Healing Journal, Again

I’ve decided to post this again.
All of it.  Somewhere back in 2015 there is a fragment of it that begins,
“Note:  The Healing Journal in its entirety has been mostly removed with just a few images left.”  At that time I felt I had to take it down… I was too vulnerable.

Hard to write.  Hard to read.  Hard to live with.

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This journal started out as a journal to record positive uplifting thoughts to speed my healing on what was to be a five week journey to rid my kidneys of large stones.
The surgeries were in two stages.
The urologist was not sure he would get all the stone out in the time I was to be under,
and so a second was scheduled.
At that time he would also then clean my left kidney of stones.

It didn’t go well; he botched it.

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After leaving my personal journal up for a few months I decided to take it down.
Then put it back up.
Then took most of it down.  Then put it back up again.

Understand the surgery itself was a terrible ordeal, a botched job by a bad doctor.
But that is not the worst of it.  It was his anger toward women and toward me.
He had an attitude about me needing painkiller even though he had split my ureter through dilation, and now I had three stints left in me for several weeks.
I was in agony in those weeks, and he stalled and refused painkillers,
and so I had to turn to another urologist for the pain, who was shocked that
Dr. Im was stalling on my painkillers when it was obvious why I needed them.
I was on four pills a day for weeks… and still had pain.

But the final blow was when he went to remove the stints.
He told me it would be a couple of seconds, very fast, and over.
He did not tell me about the camera he was going to shove in me along with the stints.
He lied.
He told me Mitchell could not go into the room with me this time: it was too crowded.
I was strapped into the stirrups and my arms were strapped down.
When he started I wanted him to stop; it was excruciating and I had not agreed to it.
His refusal to stop when I told him to stop was  a violation of my body.
I was screaming for him to stop, to let me breathe,
and the nurses standing around and the assistant to the side looked away.
It was the most damaging thing to ever happen to me,
especially as I was never raped before in my life.  Accosted but not raped.
This damaged my soul and my body and my body/soul.
I was “raped” by a doctor!  He should have stopped!  He had no right!
My yoni still cringes upon touch, and every thing is a bit frightening regarding medical procedures.  I’ve wept every time a medical person has had to touch me.
My gynecological visits are now an ordeal.
I have to have them slow down and let me breathe through it.  That is not like me.

There are entries below where I am trying to find the positive
in the experience of having my ureter split open.
But once he shoved that camera in me, once he would not stop,
that I cannot even begin to put a positive spin on….

“I bow down to hurt.  It is hurt that makes us grow.  When we are complacent and
“ladi da” we maintain the status quo.  When we are challenged and face difficulties, the real work of dharma begins.  I bow down to hurt.  Emaho!”  Barry Kerzin

I am trying not to be complacent.
The medical community is not on my side.
I have tried to get Kaiser’s attention.
I wanted them to pay for the physical therapy.
I wanted them to acknowledge that this urologist changed my life with his anger
and his terribly inappropriate cruel end procedure.
I wanted recompense.
They pretended to listen, I told my story to several lower level employees,
weeping through the story each time.
Suddenly they stopped returning my calls.
They can’t find the forms I’ve repeatedly sent,
the formal requests for my medical transcript.
The head of Urology was too busy to talk.

They want me to go away.
The thing is, that my yoni still cringes, and I can’t afford physical therapy..

During my own sit meditation, I try to heal.  I breathe in the pain and fear.
I send out sunflowers, a loving mate, summer berries,
good food, comedies and murder mysteries.
Healing is sent to all those who are suffering.  Compassionate abiding.

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#metoo.  Not from actual rape, that is, he didn’t penetrate me with his penis,
but he hurt me, he scarred me for life, apparently, psychologically.  He did not stop and allow me boundaries and breathing in a non-threatening situation, that is,
that my life was not in danger if he slowed down and worked with me,
gave me pain killers, got my husband in the room.

Finally, on top of that, the AMA was not interested.
So much for their policing of bad doctors.
Good old boy network that would only be interested,
one assumes, if a man’s penis was being
stretched and ripped and causing them torturous pain
FOR NO REASON.

Drawn in a handmade folded journal withe anything on hand:
Pentalic HB woodless pencil, various pens and with De Artramentis Document ink, Super5, Noodlers ink, and Daniel Smith, QoR, and Holbein watercolors.
Cover art a gift from Cathy Johnson.

        

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About dkatiepowellart

hollywood baby turned beach gurl turned steel&glass city gurl turned cowgurl turned herb gurl turned green city gurl. . . artist writer photographer. . . cat lover but misses our big dogs, gone to heaven. . . buddhist and interested in the study of spiritual traditions. . . foodie, organic, lover of all things mik, partner in conservation business mpfconservation, consummate blogger, making a dream happen, insomniac who is either reading buddhist teachings or not-so-bloody mysteries or autobio journal thangs early in the morning when i can't sleep
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4 Responses to Healing Journal, Again

  1. loisajay says:

    Katie–this was such a hard read. When I was going through my cancer surgeries and subsequent treatments, someone asked me if I was documenting all of that. No! I wrote down my surgery dates, release dates and chemo dates, but document a blow by blow? No. But for me it was more depression than what you went through. And what you went through….even reading this, it is so very hard to imagine. Shame on the doctor, his staff and the AMA. And arms strapped down, too….you have to think he knew someone would come flying off that table and do him the physical harm he was doing to you. It sickens me that you went through this….even more that there is no recompense. Yes, very hard to live with.

    Like

  2. an appalling journey…

    Like

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