A Constant Companion

Pain has been a constant companion lately.

I carry it with me like a feather boa that is wrapped around my throat tightly so that I cannot get air. Or perhaps it is like concrete that slowly drips down my legs to harden at my feet.

I am not sure why this is. It may be the weather, the time of year, the alignment of the planets. It may be divine intervention. It may be that my body is trying to turn against me.

I feel as if I am battling myself. As if my body was a terrain of rocky hills and low, supple valley’s. My arms stretch out on either side of me like rivers and my legs are the hard battle ground, covered in blood and the knots and roots of trees snaking their way through the grass.

This weekend was sheer agony. I don’t know what was causing it, don’t know what brought it on, but it was pain beyond anything I’ve felt before. Pain that I couldn’t even imagine.

It was constant all day Saturday and all day Sunday. It was like my body, my legs, decided that they did not want to participate in my plans, did not want to do what I wanted to do but instead remain stock still like a petrified tree, it’s roots turned to hardened muscle.

I could barley walk, barley stand. I had to sit often and any amount of walking was torture. Each step sent shoots of pain along the soles of my feet and hardened the already rock like muscles of my legs.

Even sitting was painful. I would sit to relieve the pain in my legs and feet, to give them a break of sorts. But when I sat down, the muscles in my buttocks and thigh’s shook and vibrated beneath me like the magic fingers in old hotel beds.

So I would stand to relieve the pain in my legs only to find that the muscles had hardened while I sat so I would sit again. I felt like I was attending Catholic church and all that was missing was the kneeling.

I have started wishing for one day without pain. Where I could take a step and not feel pain shooting up my calves. Where I could sit and feel nothing shaking beneath me. Where I could lie down and not have to wait for my back to stop spasming.

Some people wish for different coloured eyes, others for a new job, some for bigger breasts. Some may wish for more chocolate cake, another five minutes of sleep.

I wish for one day, one twenty four hour period, where I could be pain free.

I know that this is an unrealistic wish; that it can never be fulfilled. I know that pain is my constant companion, that it wraps itself around me so tightly that, sometimes, I feel like I cannot breathe.

But, because I am stubborn, I will fight my daily battle. I will wage war on my legs, my arms bending like water, my stomach a small hill to look down upon the battlement.

I will fight. I will wage my war.

And I will win.

Birthday Reminders

I was born on August 22nd, 1978. Every year around my birthday I am reminded that I was supposed to have died

 

My mother, young and frightened, felt her contractions starting late one evening and was rushed to the hospital. She was told that she was in labour. Scared, she did what she could to stop the labour. It was too early, it was too soon.

 

There was a reason for her fright. But the birth had not been an easy one. It had lasted forty eight long hours; by the end of it my mother was close to physical, mental and spiritual exhaustion.

 

The first problem was that my twin brother and I were born three months premature. Any number of problems could have occurred at the beginning of the birth; but thankfully Robert came out fine.

 

I would be the one to cause problems.

 

When Robert came out, he turned me so that I was feet first instead of head first. I could not, or would not, come out of her womb. Jailed with a cellmate for six months, I was content to swim in the space now afforded to me.

 

I had already stayed in the womb too long, however. The doctor, forgoing medical procedures, reached in and pulled me out.

 

According to my mother, I was a sickly blue colour. “You looked like a little blueberry.” She would tell me later. “I waited what seemed like forever to hear you cry.”

 

Finally I did make a sound but the doctor was worried. I had been in the womb too long. He was sure I had suffered brain damage and would die sometime that evening.

 

For the next eight hours, people prayed.

 

My father was a practicing Ba-hai at the time. He and his congregation prayed for me to live. My mother, alone in the hospital, held my hand through an incubator glove. According to her I held on for dear life and would not let go.

 

Amazingly, the power of prayer worked. I had survived the night.

 

The doctor was amazed. “He won’t survive another night.” He told my mother. “And frankly, if he does, he’ll never be able to walk and he’ll be a vegetable.”

 

You can guess what my mother told him.

 

But, against the odds, I continued to thrive. Doctors and nurses studied me; they watched me and poked me, took notes and shook their heads.

 

I was supposed to have died. By all rights, I should have. But I continued to do better day after day. Another doctor came and talked to my mother.

 

“He should have died.” He told her. “He should have been dead when he left the womb.” The doctor shook his head. “I’ve never seen anything like it. He should have died but he’s still alive.” The doctor looked solemn. “He’s Gods child now.” he told her.

 

Other doctors called me a miracle baby. But to my mother, I was simply her son.

 

Life has not bee easy however. I was born with spastic Cerebral Palsy, scoliosis of the spine, underdeveloped internal organs, complications with my motor skills, severe learning disabilities and a host of other problems.

 

But none of that matters to me.

 

I think this has to do with the fact that I am more thankful than most. I am thankful for every day I have, every day I live despite my afflictions and complications. I am thankful for the chance to breathe and to walk, however painful. 

 

And I am thankful for those around me.

 

Birthdays are not the dire progress of age like they are for most people. For me, Birthdays are a celebration of life. Birthdays are a reminder of what could have been and what is.

 

Every year I am reminded that I should not have lived. Every year I am reminded that I am here through the grace of some higher power to do some good on this Earth. Every year I am reminded that it was not medical science that kept me alive.

 

It was the love of my mother.

 

 Thanks Mum.

A Birthday Dream

I did not sleep well last night.

I was dreaming again. I have been cursed or blessed (I’m not sure which) with being able to remember almost all my dreams in photographic detail. Sometimes this is a good thing: a lot of my short stories come from dreams.

Sometimes my dreams are not so good.

Last night, I was dreaming about my birthday. I turn 29 this month; next week actually, on the 22nd of August. Now let it be known that I love my birthday. It’s my day and I don’t have any hang ups about age or aging. I don’t care that I’m turning a year older.

I frequently forget how old I am and have to ask someone to remind me. But for whatever reason, in my dream I was frightened of my 29th birthday. Terrified in fact….

Something (be it age in the form of darkness, wrinkles in a bodily form) was stalking me, hunting me through streets and alley ways and I was doing all I could to get away.

For some reason I was wearing nothing. I ran through the streets naked. I can only wonder if this means I was in my “birthday suit”. I’m sure it has some symbolization, some meaning that I’m supposed to interpret; but I can think of none.

I could hear my hunter getting closer, gaining on me. I ran around a corner and there stood Roy, a friend of my husbands. He smiled when he saw me, no hint of danger on his face.

“Hey Birthday Boy!” he shouted at me.

“Hey,” I replied, breathless.

“Everyone wants to meet you for half priced martini’s at The Lookout.” He said. “How about we go there now?”

I worried about bringing friends and family in contact with the hunter and shook my head. “I’m a little busy now, Roy.”

He nodded and smiled at me. “We’ll meet you there later then. Just come when you’re ready.” He grinned. “I have candles for you. Twenty nine candles. Their flame is bright.”

And then he was gone as if he hadn’t even been there, as if he had been a figment of my imagination. I raced forward and stumbled as I fell into a deep pit.

I looked around me and saw walls of dirt, roots of trees entwining themselves through the muck. I had cuts on my face and hands and could feel the blood running down my face. I smeared some mud over my cuts, hoping that it would cover the smell of blood, so that the hunter could not find me.

I looked around me and saw more dirt, more earth. A shadow fell down into the hole and I looked up at a slab of stone sitting above me, lodged in the grass.

It was my tombstone.

I could barely read the words but, instinctively, I knew what they said. I heard the tune of someone singing softly, and I recited the old nursery rhyme:

Here I lay me down to rest,

A pile of books upon my chest.

If I should die before I wake,

that’s one less test I’ll have to take.

I moaned, a guttural sound, a sound of fright. An inhuman sound and I marveled at the fact that it was coming from me, from the very pit of my stomach.

I heard screaming then, the sounds of terror and pain and I knew that the hunter was slaughtering everyone I knew, everyone I loved.

I could hear my mother screaming for me, I could hear my husband muttering my name softly. I knew I had to act, I knew that I had to do something, that I had to climb out of my grave and face the hunter and defeat it.

I grabbed hold of tree roots that were sticking out of the dirt, grabbed hard and began to pull myself up, digging my feet into the wall of dirt, pushing myself up with my legs, using everything I had.

I had to reach the top alive, I had to….

I woke to a sharp, shooting pain and I know I cried out.

My leg was spasming, my entire left leg, from the tips of my toes to the back of my buttocks. I reached out and touched it and drew my hand back instantly. Pain flared where I touched my leg.

I sat up, breathing deeply and looked over at my husband. He still slept. How could he sleep through all that? How could he…?

And I woke a little more then, knew that everything had been in my head, that the pain had woken me but not him.

I struggled to sit up more, to swing my legs around and put my feet on the floor. I hobbled (there is no other word for it) to the bathroom and sat on the toilet, hoping the cool, cold tile would help my leg, that its coolness would soothe it. I resisted the urge to lie down on its surface knowing I might not be able to get up again.

I held back tears and another cry as more pain flashed it’s way across my skin. I could feel my leg rippling, moving, voicing its protest at such a nuisance. It was beyond anything I had experienced before.

I hobbled to the sink and rinsed my face with cold water and went back to bed, trying to get comfortable but that was next to impossible. Not wanting to be left out of the action, my back rippled and undulated in response, as if it were answering a mating call.

I let sleep claim me once more and thankfully it was dreamless. I hoped that my leg would be healed in the morning. My hope was not answered.

Making my way to work this morning, I tripped a total of eight times. Several people stared at me, one pointing me out to her friend with a smirk, and I felt myself grow hot, my face flushed.

Even now, sitting here, my leg is a stone leg, a pillar of knotted muscle. The knots and the pain, a lingering sensation of discomfort, are making their way up to my thigh and beyond.

I stand and walk around to relieve the pain but then I have to sit because I can’t stand, I can’t support myself with my left leg. But then I have to stand again in a few minutes. It is a very painful game of musical chairs with music only I can hear.

I look at my bottle of Motrin IB and wonder if it’s too soon for two more white tablets. I wonder how they will taste with coffee.

I look at the clock and count down until I can take two more and concentrate so that my pain does not show on my face.

Quiet Conversation/Simple Pleasures

I am slightly worried.

My legs have been seizing up lately, turning from flesh into rock and stone at a moments notice.

This is not so unusual for me except that normally I have some sort of warning that my legs are going to seize up, that they are going to give me problems.

They will start spasming, little jolts of pain and heat that pinch the backs of my legs or perhaps my thighs and calves. I can prepare myself for what is to come based on the intensity of the spasms.

The more painful the spasm, the more painful it will be when my legs seize up.

I think of my body as an All Weather Predictor. I know when rain is coming based on how my joints feel. I know when it is going to storm by feeling the intensity of pain in my legs. I know how bad my legs are going to be based on how painful my spasms are.

But, lately, there have been no spasms in my legs.

I will be walking along one moment and then the next I can’t walk or I will trip. It is as if my legs just stop working and go out from underneath me.

Several times this week while walking to work I have tripped and nearly fallen when my legs have caught me off guard. It is as if they ware waiting for me to let my guard down, waiting for me to not pay attention.

Normally they talk, they jabber, talking and pinching and poking so that I can hear them, so that their conversation materializes in spasms and the hot lick of pain along my legs, my back, my arms.

But now there is no warning.

Now I take a step and my legs seize up. I have to stop walking and breathe for a moment, taking the air in and out of my body, willing the searing pain to vanish so that I can continue.

I can make excuses for this:

It’s hot out, I did exercises yesterday, I’ve been stressed, I have too much to do, I haven’t relaxed enough today

But the truth is that I don’t know why my body is all of a sudden changing on me, trying to keep me on my toes as it were.

I make excuses, think of little reasons that are filled with hope for why my body is against me. But I make these excuses because I don’t know and this frightens me.

The spasms, when they come, are ruthless now. They are pain beyond anything than I am used to. They’ll spasm when I stand, when I walk. Even while sitting.

It’s the not knowing that is worrying me, eating away at me. But I have resolved not to let it bother me, to push those thoughts back into the darkness of my mind so that I can focus on other things, happier things that make the pain easier to deal with:

Flowers, seeing the sparrows fly on my way to work, the look on my husbands face when I come home at the end of a day, the sound of my cat Mave greeting me when I come home, sunrises that bedazzle the eye, a good book with pages smelling of dreams

There is so much out there to enjoy that, despite my fear, I can only live one day at a time, taking things one step at a time.

And enjoy the simple things that come my way.

Fear/Love

I think I frightened my husband last night.

Lying in bed, waiting for sleep to claim me once again, my entire body spasmed at once.

I know I shook the bed, that my husband felt me shake. I don’t think I cried out but I can’t be sure. My entire body felt like one large rock, one large stone that weighted me down, made it hard to breathe.

“You okay?” He said softly.

“Yes,” I lied. “I’m fine. It was just a spasm.”

I could feel my body shaking from its force. The spasm had rocked me, almost like I had been punched. I felt my body protesting this injustice:

My shoulders shook, spasmed and quivered. I could feel my legs moving and their muscles talking in response, a subtle tick tick tick of the muscles. Like they were counting down to something.

“But are you okay?” He asked. I could tell he was worried.

“I’ll be alright.” I said.

But in reality, I was scared. The whole thing had lasted seconds, such a brief bite of time, but it had frightened me, shaken me.

I lay there wondering how I could possibly be afraid of myself, how I could possibly fear something that was part of me.

I wondered, briefly, if there was a way to cut it out of me. I wondered if I would dream when I closed my eyes, what sights I would see behind my eyelids, what colours would dance for me.

“I love you.” My husband said.

And, despite the heat, he reached over and clasped my hand.

“I love you, too.” I said.

And, suddenly, feeling the warmth of his hand against mine, I didn’t feel so afraid anymore.