Elephant Legs

The Elephant Legs have returned with a vengeance.

I got up in the morning and could already feel my legs seizing up. I could already feel the cement being poured into them, could feel the hardness of them. I was determined not to let it bother me, determined not to worry about it.

Even though I know what that hardness meant so early in the day. I should have listened to my body, listened to my legs, but I’m inherently stubborn. I won’t let anything stop me from doing something I want to do, even my own body.

I went to go to the post office. I had received a parcel notice and was looking forward to picking it up; what would it be? A book I had ordered? (there are several on the way) Or maybe a Christmas present from one of my heart sisters Kimberlee. I had been expecting it. I hoped that’s what it was.

After only a few steps, less than half a block, my legs started to seize up. They started to protest the very fact that I was making them walk. I figured I could make it to the post office. I had checked the directions, it should have only been a fifteen minute walk.

It ended up taking half an hour to get to the post office.

With each step, my legs grew harder and harder, more like rock than flesh. I can’t describe the amount of pain I was in; there are no words for it. All I can tell you was that I wanted to cry. I wanted to stop walking and cry right there in the middle of a sidewalk, the winter sun bright and blinding.

I did not allow myself to stop or to cry. I knew that if I started crying, I would not be able to stop. The pain made my breath catch with each step. I was limping by this point, each step more painful than the last one, but I knew that if I stopped walking, I would not be able to start again.

Damned if I do, damned if I don’t.

So I continued to walk, continued to will myself not to cry, continued to will myself to keep walking. It was the first time I had resorted to counting in a long time. With each step I counted, I felt a surge of victory.

One two three four five six seven eight nine ten eleven twelve thirteen fourteen fifteen sixteen seventeen eighteen nineteen twenty

twenty one twenty two twenty three twenty four twenty five twenty six twenty seven twenty eight twenty nine thirty……

I ended up losing count several times, not being able to concentrate on continuing to walk and the pain and counting at the same time. I’m good at multi-tasking but not yesterday. Yesterday I just didn’t have it in me.

I can’t describe the pain I was in. Words hardly ever fail me but they fail me here.

I was nearing St. Paul University when I saw a young woman coming towards me. She smiled, looked as if she was going to say hello, and then stopped. Looked at me.

Looked at my legs.

I was limping with each step, barely able to pick my foot up off the ground with each step, making shuffling noises as I walked. I was trying not to cry and I watched as her smile faltered, as it changed into something that looked like loathing.

I came nearer to her. “Is there a problem?” I asked.

“Are you alright?” She asked. Disdain dripped from her lips.

“I’m disabled.” I said.

She laughed. “Oh, I thought you were drunk.” then she smiled at me again because she knew I wasn’t an alcoholic, because now it was okay to treat me like a human being, now it was alright to be nice to me; because I didn’t have a drinking problem.

I said nothing to her and kept walking. I knew I was close to my destination. The woman called after me: “Have a nice day!”

I turned around and gave her the finger.

At the post office, waiting in line to collect my package, I kept moving from foot to foot. I couldn’t put too much pressure on one foot, couldn’t stop moving because I would not be able to start walking again. I would not be able to walk.

There were tears in the back of my eyes and I blinked them away, willed them away, waited for my turn to collect my parcel. When the moment came, I almost cried with relief because it meant that my journey was half way done, meant that I would be home soon.

I took my parcel and started the journey home, willing myself to make it. I had my cell phone with me. I could have phoned a cab to pick me up and take me home; I could have called my husband who would have come to get me.

But I didn’t. Mostly because I’m stubborn. And I have a lot of pride.

So I continued to walk, no longer able to feel my legs or my feet. They were rocks now, cement poured into my skin, Elephant Legs that clumped and thumped and stompedalong. I was the Elephant Man, I was the broken boy. I was the Egg Man, Koo Koo Ka-Choo!

I saw my apartment building, I saw my home, standing tall in the distance and then I did allow myself to cry, only a little. I allowed some tears to slide down my cheeks in relief because I would be home soon. I would be home.

And I could sit down.

Such a simple thing, such a normal thing, sitting. But to me, at that moment,  it was the thing I wanted to do more than anything else in the world.

And all the while, walking towards home, I was counting.

One step at a time…

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten….

Bodily Negotiations

I have been in negotiations with my body lately.

It’s not counting, not really. I wake up in pain and try to get myself through the day. I am awake and I feel my legs; they have gone rock hard in the night, the muscles knotted into tree trunks. Elephant legs.

 I think to my legs: We’re going to have a nice shower and get relaxed. They seem to like this idea because they allow me to get up, to move myself into the washroom.

In the shower, I tell them: You’ve got a long day ahead of you. You can do this.

They relax a little bit more. They like it when I show confidence in them, that I am trying to trust them.

Sometimes they slip up though; sometimes, there are brief flashes of hot pain in my back, my legs. I try to ignore them, try to concentrate on something else to keep my mind occupied.

Later, I remind my body the deal we had: Listen, I thought we agreed. You can do this. Just remember to breathe. Try not to look unfocused and give it a rest, will you?

My body seems not to like this attitude very much as it responds with a quick loss of balance or I trip on my own feet while walking.

Later, my body relaxes, just for a moment. It’s apologizing. A brief release from pain, a breath of air. Sorry, it says.

Then it starts again. I wait until I can get home to my husband, to a piece of joy so that the pain isn’t too difficult. I wait until I can sit, somewhat comfortably (my legs moving and shaking) so that I can read a good book.

Usually during my reading, it will occur to me that I was talking to myself. I am negotiating with me.

A Standing Ovation

I am beginning to get worried by my legs.

Often over the past month, I’ve had a lot of trouble standing up. I can stand, that’s not the problem really. It’s more being able to stay standing.

I have to use something to pull myself up so that I can get in that standing position, so that I can pull myself upright. I can feel my legs spasming at the very thought, the very notion and I know that no matter what I do they will protest.

Loudly.

Once I am standing, I feel as if I’m going to fall, as if I am falling forward. I imagine the ground rushing up to meet me, hard and fast like a one night stand.

It frightens me a lot more than I care to admit that I’m losing control over my body. I once thought that if I just kept going, just kept going, like that little engine that chugged so bravely up that hill, that I would be okay.

That everything would be fine.

Part of dealing with a disability is to ignore it, I think. To pretend that it doesn’t exist and prove others wrong by doing the opposite of what they say. According to doctors and therapists I’ve had, I’m supposed to be in a wheel chair.

I will not let them put me in one.

But I wonder if, to some degree, they were right when they said that there would come a time where I could not walk. I do not want such a time to visit me, I want it to stay as far away from me as possible, if you please.

I know that my legs are not as strong as they once were, that the spasms are happening more frequently, that I’m less and less comfortable, no matter what I do. I’ve gotten to the point where I can’t ignore it anymore, where the pain I was so blithely able to push away is now fighting me with a vengeance.

I am not going down without a fight, however. I refuse. I won’t let it happen.

All I have to do is take things one day at a time, one step at a time and hope, hope, hope that the next step I take won’t be as painful as the one before.

A Guessing Game

My legs are talking again.

I can feel them throbbing with the want to scream their lungs out. If legs had lungs that is.

Their conversation is particularly loud today as I make my way to work. My left leg seems to be particularly pissed off at the right leg; it seizes up and I can barely walk on it. I know I’m limping and that people are looking, but I keep walking anyway.

The left one buzzes with the injustice of being so insulted. I can feel the muscles stretching and contracting and I hope, pray, wish that I can make it to the bus stop so that I will have a moment to sit.

The bus is my salvation in the mornings. I get to sit for a few moment while my legs calm themselves down and make up, fixing whatever slight there was between them. This morning, the bus smelled like urine, but I didn’t care. I was sitting.

I know that I am in for another heated conversation between my legs on my trip home. Even now, sitting at my desk, I can feel my calf muscles begin to tingle. I can always tell if a spasm is going to come because my legs begin to throb.

Sort of like an early warning system for spasms instead of tornado’s.

My left leg is buzzing, chittering, chattering, throbbing. I can feel my right leg (never one to be left out of the fun) starting to spasm and tingle and I wonder which one will cause me the most pain this time.

I try to make a game out of it, try to guess which leg will go numb on my walk home. It’s always one or the other, thankfully never both at the same time. I’m usually wrong and it distresses me that I still don’t know my body after all this time.

I wonder if I will have to find a bench to sit on part way home like I had to last night. I couldn’t keep walking. I was in the mall and saw the nirvana of a chair, unoccupied, waiting for my buttocks to mark their place and for my legs to find comfort.

I remember walking towards the chair thinking: One more step and I get to sit down. Another step and I get to sit down. I can do this, I’m almost at the chair, one more step and I can sit down. One more step, one step, one step, one, one, one.

I hope that my legs don’t have such a heated conversation tonight. When my legs are angry, they cause me such pain.

Which one will it be tonight?

Let the guessing game begin.

Beautiful Skin

Today my legs are made of stone.

I can feel them dragging. They are heavier than usual and I wonder how I could not have noticed before. I touch my calf muscles and there is no give there, there is no softness.

There only the stone of skin, the stone of the flesh that hardens.

Sometimes I think that my muscles are like food that is left out over night.

It goes bad, it hardens and becomes something it is not, becomes something that reminds you of what it once was but it no longer resembles what you remember.

Sometimes I think that my body is a cocoon; that I am in a transitional phase and that my body is becoming, something beautiful on the inside working it’s way out.

Other times, I wonder if it is the reverse, whether or not the beauty on the outside is hardening what is inside me.

The Counting Stone

The Elephant Man has returned.

I got a ride home from work last night. From Elgin Street, I walked to Confederation Park. I knew the spasms were coming; I felt them riding in my friends car, a subtle throb that started near my left thigh and moved it’s way down to my knees.

I got out of the car and with each step I took, I could feel the stone pouring into my leg. With each step, I can feel the muscles in my leg knot themselves, filling up with worry knots, with sailors knots.

I force myself to keep walking, to make my way through Confederation Park, to climb those thirty stairs that feel more like sixty. With each step, it’s getting harder and harder to keep walking, to keep moving.

By the time I reach the top of the stairs, I’m almost out of breath from the exertion. My leg feels hard now, as if I’m dragging it behind me. I take a step and stumble over my foot, tripping forward.

I bump into a couple, a man and a woman. The man pushes me back, tells me to fuck off and watch where I’m going. I apologize, feeling my cheeks go red, a hot patch of blood on my cheeks.

I keep thinking to myself: if he only knew, if they only knew, if she only knew.

My entire leg is in pain now; the calf muscles have started their own slow throb as if my theigh and my calf are communicating in a painful morose code. I force myself to keep walking but only make it as far as the first chair that I see.

I sit greatfully into the cold metal chair, bending down to knead my calf muscles, to try and work some sort of feeling other than hurt back into them.

The effort to keep the pain at bay, to ignore it, is exhausting. I can feel it in my stomach, so hot that it makes me want to vomit.

For a while, I think I am going to be sick, but I concentrate, I breathe and I count. Graceful soft counting where I picture the words writing themselves in the air.

one two three 123 one two three 123 one two three 123

one two three 123 one two three 123 one two three 123

I can taste the pain on my tongue, heavy and bitter. It tastes like pennies and I breathe in and out, in and out so that I will not cry.

I wait, counting to myself; I wait for the stone to subside, for it to leak out of my leg and pour itself onto the floor. I try to visualize it leaving my leg so that it does not feel so heavy, so weighted.

So I can face the walk home.

I get up and start walking, knowing that I have another ten or fifteen minutes to walk until I reach the sanctuary of my apartment, of my husbands arms.

But as soon as I start walking, putting one foot in front of another, the muscles start again, hardening and morphing into elephant legs, into heavy stone that drags behind me. I wipe a tear that begins to slide down my cheek and strenghten my resolve, try to reach down inside me and find that piece of myself that is the glue of me.

I will not shatter in front of strangers.

I walk through the Byward Market, looking at everything around myself from what I carry with me. To distract my mind so that it does not taste that taste of pennies and sweat at the back of my throat.

By the time I get home, I am limping and tripping over my feet. I can’t feel my leg, my entire leg and the spasms have never been this bad. I see my mother when I get to the driveway and it occurs to me that I am embarassed for her to see me this way.

My Mum and Dad recently moved into the apartment below us. It had never occured to me before that they would see me this way, that I would want to hide part of myself from them.

I know feeling embarassed in front of my mother is a silly, stubborn excuse for an emotion. But there it was. Robert was waiting for me at the top of the stairs. Those thirty stairs that felt like hundreds, that felt like a mountain.

I could feel my mothers eyes on me as I climbed the stairs, using the railing to push up with my arm when I had to take a step with my left leg.

“Are you in pain?” Robert asked.

“Yes.” It killed me to admit this in front of my mother. I don’t know why, but there it is. The truth seldom makes sense, even to those who created it.

“I can tell by the way you’re walking.” Robert said.

I got to the top of the stairs, tears trying to push their way out from behind my eyes. Sweat was pouring off my forehead and I could feel it building under my shirt.

My mother spoke from her balcony. “I love you, Baby Boy.” She said.

I smiled, no longer embarassed. “I love you too.”

I went inside to seek shelter from the storm and a cold glass of something liquid so that I could wash away the taste of pennies.

Snake In My Path

I’ve come to think of pain as a snake.

My shoulder is still sore, still spasming, still convulsing under my skin. It beats as if a heart rests there, as if it is something alive. Which, in a way, it is.

The pain begins to slither down my arm, wrapping itself around my shoulder, my upper arm, my elbow, my forearm. I can feel it squeezing, pinching, trying to cut off the circulation of blood.

Counting no longer seems to work when trying to breathe past the pain. So instead, I imagine I am somewhere else, somewhere where the pain cannot get me:

…..I am in a forest. The trees around me are dense and dark but sunlight shines through in patches. The light makes the grass seem like jewels in the shadow and I tred carefully so as not to trip or fall on rocks that may be in my path.

I hear a rustle in the bushes and stop. I hear nothing now but the sound of my breathing and water in the distance. I look down at my normal legs, long and relaxed, no elephant legs here, no sir.

I take another step forward and hear the rustle of leaves again. I stop and watch as a snake slithers across my path. I wonder if it is bad luck to cross a path after a snake has crossed; if they share the same urban legend that black cats do.

Deciding to forge ahead I take a step forward just as the snake lunges for me, sinking it’s teeth into my…….

Foot.

The pain has woven itself to other parts of my body and I can feel my feet spasming inside my shoes, the muscles jerking in time to my heartbeat.

I sigh and wonder how much pain the walk home will cause me.

The Language of Pain

The Twin is back.

I knew he would not be able to stay away for long, that his quietness would eventually end. I did not expect it to be quite so painful.

I have had trouble walking all weekend. Almost from the moment I would start walking, my legs muscles would begin to harden, to seize up and form themselves into Elephant Man legs.

Hot licks of pain flash across the bottoms of my feet with each step I take. I can feel my feet swelling, my ankles twice their normal size. Even as I type this I can feel throbs of pain stabbing in my right shoulder which still is not right.

I wondered the other day whether or not my body was using pain to talk to me; whether or not pain was the only language that my body could communicate in.

I wondered whether my body was trying to tell me something and that, if I put the puzzle pieces together, I could understand what it was trying to tell me.

I ponder this as I take a Motrin and try to count through the pain.

1-2-3-4-5, breathe in, 1-2-3-4-5, breathe out.

Perhaps the cure for pain can be found in the beauty of breathing and contemplate my legs, hard as stone and knotted like tree trunks.

A Subtle Pulse

I am determined not to give up.

Cybill Paulsen, that evil twin, has quieted down some. Now it is only the subtle pulse that rests beneath my shoulders and my lower back. My Elephant Legs have returned to normal and now I am growing wings.

I can feel the feathers underneath the skin. I wonder if they will be large wings that will help me fly. Or will I still be earth bound?

I try deep breathing and counting to ease the pain in my shoulders. It doesn’t seem to work. I take a Motrin. It doesn’t work.

I know that if someone were to open my skin they would see a mass of knotted muscle. I wonder what else they would see.

I try rolling my arms to relieve the stress of muscle, try rolling my head and flexing my arms in hopes of dislodging the pulse that breathes when I do, that moves when I do.

It’s as if we’re dancing.

Things Come In Threes

I have been in pain for three days.

It started two days ago. Kisses along my legs like razor blades; Elephant Man legs. Walking to work hurt so much that I had to sit down when I got to the bus stop. I could not stand; there was no way my legs would support me.

Sitting on the ground, I felt the muscles begin to loosen slightly, only a little bit. I sat on the ground resisting the urge to cry. I haven’t felt that much pain in a very long time. Normally I’m able to ignore it, to push it away.

I couldn’t. Not even counting helped.

Going home, I barely made it. I could barely walk up the stairs to my apartment. I had to take it one step at a time, slowly making my way to the top when it looked so far away. I didn’t think I would make it, but I did, through sheer will and stubbornness.

I went to be thinking “At least that’s over. Tomrrow would be better.”

Yesterday was worse.

My leg muscles flared up almost as soon as I started walking for the bus stop. I couldn’t believe how quickly the pain came on, how fast the spasms started.

It seemed that Cybill Paulsen wanted to stop me from walking. I would not give him the satisfaction.

I got to work but my legs did not loosen this time. The spasms increased through out the day. During a conversation with one of my co-workers I had to stop talking. My back spasmed along with my legs.

The pain was sharp and jabbed at my right lower back. It hurt to breathe for what felt like years but I’m sure it was only seconds.

“Are you alright?” she asked.

“No.” I said. I had never said that out loud. “No, I’m not.”

She gave me some Motrin but it did no good. I took another two, and another two. The pain did not go away, it did not lessen. Nothing could quiet the twin who raged so loudly inside me.

Going home, I stopped to pick up chips at the corner store and had to walk up steps. I eyed them cautiously, warily. It seemed my life is defined in steps and yesterday I hated them with a passion.

I felt a tear form in the corner of my eye as my legs spasmed again and I wiped it away. I took the steps one at a time and hated them.

This morning, it was a replay. I felt my legs tensing, but today I wouldn’t give in. Today I would not think myself weak or give in and show any pain.

Today I did not sit at the bus stop. I stood, feeling my muscles tense and un-tense, clench and unclench. I stood firm, trying to count in my head, trying to count.

Today was not as bad, though I can still feel pain elsewhere. My jaw is sore from clenching, my feet and ankles are swollen. I feel as if I am a walking bruise and I do not like this feeling.

Already I can feel the muscles in my legs tingling, waiting.

I wonder what the walk home will bring.