Illusion of choice, in poetry
How chronic illness brings us to blame ourselves instead of what failed us
I am taking a week off in hopes of a more stable, prolonged recovery. This, instead of the boom and bust crash cycle I’ve been teetering. In the meantime, here’s a poem from my collection, “Tilt: Poems from the Fog”.
I wrote “The procedure and the choice” about a nerve block procedure I underwent in 2022 for chronic pain and migraines. I wanted to address the illusion of choice in chronic illness, the fault placed on the patient instead of failed institutions, the forces that lead us to self-medicate, and how a patient comes to shame themselves for their own disease.
The procedure and the choice
Bitter mouthed, spitting up anesthetic,
he pulls the long plastic tube
from my throat.
I hate doing this procedure
it always feels like we’re choking them,
the nurse says,
handing me back my sweater.
Block the nerves,
numb the pain signals.
That would bring me back.
Driving in the dark.
Not enough research.
The pain specialist studies me,
We have some options though.
He wheels out a screen,
the image of a throat,
then, a medical device,
the procedure to take away the pain.
Come back next Thursday at 8am.
My white whale.
This was the eighth time
I let the white coats enter me,
to separate the good from the bad.
It’ll work this time.
It might work this time.
Will it work this time?
When I got home,
I shut the blinds,
and writhed in bed for five days.
I owe it to them now.
The clinic’s bills takes up rooms,
houses,
hospitals.
I went back to the pills
after the procedure didn’t take.
The shame eats up
the girl in the mirror,
gone is the one with the bright eyes.
Band-Aids,
slippery Band-Aids.
They makes the vertigo worse,
but take away the pain.
The choice is mine.