HOME....stop
FLU RAMPANT IN KANSAS.... stop
LOST VOICE SOMEWHERE IN UTAH.... stop
POSSIBLE DIRTY MORMON CURSE.... stop
GOT TO SEE MY FIRST SNOWFALL IN OVER 7 YEARS... stop
AM NOW AN OFFICIAL GODMOTHER.... stop
CURRENTLY UNDER 300 LBS.... stop
STILL UNCERTAIN ABOUT BOWEL TROUBLE.... stop
WATCH OUT WHEN DRIVING/RIDING THROUGH HIGH ELEVATIONS; WILL MAKE YOU BLOW UP LIKE BALLOON....  stop
WILL SHARE MORE LATER....

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Considering the circumstances for my visit what I’m about to say is going to sound rather odd:  I actually feel relaxed and like I’m on vacation.  We have somehow managed to dive right into the deep end of the serendipity pool.  Just out and about in town; picking up a prescription; eating out at a restaurant; being introduced to someone who you actually used to know; going to my old high school after hours and amazingly found both my old teachers.  It’s just amazing.

I’ve got to hit the hay because Craig, his Mother and his sister are coming up in the morning bringing all the rugrats in tow; and I hear they’re hell on wheels.

But I just wanted to tell you I’m so happy right now, so relaxed; even though my back still hurts I’ve learned that I can do things and keep going on with life.  Sometimes my bowels have troubles, but I just take my medication, my pain medication, don’t complain and just go on with life.

I’m actually having fun.

Know what?  I'm actually sitting here watching She-Devil with Roseanne Barr; it was one of Kaye's favorite movies. :)

Besides Mother and the Amazing Aunt Tammy my best friend Snookie is my hero.  You remember me talking about Immaculee Ilibagiza?  Her demeanor, faith and forgiving nature reminded me of Snookie.  Yes she’s still human and gets angry but doesn’t bother holding a grudge or turning vicious because she knows it’s pointless and never really seems to get ya anywhere.  Believe it or not I’ve always wished to be more forgiving, and strive like hell to someday reach that goal.  But you and I both know I’m not there yet.

Ah hell, my Aunt Kaye passed away tonight.  I did a search for her, but I never really actually wrote about her (on here); there’s only a few snippets.  And it’s bloody impossible to describe someone you’ve known for a lifetime inna few paragraphs.

She had been sick for the past three years and was diagnosed with Primary Pulmonary Hypertension, which caused a multitude of other complications and thus her prognosis was terminally ill.  She was a long time smoker, never took care of herself and rarely went to see a doctor.  She didn’t do housework (she would buy another set of dishes instead of washing the ones she had); she wasn’t just a non-exerciser she preferred not moving a muscle at all; the only green thing she ate were M&M’s or peas inna can; and sadly becoming truly ill was her life long dream.  She was forever having phantom pains or declaring she suffered from some obscure illness.  So when her wish finally came true noone was terribly surprised.

In the beginning she wasn’t even supposed to last 3 three months, then it was 6, then a year; etc, etc.  However she just kept going to the point where even the doctors started asking, “Why aren’t you dead yet?”

She was whiny, always negative, unpleasant and completely uninterested in anything that wasn’t about her.  It was all you could do to find out how her daughter was doing, and even when ya got the info it was always trailed by negativity or how she didn’t care for her son-in-law and all the horrible things she just knew he was doing.

So five hours and one minute later after her death I’m writing to you about how unfortunately she was quite often a mean, manipulative, lazy, controlling and self-centered person throughout her entire life.  Both Mom and Dad are always talking about how she led such a sad life.  But despite it all I remember having wonderfully outrageous fun with her.  It couldn’t have been and it wasn’t all that bad.  I remember one New Year’s Eve at Aunt Kaye and Amy’s apartment.  We were sitting at the dining room table scarfing down your typical New Year’s Eve type munchies; she squirted some Easy Cheese onna cracker and said inna monotone voice, “It’s a wonderful life.”  And we all fell outta our chairs laughing at the sheer pathetic-ness of it all.  

Thanks to my asinine, uppity self-centered lil grudge I hadn’t talked to her for more than a year, and it’s a lil late now.  I’d been saying for months how I was gonna call her and just get over it, but when I actually got to the phone all I could think of was, “Oh God, I’m not up to talking to her right now – she’s so tiresome.”  I absolutely meant to do it before my surgery but of course I kept dragging my feet until it was too late to call back in the Midwest.  Then I totally meant to call after the surgery.  I thought maybe I would get a chance to do it today (she’d pulled outta these things in the past), but I knew that chance was lost the moment I heard Mother screaming like a wounded animal in the hallway.  

I wish I could tell Kaye we got the phone call while I was in the damn bathroom, she would’ve loved that.

You can’t feel sorry for me and you shouldn’t; it was my doing and my decision.  I ignored or kept inventing excuses just so I wouldn’t have to talk to a dying woman who managed to knot my knickers more than a year ago.  Well whoopty shit!  Who hasn’t managed to do that?  What made her so special?  I guess it was because I loved her and she was related to me.

You know I was actually planning to take a trip over there once I felt better.  Well, we’re goin now.  

Because of the distance I still feel somewhat detached.  Somebody called up on the phone to tell Mom that her only sister had died, but that’s just hearsay.  The closer I get to Kansas I imagine the reality of the situation will start creeping up on me.

I know one thing for sure:  I’m going to be there for Amy.  I’m so proud of her; she’s done and doing things that noone thought she was capable of, but I always did.  Bless her heart, she was in class when they came and told her and the poor thing started vomiting up anything she’d eaten in the past few days.  But she’s gonna be ok.  In fact her and her husband just bought a house and she wants to start tryin to have kids.  She was able to show Kaye pictures of their new home before she went; Amy was so happy she got to show her.  Kaye and Amy were always apartment dwellers and it was always Amy’s dream to have a house of her own.

Kaye’s to be buried in the same cemetery as Grandpa was.  I wonder if her grave will be close to his.

I have got to tell you guys all about this.  About six weeks ago there was a writer’s conference here in Salinas.  At first it was incredibly annoying because Mother literally chucked this in my lap just a few days before the conference.  I don’t really have a lot of time to think; what about my back pain?  What kinda chairs they got?  Is the wheelchair fixed?  I agreed to it, but I still wasn’t sure.  She literally catapulted me into this thing.  And you’d think she’d be all over her stuff; printin out her work and getting a presentation ready, but to my surprise she dragged her feet the whole way.

It was gonna be hot, the wheelchair wasn’t fixed and I didn’t think I could do it but I certainly didn’t want to waste the 200+ dollars Mom paid.  So the night before the conference I came up with a smashing plan.  I was scheduled to have a private session with a literary agent who specialized in my genre.  So I printed out 25 pages from the first WLS attempt, a synopsis and a page about the author.  I stuck inna nice lil folder all organized with my name, conference ID number, genre, address, phone number and email.  I made it so all Mother had to do was hand it over.

Unfortunately this was a five minute presentation and Mom was kinda flustered and didn’t realize I’d done all the work for her.  However the literary agent was intrigued (although he said lose the profanity and that was totally my fault for having fuck in the first sentence of the synopsis.  I was thisclose to taking it out), but besides that he said it was an extremely hot and timely topic and he’d be happy to represent me; the only catch being since I’m a first time writer I need the completed product.

But here’s the thing:  This wasn’t just any literary agent guys, when Mom told me who it was I shot through the ceiling with glee.


Drum roll please…

Michael Larsen.  Yeah you heard me, THE Michael Larsen.  That’s THE Michael Larsen who’s wrote several books on how to get an agent and get published.  He told many another folk that if they did this and that they’re book could have potential, but he was totally down with me, or at least for five minutes.  Unfortunately noone could take your work, which was a damn shame.  I actually think his partner Elizabeth Pomada might be a better option as she does memoirs.

Still, I feel I need to find a helpful writer and take a course or two.  Seeing as how my high school education was a joke and I’ve yet to go to college.  I know my grammar, punctuation, sentence and paragraph structure are all over the map; I just try and make it appear like I know what the hell I’m doing.  I also have no idea how to section it off into chapters – with non-fiction, agents and publishers prefer an outline and chapter synopsis.  So I don’t know if I could go against the norm and make it more like journal entries or if the chapter thing is mandatory.  

And with that in mind I’ll probably have to put most of my blog under lock and key, or at least the weight loss ordeal.  Which is kinda unfortunate as I hoped it might help a few folks, but who the hell wants to buy your book when they can read it for free?

And now for you viewing pleasure I present my About the Author page:


About the Author

Elizabeth Brooke Lee is an extremely cranky individual and has valid reasons to prove her disposition.  

Although a 430 pound young woman, she was blessed with a seemingly Touched By An Angel medical health.  So you can imagine her surprise when a weight reduction procedure referred to as the Roux-en-Y quite literally ruined her life.  Fast forward three years later to the present and we find her taking nine different prescriptions, as opposed to two pre-op, including suffering from severe ulcers; prior to surgery she never once endured a light case of heartburn.  Brooke also suffers from debilitating back pain, became bulimic and only lost 100 pounds.  

Most people in this situation would give up and/or switch surgeons, but Brooke has remained loyal to her surgeon.  In fact her rather pushy and opinionated attitude finally broke through and much to her surgeon’s surprise he found himself respectful of her intelligence and even fond of this most unruly patient.  Now Brooke being the determined cuss she’s always managed to be, is preparing for a second surgery; a revision of the first.

This story in narrative, diary-like form is raw, emotional and quite often incredibly pathetic; you’ll find yourself laughing when you think you shouldn’t be, but life is like that.  Blatant honesty gives people the chance to climb inside and poke at the dirty gooey things that are often hidden from the naked eye, but there’s a lil voyeurism inside all of us.

Brooke is sorry she cannot be present to meet with you personally.  Because of the intense pain and the anxiety that always manages to follow suit, irrationality takes charge and before you know it a maniac begins taking hostages while demanding mass quantities of Vicodin and dark chocolate truffles.  Brooke would also like to apologize in advance for the inevitable spelling and grammatical errors as narcotics tend to make one’s brain turn to tapioca.  Anything else is Microsoft’s fault.

Thank you for taking the time to read.

Somewhere…

I know, I know; I’ve been silent but it’s hard to make your mind work when it feels like someone’s using a jackhammer on your spine.  And all ya seem to be doing is counting down the minutes till you can take more pain pills.

Rolled outta bed this afternoon with typical searing pain and Jabba the Hut staring back at me from my mirrored closet doors; that is if Jabba wore mint green jammies with lil kitties on ‘em.  At this point in time it’s hard not to think, “And I went through all that to still feel and look like this?”  However I did hop on the scale and learned I had lost another pound: “Alright, I guess I’ll go on then.”  This now brings us to a total of 24 pounds lost, but how much do I have to lose for my back to stop screaming?

So anyways, I’m no longer spending most of my time in the bathroom.  I know you guys were totally on the edge of your seat about that.  For awhile there I was having very nasty withdrawal symptoms from Effexor since it’s a time released capsule and none of the lil beads seemed to be absorbing.  So they put me on the regular Effexor, however since I was taking the maximum dosage prior they automatically prescribed the same amount.  Turns out taking too much Effexor has very similar symptoms to withdrawal.  Anyways I played experiment and found half the dosage normalized me and no longer made me feel like a paranoid schizophrenic.

I’m not kidding about the paranoid schizophrenia.  I could not focus on anything, 5 or 10 minutes tops.  And I saw things that weren’t really there.  Yeah seriously; like spiders, monsters and people who are dead.  Mix that all together with constant heart palpitations and you got one serious nightmare going on.  

I’ve got portable and cordless back massagers I can drag all over the house, now I just need a laptop to go with ‘em.  I promise next time I’m drugged up good I’ll try and tell ya all that happened and fill in the blanks.

Well originally I was trying to post to the Advanced Bariatric support group leader, but unfortunately Fat-Russ-I-Believe-in-Genie ripped the diagram that Dr. Swartz drew out of my hands thinking I was gonna whine on their message board about how Felix fucked me over by only giving me 100 cm bypass.  When in fact all I wanted it for was to try to explain what I was now (a mixture between RNY and the DS) and how that I feel so alone now because either surgical patients say, "Well I'm sorry honey but I can't just help you because you're different and not like us."

Anyway after my parents who no longer have any need for me go to sleep tonight, I'm gonna knock down the smoke detector that Craig put up for me as soon as I told him noone had bothered to do it for almost 3 years and I was too short (ladder and all), and then I'm gonna torch us all alive.

*thumbsup*