Capital isness

Doc's 60-day prognosis: I'm 90% grafted to my brother's marrow.

"This is what it is with a capital isness."

I used to love GQ magazine. Anything to learn more about men -- real men. A lady like me doesn't mix well with boys. We're like oil and water, myspacers on facebook, Oprah and gravy. You get my point, the combination is not a good look. Then a good friend of mine told me "GQ" is for my gays but "Esquire" is for real men. I saw "the 66 men worth emulating list" on their website:

#14 Charles Barkley. For what he said to the cops.
#32 Nicolas Sarkozy. Cigar smoker, star-fucker, president.

While reading the list I couldn't stop laughing, or learning, and I immediately switched my subscription. 4 magazines in, I can't put it down.

I've read about Façonnable's new creative director, Eric Wright, a black man from San Francisco, how to order drinks over 4 hours (max at 5 if beer, 4 if anything mixed with tonic and only 2 if martinis) and why its still better to invest in crude oil and not alternative forms of energy. My personal opinion: any magazine with the 2010 E550 coupe on the back instead of Eva Longoria in false lashes gets my vote. Dude was right.

But no matter how many issues of Esquire or blogs on Thrillist I read, I'm still all woman. I'm still the simple yet complicated girl from Aberdeen who will wait for the booth to avoid the table, who will never really care for a Ben Stiller movie and who will try really hard to show you how effortless my lifestyle is. Some credit for knowing who I am? All of this to say that still, I will never know what it means to be a man.

Are you also one of those people that has wondered what something on the other side of the fence feels like? The rich versus the poor, the beauty versus the beast, the skinny versus the biggum. I used to wonder what it would be like to be healthy. To jog without going into crises. To not have to build up to it and just get out there and go. I drilled my sisters before the bone marrow transplant, asking "What will happen if you go jogging"? Like really, what's the worst thing that will happen? My sister Beth replied "Sports induced asthma?". We laughed - she can be a nut sometimes. Then I thought laugh all you want but in my 3 month window of being sickle cell free, I'm going jogging.

Well I had my catheter removed on Monday and doctors orders were to wait until it was removed to exercise. That only gives me 30 days. You understand that after 90 days is the real deal? I'll either keep producing my brothers marrow or I'll go back to producing mine. The catheter was in my chest for 60 days so that gives me 30 days to live Sickle Cell free and be able to exercise. The countdown began on September 24.

Monday. catheter. gone.

By Tuesday I was up and running (pardon the pun) and I think I discovered what it felt like to be normal. (Insert Rocky theme music) The first time I was so scared! But no crises, just really sore thighs. I'd cry if I wasn't so excited. And the music I'm listening to has me so hyped after these jogs I feel like I could do anything. (BTW, if you have not listened to Raekwon's Cuban Linx II yet go download it immediately). I can't believe this is what I've been missing my whole life, an ache or two in my thighs and my shins. It's so much simpler. All of this was worth it; the chemo, the first 3 weeks of physical hell, the emotional duress -- all of it was worth it for these moments of being normal. I can only pray with all my heart that this lasts forever and I'll be cured.

Then on Sunday I became too comfortable with this sense of normalcy and while we were filming for the documentary, I didn't wear my mask around my sis, who has been battling with a cold for several weeks. Now I feel awful. I thought I was being careful but when my immune system is this immature, it's difficult to adjust.

I did, however, receive permission to go back to work part-time so, in addition to my documentary project, I'll (hopefully) have something to be a part of again.

"I know these things don't come without a cost. I know that there's no insurance you can buy on this. I know how the thing that's restoring you can wind up killing you. ...How did all that get there? Then I remember. Got there because I'm alive again. Because I'm back in the tornado. Because this is what it is with a capital isness."
— PHILIP ROTH, The Human Stain

Read more: http://www.esquire.com/features/things-that-make-you-happy/philip-roth-human-stain-1009


Thank you for reading.

Peace and blessings,

Christina Madry

Choice Theory

To those who have shown their commitment to my well-being I say thank you.

Life is a blessing and usually wonderful but 2009 has been tough. I thrive on being happy, it just seems easier to be a half glass full kind of gal but this year is a challenge. I lost another amazing friend and brother, Ajile. I shared some of my fondest memories of Brooklyn and Manhattan with Ajile. He was my neighbor when I first moved to Brooklyn in 1999 and we have been friends ever since. He met my mother, my sisters and we share many of the same friends, some without knowing. We shared many passions in life and I pray that the creator had a surf board and a snow board waiting for him when he arrived on Friday.


Another kindred spirit,Nassan, passed away in February. Michael Jackson died. I was in denial all summer but reality struck and I finally cried. I'm premenopausal and the hot flashes suck. I'm a 25 year old in a 62 year old body. It just seems like 2009 is pecking at my soul.

But as with anything in life you have to fight back. Don't surrender to the unfairness that comes with life, surrender to love. So I've decided to spend 80% of my days exploring my passions and reinforcing the ideas of life being as fulfilling as you wish for it to be. The other 20 is spent watching the Young and the restless and eating (just ask my sister Beth).

I've done all my inspiration projects for A/W 09 and have fallen in love with fashion, yet again. I also realized I'm much more innovative in my thinking than I have been in my personal execution. Funny how people who are responsible for creating fashion looks can get lost in their favorite everyday jeans and tees. It's the never ending story but London get ready. I'm going to translate on the outside what I see myself as on the inside - unique, easy (like Sunday morning, not like the Kardashians) and free.

I also decided to listen to every loving or inspirational song I could get on my iPOD. The really loving ones that make you want to gag if you just had a bad day like "Nothing Really Matters" with Lauryn and D'Angelo, "By your side" by Sade or "Lifetime" by Maxwell - even Juicy by Notorious B.I.G. "Spread love, it's the Brooklyn way!" (That's for you Aj...)

Museums, fashion blogs, V, Dazed and Confused, overdosing on Michael Jackson and internet window shopping -- whatever it takes I'm getting back to myself or actually.....I'll be moving forward. Thought: why do people want to get back to themselves, shouldn't we want to constantly progress? I just have 4 months left in this program and then I'm free to return to the life I was summoned to live. Life is full of choices, will you fight and enjoy the life you were destined to live or roll over and let it get the best of you?

Next week look for an update on my progress. The blood test results come in regarding my 60 day prognosis next week.

For my loving brother, Ajile, and for all those we have lost this year:

Back to my roots

I'm back and I'm feeling like myself again. Not really but no use in letting my temperamental ways get in the way of all the news and updates I have for my blog. After all, you can't visit.

My 30 day results came in a couple of weeks ago and declared I'm 78% grafted to my brothers marrow and my sickle cell production is diminishing. Next stop: 60 days. Remember the fight continues for at least 6 months to a year so I'm far from the finish line. I have been progressing so well that I will be released from the program early, next Thursday to be exact. That simply means that I don't have to report to iPOP any longer and will go to my doctor for regular check-ups.

In other news, I have been experiencing some pain in my legs, particularly from my hip bone to my knee bone. Originally I thought it was Sickle Cell pain but I found myself at day 35 thinking, I should be 70-100% grafted with my brothers marrow so why am I experiencing Sickle Cell pain. One of the nurses theories was that because Sicklers are so in tune with their bodies and hyper aware of pain that maybe it was just an assumption. I took an ibuprofen as suggested by my charge nurse which is usually my secret weapon in sickness but it did not work at all. After having to take stronger pain meds a couple of nights in a row, I decided to research a more homeopathic remedy and refer back to my great-grandmothers southern medicinal recipes.

Often as an African-American, especially living in Brooklyn for the past decade or traveling outside of the U.S., you feel a disconnect from your history. I was surrounded by Caribbeans, South Americans, Europeans and Africans who could name their past 5 generations of ancestors, if not more than that. Many African-Americans are 6-7 generations in America and were completely stripped of their history, culture or because of the separation of families during decades of slavery, can't even call by name their grandmother's grandmother. Here I am, with a great-grandmother that is 109 and still alive and I am not [fully] utilizing having her here, still with me, to teach me things that I can pass on to my own children. For example, when I was growing up, she made this salve for my joints when I had a crises from Sickle Cell -- and it worked. I always felt better. The main ingredient for the salve was what I thought she called "Polk salad".

Now if you're a true southerner you understand the concept of "Medicine men and women" found in the mountains and their secret recipes. Essentially many African-Americans have a connection to the south as those were the ports in which our African ancestors were brought, sold or escaped into the mountains with the natives. My great-grandmother's mom was Cherokee (natives from the South Carolina region) and her father was from Africa by way of England, so medicinal treatments were regarded highly in our family. For bone aches and pains we were to rub this "Polk salad" on the joints with the hands continuously. The hand being a carrier of energy and the salve having a calming effect.

In my research I discovered it's actually called "Poke Sallit" spelled s-a-l-l-i-t so as not to motivate anyone to actually eat it. The poke weed plant is highly poisonous and should not be eaten, although in many southern traditions the plant is boiled from 4-7 times to remove toxins, fried in lard (Crisco), then eaten. I read that it was commonly referred to as the poor mans "mustard greens". While some chose to eat the poke weed plant, it was also used to make cough syrups and salves. I remember the salve having a delightful smell, though nothing too sweet like a honeysuckle but more like a prune or a ripened plum. So after a bit of research, I did discover a recipe:

Root of the poke weed
Clarified iodine (without the magenta color)
Oils (Eucalyptus)
Petrolatum or Beeswax

First you must wash the root, then chop it into small pieces, enough to fill up a jar. Add oils to the poke root, leaving it standing until it becomes a mush. Set it in a corner and forget it for a moon and a half (about 6 weeks). When the mush is strained, save the heavy liquid. Melt into it petrolatum or beeswax, and VOILA!


Now it is my goal to find this Poke Sallit and continue this tradition in my family. Whatever traditions or natural medicinal remedies you have in your family, please feel free to share your stories with me. Should you get to the poke weed plant first, please save me a batch!


Thank you for reading.

Peace and blessings,

Christina Madry