The Best Blog in America?

Four and a half years ago, in the middle of January 2009, I began my blogging career with these words:

"I'd like to thank my dear younger sister for letting me in on this action. I don't know about all that 'smart one' stuff since she is the one who got something off the ground that I have only talked ad nauseum about doing myself. I may have the Master's in English Lit., but sometimes we overeducated end up being the most stagnant."

And it's true, without that first push toward online confession from my younger sister Jennifer, I have good reason to doubt that I would have let a closet writer's burning ambition see the light of day. I earned a comfortable living in those days as a manager of corporate standards, and came home each evening to make dinner for my then-husband. I had a clearly defined purpose that hid rather well some painful internal chafing. I was not! (screamed my buried soul) cut out for paperwork, motherhood and meal planning. There is nothing inherently wrong with those roles and for many women, filling them provides intense personal satisfaction, but the farther I traveled down the path of rote domesticity, the closer I moved to its expected tollgates, the more certain I became that I was lost.

Jenny knew it. And she wouldn't let me pretend otherwise. If I were lacking in personal bravery, well then she'd start the blog, give it a name and a theme and set me up as an administrator. No slouch a communicator herself, she produced the first few posts - in the voice of a harried, swamped suburban career woman, wife and mother - and challenged me to set myself apart.

That original blog, Which End is Up!?, "An in-depth look at the life of two very different Chicago sisters as it happens," evolved over time, eventually becoming the one-voice forum that I secretly believe Jenny always intended it to be. Months passed and as I gained a following, confidence and a certain amount of prolificacy, I migrated over to the Open Salon platform where Contemplating the U.S. Navel was born.

Through practice and self-discovery, I discovered a genuine passion for deconstructing our nation's increasingly fractured and broken political system. A long series of posts examining these themes led to professional recruitment from RootSpeak magazine in the form of a weekly column. When RootSpeak went on hiatus, I landed at PoliticusUSA where I've enjoyed my largest readership to date. That first push toward blogging from my baby sister has led to a diverse and satisfying professional writing career that includes national awards for journalism (the explosion of urban agriculture), newsletter editing (PenPoints, the quarterly communication of the Illinois Woman's Press Association) and theater criticism.

And now it is in June 2013 that I have a sense of a fledgling communications career (because a writer can never be too comfortable or established) coming full circle. For it is this year that the contest judges of National Federation of Press Women have deemed this very blog the best in the nation.

I still can't quite process and accept the mind-bending honor. For writing without varnish (and some in my life might argue, too nakedly) about the triple challenges of alopecia, cancer and divorce in 2012, I will travel to Salt Lake City to receive a honor the Becky of January 2009 could only experience as a daydream.

It's beautiful and satisfying whenever one's work is recognized by an esteemed body, but when that work is the very lifeblood and selfhood capsized across the screen, the victory becomes so much more gratifying - and humbling. The award I will collect from the NFPW at the end of August is not just a celebration of my words, it's a vindication of my voice, my experience. The emotions and thoughts I vomit onto the keyboard nearly every week are my most authentic self and somehow, a conglomerate of respected peers have deemed that worthy of consumption and acknowledgment.

I never got into blogging with ideas of grandeur. I always assumed that if anyone outside my immediate family read the words, I'd already won. Blogging was therapy, a way of wondering aloud on so many topics: "If this is how it's supposed to be, then how come...?"

But it now appears that the attempt to make sense of my self and the world around me has spoken to others. When I read this judge's feedback, I cried for that young, inexperienced 2009 self who had no idea she could use prose to speak to faceless others, badly inept at self-expression as she'd been to that point:

"This writer has no problem tapping a vein and bleeding onto the page, but she does so with humor and style. My kind of writing! Definitely worth the prize.""

Migraine Season

This is the kind of winter that migraine sufferers dread. Take last week for example. Here in Chicago the temperature touched 61 degrees on Tuesday, the warmth punctuated by springlike showers. By Thursday morning, the mercury stopped climbing at 10 degrees with brutal winds and icy road conditions.

Remember when the El Nino weather pattern was the subject of much news coverage back in 1997 and 1998? Well as a native Chicagoan, I never saw what the fuss was about. It's El Nino here all year-round. Many times we cycle the four seasons all in the same Windy City day. As a child and young adult, the varying climate was either a fun adventure or a wardrobe challenge, but as I enter my mid-30s, in peak mental condition, but somewhat hobbled physically, the volatile elements have a similar effect on my temperament.

Back in November of 2012, on Election Day to be precise, I fractured my coccyx and sacrum in a bad judgment call involving L'il Red, a yellow light and an SUV. As an avid gym goer and infamous pain intolerant, the long recovery of this injury, aggravated by the bipolar nature of a Chicago winter, has left me rather short on patience - with myself and others. Midsummer last year I was also diagnosed with a debilitating cluster migraine condition that has been stubbornly difficult to regulate. The worst fate for a control freak is the body's capricious tendency to dive into a tailspin of throbbing pain and nausea that can endure for days. In the worst moments of these episodes, I cannot talk or write. The ability to communicate, an attribute I value so highly, drowns in suicidal levels of painful inertia. To look at my scientific, solutions-oriented partner in the eyes and see a helplessness I can't comfort may be the cruelest turn of all.

As I sit here typing these words, it's a manageable 32 degrees outside but freezing rain has been dropping in sheets since the middle of the night. I know this because I awoke with a dull pressure ache in my sinuses when the downpour began. My physician, the eminently patient and kind Dr. Gong, has theorized that the parts of my brain which trigger a migraine don't seem to know how or when to shut themselves off. This could explain why the headaches can last for days and are immune to all the usual remedies. My brain just ignores what's good for it. Wouldn't be the first time.

Throughout two years of recovery and convalescence, which began in early 2011 when I said goodbye to my ex-husband and our broken marriage, I was warned about the mind-body continuum. While I was in survival mode, on constant high alert, the ability to function without food, sleep or emotional balance was a phenomenon to be taken for granted. It was only paradoxically as I began to relax and morph into the new, less self-defeating person I am on the inside that the body started to give way: a battle with cervical cancer, the cluster migraines, alopecia, insomnia. If my psyche is in large degree healed, why can't my body get with the program? It seems it feels the need to follow the arc of this typical Chicago winter: up, down, all-around and completely outside my jurisdiction.  

Massage Masochism

Several months ago I wrote this post about my ongoing battle with alopecia. The hair loss which follows the line along my left temple turned out to be an aesthetically horrifying side effect of chronic cluster migraines, the condition with which I was finally diagnosed in mid-August. Though the diagnosis brought about irritating lifestyle changes (less wine consumption, reduced outdoor activity in hot weather, more sleep and less demands on my limited free time), the verdict was certainly preferable to that of an autoimmune disease or brain tumor, which were the other two options.

The team of doctors who helped me looked for answers decided upon a fourfold treatment plan: one emergency medication for sudden headache onset and two daily pills, the aforementioned lifestyle changes, a topical steroid spray intended to regenerate hair growth and treatments as often as I could afford them with a craniofacial massage therapist. Through a series of a medical exams, it was ascertained that copious knots located at the base of my skull, scalp, neck and jaw might be limiting the healthy inflow of blood and oxygen while causing a retention of impurities and other waste. It was also hypothesized that these knots developed over time, likely due to the effects of 2011 stress - cancer, divorce, and a schism with close family members.

I went AMA and took myself off those daily pills within a month, The prescriptions were causing reductions in my heart rate, breathlessness and chest tightness. During light jogs, I felt dizzy and lightheaded and worst of all, the tablets did nothing to restrain the monstrous headaches that often appeared out of thin air. I held onto the emergency pill, and still do, as it has proven effective at limiting the discomfort if I act with alacrity.

But about those craniofacial massages. They have been a horrendously uncomfortable miracle. It turns out I had an expert right in my own backyard, a longtime friend with an established mobile therapy business. He specializes in the treatment of those with chronic conditions like arthritis, multiple sclerosis and yes, migraines. Because many of his clients are homebound or otherwise limited in their motility, Pat comes to them. As a sole proprietor with his own equipment, without the expense of office space, his rates are highly attractive.

But I digress. I booked my first 90-minute treatment in the middle of August. Pat started with my scalp before moving to the base of my skull. For a person who has built a career out of presumed self-awareness, I knew not until he touched me exactly how sore, rigid and entangled those muscles were. Hell, I didn't even know they were used for anything. However it wasn't until he slapped on a pair of latex gloves and began digging around my jaw inside and out that the actual tears began to flow. As Pat began to isolate grape-sized kinks in the muscle groups which permit talking, eating, brain and neck support, I couldn't believe I had been walking around living day-to-day life like this. I am certain the tears were shed in equal parts sorrow over the ignorance which led to needless suffering, as well as temporal pain.

At the conclusion of that first session, I had watery eyes, sneezing and a two-day runny nose that ejected copious amounts of weird green shit. Was that mess literally stuck inside my head? Never had the dire warnings that a stressful lifestyle impacts overall health seemed more obvious. I had the mucus-filled tissues to prove it.

As I walked out Pat's front door, I was resolved never to endure another bout of his sadist "massage therapy" again, but I certainly couldn't deny that I had more movement in my jaw and neck than I ever remembered. I also couldn't ignore that as he worked through my jaw, tiny shoots of pain were refracted at the front of my skull - exactly the point from which the migraines emanated.

Nearly three months and one regenerating bald spot later, my belief that prescription drugs often only mask the problem, and bring about their own pitfalls is stronger than ever. I'd stop short of labeling myself a New Age homeopathic hippie, but I am a logical being and if something works, I stick with it. I haven't suffered a migraine in 12 weeks and the new hair growth, even if entirely white, offers encouragement that this past summer's informal wig shopping may have been premature. I no longer obsessively pet the smooth spot that shouldn't be, as if enough rubbing could awaken the dormant follicles.

If short-term pain once every three weeks means getting my life back and a reprieve from repetitive, expensive doctor visits, then it's a true pleasure. 

Bald Insecurity

Boyfriend/Hairdresser 8 weeks ago: "Come on! It's always something with you. I can't see anything!"

Sister 4 weeks ago: "Is it because you dye your hair too often?"

New Boyfriend/Hairdresser 3 weeks ago: "Ok, now I see what you're talking about."

A woman historically known for her wild, curly red locks is starting to part with them, at the ripe old age of almost 34. And with this development, wherefore goes the identity?

The summer I turned 13, I took a long look in the mirror and decided that with the natural attributes of ghostly pale skin, bright green eyes and a smattering of freckles, Mother Nature was in error when she doled out a head of medium brown hair. If I was going to be continually mistaken for Irish, I might as well go all the way with it.

Except for a brief 90s dalliance with black (a huge mistake influenced by Nine Inch Nails and Nirvana) and a foray into blonde highlights last decade (the things we do for love), my hair has held one fiery shade or another for over 20 years. As the tresses curled evermore with each passing year, I alternately cursed the frizzy, unruly mess yet gave silent thanks that I was gifted with a conversation piece, a physical manifestation of my personality: untamed, sometimes glossy, frustrating and colorful.

Though I fancy myself a believer in the overused "beauty is skin deep" maxim, I rarely applied that latitude to myself. It was never enough that I was a smart kid, decent at sports with other accomplishments. I wanted to be beautiful, the kind of gorgeousness that stopped people in their tracks. I wanted to ditch the huge Haray Caray glasses that acted as a screaming billboard for my near-sightedness. I yearned for the day I would have the independence to have my awful, crooked chompers corrected through the miracle of orthodontics. I wondered if I would ever grow big girls boobs (still waiting at 33). I didn't want to be creative and odd. There was a time I would have surrendered everything that makes me, well me, if it meant loving the image reflected in the glass.

As I grew up, sought the services of a good therapist and did the painful work of looking inward, I accepted what I had known all along: you can't have it all and it's a pretty idiotic waste of time to moon over your personal aesthetics. So as I have alluded in other posts, I learned to kind of like and appreciate the rest of me. Until.....

8 weeks ago when I began to notice a spot near my left temple that was hairless. I'm not talking about short baby hairs that might reflect pulling, hairbrush damage, etc. I mean bald - like it had been waxed clean. My eye, long trained to zero in on real and perceived flaws, moved to the spot by the day, then the hour, then the minute. What the hell was happening and why?

Alopecia was the first suggestion offered by the doctor, maybe stress related. Even as it started to be accompanied by intermittent headaches and nausea, I was told I shouldn't worry. Fretting could expedite the pattern, but asking me not to worry about an eyesore which I cannot control is like asking water not to be wet. So as the spot grew in the ensuing weeks, as topical steroids were doled, I started to consider that I might soon be without my signature physical attribute. Would my personality change without the aesthetic weapon that seemed to justify a "take no prisoners" attitude? The absence of my loud hair, an armor to hide the quiet, sad shame often experienced might leave me naked and defenseless in metaphysical and real ways.

A battery of tests this afternoon will shed additional light: autoimmune disease, brain tumor, anxiety disorder. These first of these two diagnoses are obviously somewhat problematic. But all I can think about is my hair. I don't want to lose it - or myself, especially when it took so darned long to be found.