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Summa summarum
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I'm visiting my mother today. It's not that far away, just about half an hour. I realise half way there that I've forgotten my keys to my mother's house. I never do that, I'm not a forgetful person. She was working til six today and Jens was going to go to the tracks to photograph winning horses. It's just a normal thursday.
We go by her office, deciding we'll wait for her and give her a lift home. I haven't been there in ages. I love her office, the feeling that thousands of people are able to go there and get help is a comforting feeling. I know that she's the heart to a lot of people.
We catch her just as she's ending a session. She checks her phone and is surprised to see 15 missed calls and even more text messages. The first message was from her sister in law. "Crisis, call me".
The next ten minutes are aching in my brain. Old bruises appears, scars are ripped open. My brother's little sister killed herself today. She swallowed a whole bottle of pills, pulled a plastic bag over her head and hid in the closet. My grandfather found her just a couple of hours ago.
She had been ill for a while now. Went in for shock therapy treatment last year. 11 shocks. A little medicine afterwards. No therapy.
No one contacted my mother, no one told her she was ill again. My aunt refused therapy, she refused to talk about it. She didn't need it, she needed to work again. Everything was fine, she was fine.
She wasn't fine and my relatives aren't fine.
Sunday is the fourth anniversary of my father's death, my aunt leaves a husband and two children in her teens behind.
I don't know why I am writing this here, perhaps I am numb.
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I have cold hands.
I have had cold hands before. Sometimes even cold feet, hell I live in a place where winter time is all the time. I can stand cold. For weeks now my hands and feet have been like ice. I wear clothes, socks, two pairs, three pairs. I wear clothes. I am cold.
Then I feel this thing on my neck, on my throat. It's a swollen mess. I keep stretching my head back to feel it. I get everyone close to feel it. My mother felt it and told me to go to a doctor. She should have just said "it's big Linn, get over it." People get thicker necks once in a while you know. I could have just gotten a thick neck.
Last Wednesday he had his hands on me. I always get doctors that want to feel my chest. I believe I have had more people feeling my chest than a Thai hooker with implants. Only, most have been purely medical. Most.
I have been sick before. Actually I have been very sick before. I have been sick, all my life. Sometimes I get better and other times I get looks as to say – "We have no idea, sorry". Life goes on, I felt good. I woke up and felt good. I drank some iodine; I was allowed to eat birth control for the first time. I felt good.
I stopped drinking the iodine, it was part of some health thing that supposedly made you pee a lot and cleared out your system for the new year. I didn't know drinking iodine gives you a thick neck.
You don't get it though, I don't want to spell out the whole story here I just want to say that it's a big deal. It's a big fucking deal and I can't say that to everyone I know here. I cannot worry them. I called my brother and I don't talk to my brother but I damn well called him to let him know that I might have something on my neck. He thought I had a thick neck as well. He has a thick neck.
But I can't let them know that I am worried here, I can't let them know that I am so afraid to call my doctor tomorrow. He was new by the way, a new doctor. A new doctor feels like writing in a forum. He has my medical chart, you have my profile. You do your analysis of me and you make your mind up who I am and what's wrong with me. You take tests and I am a fluffy pink bunny with big cheeks or if I was a dinosaur I'd be a T-Rex or if I was a month I'd be July.
I know I don't post much because I don't have very much to offer on American politics or arguing over black and white. I don’t see my life in black and white. It's interesting to watch and I want to have opinions on such things. I just haven't lived my life that way.
I am making a call tomorrow to see what is wrong with me now and no one understands that I want there to be something wrong with me. I want there to be an explanation that is reasonable. If there is something wrong with me tomorrow there is way to fix it, very good pleasant ways.
If there's not, my mother promised me a colonic. I don't shit in front of other people. I'm sorry. I hate thick necks. And shit.
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My father died the 25th of March 2003. Of course, as normal when death strikes close to home it's a heartbreaking experience. Many of you here on this board has gone through with it a lot, some a few, others of you will if not now then soon.
He was a lieutenant in the Swedish army, incharge over medical care and rescue missions by helicopter. Since Sweden is neutral we're not rescuing any soldiers in war times but instead making sure that people working for emergency centrals all over Sweden and other nordic countries will be able to have helicopter assistance from the army.
14:09:11, 030325. The helicopter happened upon a vortex that quickly made the helicopter loose control, it hit the ice and the rotorblade dug a hole underneath them to then sink under water.
"We're going down, down down" was my fathers last words. During a 6 hour meeting they ended it by playing the last recorded conversation my father and the pilots had, I should have walked out of the room but I couldn't move. 3 out of 4 people made it up from the water. My father was trapped in the ropes he'd been tied to since he was the one sitting on the skids outside practising quick rescues over open water.
So why am I telling you this? I have no idea, to get it off my chest perhaps. It's a scene that plays inside my head almost every day three years later, even though I was never there. Not near the ice, not in the helicopter and was never allowed to attend the hospital.
1½ year later the accident commission board released their report on the accident. What was made out was that the pilots had not been to their medical check ups in 2 years. The co pilot was also too short to be able to operate this type of helicopter.
And here's the twist of it all. Had the pilot not been too short, he would, as is his responsibility, been able to notify the head pilot of the situation and gotten themselves out of the vortex without a problem. This is said by the accident report and by the pilot himself.
I do not blame these pilots. I do not care for them but I do not blame them. They came two days after my fathers death and told us that they had done nothing wrong and that it must be something wrong with the helicopter because they had not seen a thing. Years later they hang their heads telling us they knew all along.
The army left our side quickly after the burial, the soldiers and collegues of my father stopped saying hello. The pilot who was too short, hides when we see him at the local supermarket.
Today our attorney contacted my mother. Do you know how much money you receive after the army faulters and kills your father? 2500 dollars.
My grandmother, my grandfather, his 4 siblings and my family receives 2500 dollars each.
It's the law. You cannot change the fact that my father had no contact with his family at all because he hated his father and he loathed his siblings. My grandfather disowned me as a grandchild when I was 8 and I didn't see them for 5 years. They still live just down the street from us.
The money? I don't want it, my father's family will probably accept it and feel like they have every right to do so. Everyone has to live with their own guilt and choices.
I am sure that the families of dead soldiers get nothing or very little money either. But we're not at war, this didn't happen because enemy shot him or his helicopter. This happened because a pilot was too short.
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