Welcome Spring!

The snow is almost gone. Things are thawing, melting, flooding, growing. Mud is the medium for Earth's expression. Mud and vines and the waking green. This past Monday I celebrated Ostara with a few friends. I started my period too, which, is kind of right on the money for Ostara. During the evening we talked about things here and there and in the end we drew Rune eggs from a cauldron. The Rune suggested things we have to look forward to/work on/focus on for the following year. My rune was Ansuz. This rune means Odin or god. It is the 'A' in our modern alphabet and how fitting because I have no less than eight letter A's in my full name. Three in my first name alone. 

A friend interpreted and divined for me that maybe this is the year to really form a connection with a god or goddess. While I'm very drawn to many deities, I have yet to feel one really claim me and become my patron. Maybe that's just not in the cards for me, but at the same time, I feel I really do want that relationship. I've thought about Thor, Freya, Skadi, Elen of the Ways, Herne, Innana, and several others as potential patrons but I don't know that I've really made myself available to them. I know that I am too in my head most of the time for even the smallest of meditations so really listening to the gods and to the wights and to the fairies and to everything around me is never easy. 

I am always looking to the fallen angel and watcher: Penemue. Enochian lore is very interesting to me from a spiritual and literary standpoint. About ten years ago I played around with a novel about a little fallen angel named Dobiel but didn't get very far. I wouldn't mind revisiting the idea but I would like to learn a lot more about the fallen angles before I do. 

Lately I've felt a huge pull toward 'darker' entities and deities. Sometime in summer I'm going to, with the help of a few friends, perform a ritual to honor the scary, misunderstood, dark, and commonly considered 'evil' of our spiritual brethren. Some of those I want to include are: Lilith, Lucifer, Loki, and Princess Luna. Yes, L was a very intense theme here. But there are more gods and goddesses and creatures that fit this category and I'm open to expanding it or even adding a second part. I know I want to keep the feeling of this ritual light and inquisitive and educational. This is a ritual to explore the necessary and positive aspects these beings represent, not to emulate their less admirable acts. 

In other news, the Hannah is doing amazing. She still has really bad days but more often than not she is finding solace and healing in her writing and I'm very proud of her. Right now we're working on building up strength in both of us. I'm walking to the bus stop again (and bitching about it because damn am I out of shape!); and she's going to start going to the mail box and walking me to the property line of the apartment complex when I leave in the morning, We're hoping that we'll both feel able enough to go and see the big cats at Cattails, which is a big cat rescue reserve in northern Spokane.

The Surgery (not as glorious as 'Repo: The Genetic Opera' would lead you to believe)

So I haven't posted in a long time. About three months actually. Things have been difficult for me emotionally. Hannah and I have been fighting to get her a hysterectomy for a long time and the beginning of this year things finally started happening. She's written about much of the experience over on her blog and she's done a great job chronicling the stress and pain she's gone through. And now I want to express a little of what I've gone through as well. 

It is not easy to see your loved one suffer or be jerked around and treated poorly by those in the medical field. Hannah's suffered extreme vaginal bleeding for 8 out of the 9 years we've been together and as a result has been anemic as fuck. For those out there suffering from anemia, I'm so sorry, because it is shitty. It's more than just feeling fatigued. It is a condition that can permanently harm the sufferer if not controlled. In some cases, anemia (low hemoglobin) can lead to heart attacks and death. It's no joke. But for many, many years doctors looked at Hannah and said, "take iron," and sent her on her way. Well iron helps a little but no amount of iron is going to help when you're bleeding through 10 plus feminine pads every fucking day. This became the norm. I started to just accept that this was how it would be forever. But then at the very end of 2016 we learned that it didn't have to be this way. We got in to see a gynecologist and hysterectomy was suddenly on the table. 

For all those years we the frogs sitting in a pot of slowly warming water. But starting in January we finally saw the bubbles of boiling water and panic set in.

Things got worse. Suddenly and terrifyingly. Hormones, hemorrhaging, a trip to the ER, blood draw after blood draw, biopsies, pre-cancerous cells, an irregular EKG, so many doctors, so many ups and downs, a trip the Cancer Center and finally a date for the surgery, February 22nd. But then that date got pushed back. So then March 1st was to be the day. And February 22nd to March 1st was the longest week of my life. I cried every day, had panic attacks, felt a sort of premature loneliness creep over me as if I was preparing for Hannah to die. This was supposed to be just a run of the mill hysterectomy but all of the things around it (the alarmist verbage, the 5 wishes of a dying patient document which I had to sign, the mention that Hannah's weight made this a 'risky' operation) made me feel like Hannah was going to go to sleep and never wake up again.

But she did wake up again.

We arrived at the hospital at about 5:30am. During her pre-op I was allowed to sit with her. She was so nervous. So was I. We chitchatted a little and I told her everything was going to be alright. She wore a bind rune and a drawing of the four elements on her back and I no for a fact that these things worked their magic on both of us. I did cry a little with her in pre-op but mostly I was a silly, fun, strong fiance. The doctor came in and told us that she was going to make five incisions and sent in her robots to do the deed. Well, after she left, I told Hannah that essentially she was going to have Voltron inside of her, which meant that her uterus was Zarkon, which suddenly made surgery kind of epic and perhaps a smidgen less terrifying. She was prepped and taken in for surgery around 7:30 and by 9:30 the doctor herself came out to tell me that Hannah had done well and was in the recovery room. She said that they'd let me go and see her after a little while and that Hannah would be coming home that day. It was surreal. Just like that the surgery was over. It was as surreal as when you wake up in a different country for the first time and really realize where you are. 

There was a moment in post-op recovery that I broke down a little. I was leaning over Hannah, holding up her cup of water so she could drink from the straw. I saw a little crust at the corner of her eye like the salt left from an involuntary tear. I remembered the line in the '5 wishes' thing about "I wish for a warm wash cloth for my face" as a comfort requested by someone near death. Even writing about right now makes me cry a little. Such a small request with such a huge implication. And I just looked at her and imagined how this all could have ended up differently and how thankful I was to the gods that she was just groggy and thirsty and not fading away forever. She saw my crying and playfully, sleepily said, "you really are a wimp." Guilty a mother-fucking charged. I own it. I'm a wimp and I'm really, really happy that the surgery is over and we can start looking toward a future free from the daily worry, emotional and physical pain, and intense fatigue.

She's lying on the couch right now, struggling between medicinally induced sleep and the desire to stay awake and cuddle with me. In about four hours I'll wake her so she can take another pill. So far, aside from some pretty bad aching and a touch of nausea, she's actually doing amazing. I am still afraid to leave her alone. I've seen her shift from doing perfectly fine to sobbing in the bathroom within seconds, so I still want to have someone at home with her while I'm away during this next week for work. But on the whole she's just fantastic. 

And on the subject of fantastic, our friends and support network have been absolutely stunning in their kindness and consideration. I can't even begin to write or verbalize my thankfulness. I am touched beyond words and I know that had it not been for our friends and family, I would be completely lost right now. Thank you to the many who have made Hannah and I feel so very special and loved.