May 2022
Back Story: The Last Waltz
I was probably one of the very few pregnant women who kept copious notes, schedules, charts, graphs, and journal entries during her two pregnancies.
I do not believe that I intentionally set up a reservoir of feelings and factoids from which to write fiction. During those periods of intense creativity, I was engaged in two major projects, life-cycle projects, if you will, in ways that no woman of my acquaintance, friendship, or contact had even a passing wish to partake in. Once their children left the nest, they wanted no part of looking back on a period of their lives that they got through as fast and clinically as they could.
I felt quite alone to bring resolution to those child-bearing years, but that sensation is logically consistent with how I felt during my child-bearing years.
Even with a loving, protective, and compassionate husband, who has a terrific sense of humor, I felt alone. And I was alone, without extended family or family of origin.
Fortunately, I was able to communicate quite well with my doctors and with those nurses who truly knew the art of healing, and the art of helping others in need. I felt, and thought, that those years of my life were uniquely fleeting, and, indeed, they were.
Way back then, the Nanny State and the clueless uppity automatons following orders had not yet been foisted upon the Body Public. That vast population of citizen-lab rats and specimens have been obscenely and hypocritically hectored and lectured by Idiot Elites and Corrupt Clinicians to be beholden to them, and to Whoever, and Whatever, orders the masses what to do and say and eat and think.
I went in search of annotated moments when the Experts were not in charge of Prigs following orders. I found them in my own personal files. I was amazed at the zest and quest for living that personified me, personified many in the world I knew.
As I read through my files of confidential notes, many of which shall be used in fictional settings of THE LAST WALTZ, I can see that life was more full of life back then, in the 1980s and early 1990s.
Life was being lived with little concern over lawsuits, and even less fear about sickness and death. I know, because, looking back, I can see how very high-risk I’d be deemed today.
“Flunked glucose test. Threw up. Have to take it a second time.”
“Flunked it a second time. Fainted. Oh well.”
The attending doctor asked me if I didn’t eat or drink a lot of sugar. And, in truth, I did not. He laughed and stated that many of his pregnant patients swilled the bottles down like nothing, with no ill effect. He informed the nurse: “We do not like our pregnant patients fainting, and the glucose test is to blame for this one.”
There are a few more examples of diagnostic tests that I flunked, but my physician knew me, and knew my body, well enough that the numerical results did not phase him, or the pre-managed care overseers.
I am composing THE LAST WALTZ as part of a mission to return my mind, my body, and my consciousness to a time when I was inordinately capable of enduring enormous physical pain through focusing and concentrating on an acute mental activity to block out the perpetual noise of the nitwits, the nattering nabobs of negativity.
That phenomenal capability of mine has been eroded and very steadily worn down within the past few years. My sill of perception has been shanghaied before my very eyes that instantly want to flee the sight of such abhorrent stupidity. That robotic idiocy has been fueled by corruption and the lust for power that is fatal, even though it’s not ever been tested, measured, or calibrated.
If the future known as reality calls for an endurance test, I’m ready for it!
I was in labour for over two days for the birth of my first child. I knew instinctively, from the very first gripping contraction, that thinking “pudding” was not going to help “soften things up” and “move things along,” as the on-call Vegetarian Doctor, with whom I argued, told me during that very very long first night.
Yes, there were know-it-all docs way back then, and I knew who they were. Despite my polite tone while speaking to them, the daggers in my eyes always gave, and give me, away.
He assured me that, if the proper positioning and breathing techniques were used, by morning, “We’d be having Our Baby.”
I spoke with Doctor Veggie early that next morning, as he made his rounds, and I informed him that We Had Not Yet Had Our Baby. He then barked I was not therefore, technically, in actual labor. He walked off, outside, to the dining table where he breakfasted with his colleagues.
Sometime during the late afternoon of Day Two of Childbirth without Progress, I grabbed hold of the moment of truth about My Baby. No doctor in the hospital wanted to voluntarily belly up to that truth because lawsuits over one too many a convenience surgical delivery had already started to cause doctor-surgeons to drop the knife from their practice.
I knew without a doubt that this childbirth was not Mind over Matter, but Matter over Mind. I called for the much-beloved Anesthesiologist, he of the Evening with Your Anesthesiologist Pre-Natal Workshop. The women in that Lamaze class had absolutely adored this guy. Somewhat tellingly, I’d not gone to that class.
I had, instead, learned about various types of childbirth anesthesia through my own research (and this investigative work was pre-Internet). The epidural was not fearsome, but it did carry definite risks. (The Twilight Sleep, on the other hand, mimics precisely the phantasmic name.)
More than an hour after my request for a surgical solution (what was termed an abdominal episiotomy), Dr. Epidural finally arrived on the scene. This doctor was the Chief of Anesthesiology at this hospital; the scene was my non-birthing room. He quickly assessed my failure-to-progress status.
This courteous man wore glasses, rather thick ones, and he fidgeted with them, constantly, while he profusely apologized for his tardiness. He then began to make excuses (midtown traffic, unexpected duty calls . . .).
I put a halt to his endless explanations by
saying, in between calming breaths (both his and mine):
“I will accept your apologies only if you do something within the next 5 minutes.”
Speechless, he did as I said. First, he checked my medical history and, horrors of horrors, I had none. He gingerly stated that I did not appear to be in a high-risk category. (Semi-trust, and pray.) He asked me if I knew about a spinal epidural.
“More than I want to know,” was my terse reply.
The nurse then assisted Dr. Epidural in providing “pain relief,” as the room took on a party atmosphere. The shifts of nurses, interns and various levels of residents rotating through My Case of 2-1/2 days had become notable. My dear dear husband looked exhausted, and, indeed, he was. My intense focus on childbirth had included comforting him, which comforted me and the unborn baby, our son.
The Good Doctor Epi then began to marvel aloud at my powers of concentration in the midst of so much transition-contraction pain.
He had never seen such amazing focus in a woman experiencing this intense labor. He assured me that I had labored for 2 women. Which almost made me cry because I still did not have a newborn baby to account for, after all of my accouchement.
Lately, my powers of concentration in the midst of transitioning — to another phase of my life in a newly built house — have been terribly and adversely affected by the lunatic mask-fascists in medical facilities; by the lunatic farce that has been COVID-19 and its never-ending variants; and by the now-desperate measures of Big Pharma to push even more pills, potions, and promises to be prescribed by doctors and dentists, and anyone else legally capable of writing prescriptions.
I cite a Personal Journal Entry from 23 December 1986:
Anger, rage, the feeling of release — freedom. Eerie dream last night — overall sensation so real — intuition working. It is true — you do whatever to protect your unborn child, and to protect yourself; actually, they are one and the same thing at this point in time.
Determination to win — excel — achieve — not to be held back by anyone or anything. Was this 20 years in coming?
Right now, I feel the exact same way about my life and my creation of this northern French novel.
