Cyber Monday Special and a Pushcart Nomination, and Survival Skills for the Sick
- At November 27, 2017
- By Jeannine Gailey
- In Blog
- 3
Cyber Monday Poetry Special!
Hey guys! Consider supporting poets and poetry today on “Cyber Monday!” I’m offering a special – all five books for $62 including shipping! Otherwise, a dollar off all individual books plus free shipping! (That would make Becoming the Villainess $11, She Returns to the Floating World $11, Unexplained Fevers $14, The Robot Scientist’s Daughter $14, and Field Guide to the End of the World $14.) Of course I will sign these as well if you like!
You can e-mail me at jeannine dot gailey at live dot com or just use the handy Paypal button below!
A Pushcart Nomination
I wanted to say thank you to Redactions and Tom Holmes for nominating a poem from my new manuscript-in-progress, “Self-Portrait as Appalachian Ballad,” for a Pushcart. I’ve been nominated before but never included in that sacred anthology, so hopefully I have better luck this year with this year’s judge. You can read “Self-Portrait as Appalachian Ballad” as well as Redactions’ other Pushcart nominated poems here.
Survival Skills for the Sick (Holiday Edition)
I surprised myself by decorating most of the weekend, getting Christmas cards, writing poetry, reading, and not doing all that much shopping. We had a relaxing Thanksgiving, just Glenn and I, not doing much, and that was maybe good for me. Usually I am type-A get-it-down-girl starting the day after Thanksgiving. But I had a crazy week last week with the doctors. dentists, which left me with a lot of vertigo and fatigue (apparently these are my big MS symptoms.) Those appointments are so stressful and it is so easy for someone (with any chronic health problem, not just MS) to let them take over their lives. I struggle with trying to protect myself and trying to have a balance between stressful/horrible things (unfortunately, we often can’t avoid the worst parts of life) and the joyful, affirming parts of life – being with people who bring out the best in me, spending time in nature or with art or music or animals. There’s something about health that doctors never touch on – the need to reaffirm within ourselves that besides the prescriptions, the onerous tests, the therapies and the medications, we need a reason to keep on living. We need to motivate ourselves that there is a reason to suffer through the rest of it. I have a lovely older friend who has had cancer a long time who has been such an inspiration to me, joyful, youthful and determined to enjoy her life. She told me that one of her secrets is to treat her body as a friend, not an enemy, and to schedule happy things before and after chemo treatments and surgeries. For her, having something to look forward to is as important to her treatment as the medical stuff.
Starting a new MS drug soon – Tecfidera – which has some scary side effects but hopefully will be effective in slowing down the inflammation and growing number of lesions in my brain – is an exercise, really, in hope. You hope the new drug will help, that the side effects won’t be too bad or keep you from living the rest of your life. Going to occupational, physical, and in my case, vestibular therapies are also exercises in hope – in hope that you will get better, feel better, regain some of your lost capacities. Hope is really an important component in the treatment of disease.
So I am wishing you, both my healthy friends and those who aren’t, hope and joy this holiday season. In the middle of the mayhem, be sure to pencil in a few hours of down time. Make your favorite dinner, or a batch of cookies, put on the music you like (I’ve been playing the Lumineers Cleopatra album and Aimee Mann’s Mental Illness, along with the cable Yule Log Christmas carols) whether it’s holiday-appropriate or not, watch a happy-making show or movie, talk to someone you like over the phone. Spend less time with the news. Read a few poems, write a few poems, get lost in a murder mystery or Paris memoir (two of my guilty pleasures). Don’t be so hard on yourself, your body, your ideas of what the holidays should be.
Jan Priddy
Congratulations all around! There is always magic in having the tree. (We play The Muppets Christmas album with John Denver. It gets me in the mood every time!)
Brian James Lewis
Thanks for another great post full of great pics and positive vibes. You are right, that whoozy fatigue deal is a definite drag! I have it all the time and I don’t have a huge amount of understanding people. So often what they assume is laziness on my part, is just me being my slow self. About a year ago, an acquaintance of mine told me that, “it must be real fun hanging around the house all day taking pills.” Needless to say, we’re not real friendly anymore. You are very brave and awesome!
Jeannine Gailey
Thank you Jan and Brian! May you both have peaceful and warm holiday seasons!