Be honest: if you are bleeding in marvelous waterfall gushes and with great effort expel clots the size and shade of purple plums not just one week out of the month but several (are you cringing yet?), and if oral iron supplements sit in your stomach like the rocks they would have tied to witches to see if their dubious bodies would float, and if your doctor says, “We really need to try iron infusions, but given your history, there’s only one kind I’ll consider. It’s called Venofer” – you’ll ponder this option, right?
But if, after weeks of forms and referrals and waiting, and yes, fainting and a hummingbird heart rate upon climbing the neighborhood’s tiniest hill, you don’t know whether you can leave the house on a given day, whether your calves might seize up, or whether the red flood will stain your thighs and your things – if after that limbo time, you get a message from your doctor that says, “We’re so sorry, the only local infusion place won’t order the medication because your insurance reimburses them too little” – then a minor tantrum is in order, right?
It’s just, you can’t tantrum a lot because your iron stores are so low that you have to be judicious about the stomping and fist shaking and yelling since your body runs out of breath and then your brain tries to protect your organs by simply cutting them all off and getting you to collaborate with gravity by dropping you down down down. The heart keeps on fluttering irregularly and you learn that anxiety and blood loss are related, that cognitive function and even your ability to tie words together sensibly depend on how much iron your body has at its disposal. You don’t even think about all the hair anymore you find on your pillow. A friend suggests licking the handle of a cast iron pan, and daily. Later you read that traditional healer women stemmed the tide with herbs they gathered when the sun, the moon, and the season were right, even at the risk of being persecuted. You wish you could grow those herbs on your front porch, by yesterday. You’d dance naked around a fire if you had to, just to find relief and regain a smidgeon of vitality.
You try to rally modern support. Sporadic brain-shredding queue music, and you speak to not only one but two but three but then four insurance reps, all of whom misunderstand the issue and transfer you incorrectly. In between, you change your oversized, multilayered pads twice. The persons on the line inevitably mumble, always more question than statement, “Are you still there? I’m still waiting? Bear with me? The system is slow?” and then finally, the last one says, “So, this provider actually is in network with us …? But if they refuse to give you this infusion for whatever reason, there’s nothing you or we can do…?” So when you (logically, you think) answer, “But I have this insurance. I pay for insurance, so I can get care. And the point of the infusions is to keep me out of the hospital, to save my life and save the insurance company money. How is this just?” and they sigh in response, “You’re right…? Is there anything more we can do for you, and are you ready to take our customer satisfaction survey?” – then that little meltdown is justified, isn’t it?
You hang up because that’s all you can do. You hang out on top of the three ancient towels you’ve layered on your couch and know you’ve done the automated surveys, and they improve nothing. You and your doctor have pushed pre-authorization – nothing. You’ve talked to your HR managers and you’ve written to the state’s insurance commissioner, and this has done nothing. Then suddenly, you understand why some people refuse to pay taxes, premiums, and bills. You get why they let themselves give in to the temptation of whatever cheapest drug numbs the pain and dumbs down the fear and then, when it gets really bad, go to the ER and beg, “I’ve got nothing. Just take care of me.” You understand suddenly what it’s like to do it all right and still receive only wrong. You get how this system is an entity that assumes people exist to serve it in perpetuity, instead of the system serving the people. A set-up that makes the sick sicker and the rich richer. The bloody bloodier.
Your choice at this point? Tell your kids with a terse smile your pallor is normal and that they need to bravely grow up and take the dogs out because you can’t. Tell your boss you can’t come into the office, again – yes, again. Put your legs up the wall and let the leftover fluids you’ve still got flow back to your head. Breathe rhythmically. Drink something salty and wonder if there’s a greater power out there that can help. Maybe you whisper your prayers to the type of god that appreciates and heals injured, infuriated wombs. You can burn some sage and hum. Stumble through downtown and whine, with a voice reminiscent of a semi-recognizable actor, “Don’t you see that I’m bleedin’ here?” and hope someone, anyone, will take on your almost lost cause. As you pass out, you envision buying a pink-grip Ruger you can actually lift with shaky arms to remind the world’s insurance and pharma CEOs and the political decision-makers that insurance policies are held by real people. Real people who really, really bleed because that’s what bodies do.
Bodies are bodies. Blood is blood, and that’s all there is to it. Your once-precious vessel has transformed into something rickety, lumpy, and livid now, so what can you do but sit on your towel and light a candle for all female organs turned liability?
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Alina Zollfrank from (former) East Germany dreams trilingually and writes in the Pacific Northwest. She believes artists and writers are humanity’s true pulse, social media might just kill our essence, and produce should be shared with neighbors. Her work has been nominated for Best of the Net and The Pushcart Prize and recently appeared in Orchards Poetry Journal, Heimat Review, SAND, Eastern Iowa Review, Sierra Nevada Review, Tipton Poetry Journal, Comstock Review, The Braided Way, and others. Her essay “Mein Apfelbaum” will be featured in the garden anthology by Wild Librarian Press, and her poem “Forces” in the ecobloomspaces print anthology by Iron Oak Editions. Alina is a grateful recipient of the 2024 Washington Artist Trust Grant and committed disability advocate.
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Char Gardner is a lifelong visual artist and CNF writer, who taught in the Washington, DC area for nearly twenty years before she began working with her husband, Rob Gardner. Together they made documentary films internationally for over thirty years. Now retired, they live in the Green Mountains of Vermont, where Char is at work on a memoir. Her recent drawings are made with oil sticks on Arches 22×30 paper. Imagery is derived from the human form (working directly from a live model) and from the surrounding natural world. Her essays have been published in The Gettysburg Review, Green Mountains Review, and elsewhere.
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