Avoiding Olympic television coverage

I am avoiding anything to do with the Olympics, because I tend to remember what happens during an Olympic year. That would include what I call "surgical intervention."

I see a urologist in September and I have to get a subpubic cathetar. It will involve surgery and I have graphic memories of previous trips to the hospital.

Something as innocent as an Olympic poster can serve as a trigger for these memories. The poster in question was hanging on a hospital wall, near the tub room in the hospital in Montreal.

I may have other trips to the hospital in the pipeline and I want to do everything in my power to minimize my ability to remember my future encounters. If this includes totally confining myself in my room for the duration of my stay, not even going into a hallway and avoiding television and newspapers and music, so be it. I will even remember songs I hear in the hospital. Even listening to George Michael will serve as a trigger.

Listening to "The One" by Elton John will bring back memories of me lying in a hospital bed, in skeletal traction. I still remember the last time these vampires drew blood from me. I remember it quite vividly. No one quite understands how traumatic the hospital was for me and continues to be.

If it looks to you like this monster is controlling my life, you're right.

I'm going for whole nights without sleep and just sitting around church because of fear of what's coming. No one gets it, because I look so calm, cool and collected. I have no choice but to be that way, it was drilled into me to "be good for the nurses", even as they were doing horrible things to me.

I can be calm even as they are sticking a needle in my arm. That doesn't mean I'm OK!

I want to run away from all this.

There is a thing more crippling than cerebral palsy: the prison of your own mind.

(((((hamster))))) have you talked to a T about this?

-comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable-

HHHHehhhhh Girl! Ok I keep trying, be patient with me..

You sound like you are "remembering" stuff that hasn't happened yet! Are you saying that 4 years ago this same thing happened, that you had to have surgery, and now this year again ... and it's an olympic event year?

You really need a good T, girl, someone who can help you sort this stuff out better... you shouldn't be suffering so, mentally and emotionally with all this... there is help out there that can make it some easier!

<font color=green> ...slip sliding away... slip sliding away....

I just want to make it as hard as possible to remember what's going to be coming, for that matter, what's happening now. I'm not exactly having an enjoyable life from a medical standpoint right now either.

Like I said something even as innocent as a Olympic poster on a wall can set me off (remind me of that blasted hospital.)

I've been in that blasted hospital during other Olympic years, or even when certain political events were taking place. I remember watching certain shows in the hospital. Seeing those shows or hearing of those events can remind me of the hospital.

So in effect, television can serve as a trigger for all of this. Since I feel so physically rotten all the time, it feels like I'm recovering from surgery all the time. I have shut my TV off. It is surgery that I do not seem to be recovering from.

My anger is not at you, Sky. It's at the pain and at the surgery that led to all this.

Watching the Olympics is just going to provide me a memory later on of when I was waiting for help and didn't get it. It'd just remind me of the time in my life when surgery was only months away. (I have to see a urologist for a subpubic cathetar.)

There is a thing more crippling than cerebral palsy: the prison of your own mind.

I haven't talked to a T about this particular quirk yet, but I really think I should. (I only see the guy every two weeks.)

This is really STUPID!!!! It's only the Olympics for crying out loud! What horrible thing is going to happen if I watch the Olympics?

That's what I'm afraid of...

There is a thing more crippling than cerebral palsy: the prison of your own mind.