours on my bed, with the sleeping early plus the lazing about all evening or if I'm getting sick but I have been awake since about 3:30 with what feels a lot like fever aches and a headache.

So I gave up on sleep for now, took some ibuprofin, am eating some nilla wafers, watching a little TV and hopefully I'll get a couple hours more sleep before I have to drive.

I don't really have internet in Michigan so blog may be on hiatus (because I update it so regularly to begin with) and then I go to Mexico January 4th! That will be exciting.

My face made friends with my chair

Isn't it odd, friends, that despite having an exciting, action-packed autoimmune disease, most of my serious hospital ventures in the past 6 or so years have been utterly unrelated? For example, having my lemon-sized cyst removed was by far my most serious procedure to date. Or how about my foot surgery that was the result of breaking my toe during a game of keep-the-balloon-off-the-ground?

Or, just for fun, let's consider last night. It was a nice night, ladies and gentlemen. I wrote several pages of my Chaucer paper (it's going to be nauseatingly long but I'm having so much fun with it) I cleaned my room (which for those of you who have ever SEEN my room is really an impressive feat. No, really. I cleaned it thoroughly), I watched some Blackadder, and then I fell asleep at one in the morning.

Not odd yet.

I woke up at four and realized I'd fallen asleep without really getting ready for bed. I got up, changed into pants that were less sweltering than my sweats, brushed my teeth, started my Harry Potter audiobook (shut up.) and sat on the edge of my bed to take a drink of water.

Somehow that drink of water ruined everything. I am told I must've swallowed it wrong, but instead of coughing and hacking what happened was I had an intense sudden chest pain and felt really dizzy. Next thing I knew, I woke up on the ground with my nose bleeding profusely and my right eye burning. Waking up to pain is one of the most discombobulating experiences ever, and sometimes if it's after surgery it freaks the nurses out if you wake up and cry and then they give you more morphine, which is fun. But in this case I just made a lot of noise before I even figured out where I was, that the wet on my face was blood, and that chest pain and preceded the fall (at first I thought I'd just fallen out of bed in my sleep).

I went to the ER, more because I was terrified than because I thought something was really wrong. I felt okay, not dizzy or anything, but I have never fainted before so I was FREAKED OUT, yo.

Turns out if you go to the ER on a Saturday night NOT drunk off your ass, they don't really know what to do with you, but the doctor was very nice and calmed me down and I was in the ER from 4 til about 8 in the morning. Everything was normal (the ninety-seven tests they did, including an EKG and a CAT scan). The doctor said it was called an "esophageal spasm" which is, I guess, exactly what it sounds like. He said it's not uncommon, though normally it doesn't happen so bad that one would pass out from it. So we're all clear there. Hooray.

Now I am very sleepy, have the rest of my Chaucer paper to write (though may ask for an extension) and my eye is really puffy and bruise-y.

So that was my Saturday night. Raise your hand if you are jealous!

I am the worst

At keeping up with this these days.

Anyway, the Rejectionist has had another uncontest: december resolutions! Going off my friend, the Narrative Addict's rules for the various Lents he declares when he feels fat, I have chosen a few reasonable and a few completely unattainable goals.

Attainable: write! 500 words a day. Of anything. Actually I haven't been doing that well with this but I'm giving myself a tiny bit of leeway because I DID spend 6 hours working on my creative writing project and it just feels like that counts.
Unattainable: Buy and keep a hat for longer than a week (I lost the one I bought last Wednesday last Friday.)
Attainable: When my knees hurt too much for me to participate in Social Activities, I will stop sulking and view it as an opportunity to do laundry, read in bed, or go to sleep early.
Unattainable: Spend less money on caffeine.
Attainable: No shame December! (Narrative Addict and I figure it's...good for us.)

In other news: I am frustrated as hell with writing right now. I stayed up most of the night not getting anything done, which was really not the best plan. I should've sent myself to bed before I got too worked up about the whole thing because now I'm running off 2 hours of sleep and am even less rational than usual. Plus, the less I sleep the longer it takes my joints to warm up and work like normal joints.

What else, what else. Two more weeks of school (yeah, we get off on the 23rd. It's a little absurd.) and then like 10 days of break and then I go to Mexico. I am exhausted.

I am reading a lot though, outside of school. It's just sort of what I do instead of procrastinating too heavily on the internet. It's still procrastinating but it's procrastinating in the spirit of Project Well-Read. Currently reading Lamb by Christopher Moore which is HILARIOUS and a really good choice after all my pretty dense/intense reading of the past few months.

I have nothing else to say. Just did an hour of submissions. No gems, good or bad, really. Mostly everyone was just pretty mediocre. Or maybe I'm just too tired to appreciate their genius.

No, I think they were just pretty mediocre.

Just closing my eyes and thinking of next semester

Registered for classes last week and it's going to be fantastic. I'm still taking max number of credits but in four classes instead of five, like I usually do. Also, all my classes are in the morning again. I love morning classes and free-ish afternoons, it's how I a) do my best work and b) do any of my work. Next semester will probably be more homework per class (I may have mentioned 50% of my time is devoted to four of my classes put together this semester, the other 50% is devoted to creative writing. What time that leaves for my 4 jobs don't ask me), but it will be classes I LIKE instead of classes I am trudging through (except Chaucer - I like Chaucer!)

I am taking (if you were curious): 18th century british literature and the rise of print culture (AHHHHHH AHHHHH DORKING OUT AHHHH), Spanish lit (oh, I'm going to Mexico for winter term for to re-learn the Spanish so I can take Spanish lit), fiction workshop for creative writing, and then an intro biology course that I want to take so I can take Evolution next semester.

I will also continue as a writing associate for English (probably for the same course I'm doing now, but that is a different story/rant; the course is having trouble because it's a new course and I am oddly invested in making it work), and believe I'll also be TA-ing for intro creative writing. Woo! More jobs!

I just got my blood pressure medication today. Will take it tomorrow and see how it goes. It's parents' weekend! My mom and dad and dog are here. It's fantastic. Oona (the dog) has made so many friends. So have my parents.