A few years later, when I tried to describe this mental state to Gloria, she recommended a book that might help, Trauma and Recovery, by Judith Lewis Herman (New York: Basic Books, 1992). The next day, she sent it to me. This book deals with serious trauma generated by combat, death camps, rape, and continued childhood sexual abuse. What I had suffered did not compare to these, but Herman’s descriptions of trauma nevertheless describe my feelings as well. For instance, she writes: “Traumatic events violate the autonomy of the person at the level of basic bodily integrity. The body is invaded, injured, defiled. Control over bodily functions is often lost.” Many people find this loss of control “the most humiliating aspect of the trauma” (pages 52-3). “Traumatic events appear to recondition the human nervous system” (36), leaving people with “an elevated baseline of arousal: their bodies are always on the alert for danger. They have … an intense reaction to specific stimuli associated with the traumatic event. After a traumatic experience, the human system of self-preservation seems to go onto permanent alert, as if the danger might return at any moment” (35). A state of “hyper-arousal is the first cardinal symptom of post-traumatic stress disorder” (35); “the traumatized person startles easily [and] reacts irritably to small provocations” (35).
For a couple of years after the coma, I was a pain in the neck in a car, crying out at the slightest provocation, terrifying the driver. I had never been like this before, nor could I control it, no matter how hard I tried. Also, I had a short fuse for frustration and exploded when things went wrong, especially when I was trying to manage on my own—to walk, shop, or deal commercially with others.
Herman cites Primo Levi, describing inmates of a death camp: “In the month of August, 1944, we who had entered the camp five months before now counted among the old ones…. Our wisdom lay in ‘not trying to understand,’ not imagining the future, not tormenting ourselves as to how and when it would all be over, not asking others or ourselves any questions…. For living men, the units of time always have a value. For us, history had stopped” (89).*
My trauma was merely a bad dream compared to Levi’s season in hell, yet I felt the same way. I questioned nothing, wondered about nothing except the possibility of recovery, and expected nothing. Herman writes that children who are kidnapped and threatened with death retain a sense of futurelessness for years after the event: “when asked what they wanted to be when they grew up, many replied that they never fantasized or made plans for the future because they expected to die young” (47).
Since “the core experiences of psychological trauma are disempowerment and disconnection from others,” recovery requires renewed empowerment and the creation of new connections (Herman, 134). For me, the essential step was reempowerment—the regaining of my physical abilities; I did not require new connections. Except for when I was comatose, I had not lost the ability to enjoy my friends: Rob said that once I woke up, no one came to see me whom I did not recognize and greet. I clutched that fact to me like a kind of holy medal. Even if I did not remember their visits, I had been aware of my visitors’ presence. That I was never out of contact with people seemed to me a sign of hope.
I felt better as I became able to do more things, and as that happened, I also took more pleasure in seeing people. My calendar suggests that by the second week of March, my spirits were rising; it is filled with notations of visits, not just by “family”—the kids and my closest pals—but by other old friends I treasure.
My visitors were the usual suspects, with some added treats. Chris Shepherd visited from London to weep with me. Barbara Raskin came from Washington, D.C., and Donna McKechnie came from California to advise me on arthritis. My former son-in-law, Bruce Gagnier, came to console me. Lisa Alther, on a trip down from Vermont, visited one afternoon, as did Alix Kates Shulman, Carolyn Heilbrun, Candace Hogan, and Wilbur Colom.
By the third week of April 1993, after almost three months of physiotherapy, I could walk, not very steadily or in a straight line (because of the chemotherapy-caused peripheral neuropathy in my feet and damage to the balance center of my brain), with a cane to support me in case I felt dizzy. I had regained movement in my left arm and my hands, although they had little strength; still, supporting myself with my arms, I could now lower myself into a chair and rise again. Sometimes, rising took several tries. The kids found it hilarious when I fell back down as I tried to rise, or walked in a circle right into a wall. Their laughter probably kept me from crying, which is what I felt like doing each time this happened. In my childhood, efficiency was considered essential in all endeavors. My family scorned sloppiness in thought or movement; they would have regarded with contempt one who continually dropped things (for the peripheral neuropathy had also affected my fingertips) or walked into walls. I did this even though my dose of phenobarbital was lower (it would end completely by late May).
I was able to swallow a few more foods—a few soups, applesauce, papaya, things soft and moist. I could not swallow any but the softest, gluiest glop, so I did not eat bread. Nor could I eat anything at all spicy, acid, or carbonated. But the pain of swallowing was largely gone.
Mother’s Day, early in May, is not a major event in our family, because for years I derided it as a commercial invention. Still, I have to admit with a certain chagrin that once the kids were grown and gone, a certain anxiety crept upon me each year as it approached lest they forget it. And some years, one of them did, which I, perversely, found hurtful. But they usually took me out for brunch—I had vetoed gifts. This year, I expected nothing. The children came to my apartment on Saturday night, made dinner, and stayed overnight. They said nothing about Sunday.
After eating breakfast, taking my medications, doing my exercises, bathing, and dressing, I came down about noon. The three kids were standing on the terrace outside my study; the door was open, and they smiled at me as I walked into the room. And then I saw the terrace was blooming from one end to another. They had planted every box, filled every pot, made the terrace gorgeous with flowers: lilies, pansies, petunias, marigolds, portulacas, and irises overflowed the boxes, scented the air. I was overwhelmed. Sitting me down on a cushioned chair, they sat with me in the warm spring air. Later, we crossed the street to the park, where we walked for a little while, then sat on a bench—they had brought along a cushion for my knobby back—watching the cyclists and in-line skaters speeding past. It was a grace-blessed day; the sun was warm, people were gay, and we were happy. For me, it was like an emergence from prison: I sat there almost like an ordinary person, with my children, in the sun, watching a world I was no longer disconnected from. After we returned, Rob walked to a nearby Mideast restaurant and brought back baba ganoush and hummus and tabouli and lentils and stuffed grape leaves and lamb and pita bread, and we ate together on the terrace. It was the first meal I had fully enjoyed since the previous September. And it was the best Mother’s Day in my memory.
By mid-May, I felt I no longer needed the nurses. Without them, I might fall when I got up in the middle of the night, but they were too expensive to keep on simply for that one task. Knowing they were counting on the pay, I told them to stay for another week, but I felt wasteful. Ursula would sit alone in my apartment night after night while I went out with one friend or another, to dinner or to movies, and she’d glare at me when I returned.
I was longing for my Berkshire house, but I could not go there without help. Rob drove us all up for the weekend. It was my first visit to the house since the previous fall, and by mid-May, the gardens were aflame with rhododendron and azalea, lilac and late tulips. In the visualizations I did twice a day while I had cancer, I had always ended up picturing myself at the Berkshire house. I started elsewhere—a Greek island, a small boat in the Mediterranean along the coast of Italy, in Venice, or a luscious landscape in the middle of the Serengeti or Ngorongoro—or places I had not been to but imagined—Majorca, Rio, Tierra del Fuego—but no matter how I pushed my mind, my vision always homed in on this house, this porch, in the mi
dst of this garden. Then, I had not been sure I would ever see them again. Now, here I was. I was moved with gratitude that I still had this in my life.
I made a plan. It felt daring, but more than anything else that spring, this plan made me feel human again. I knew I could not live in the country by myself. I was still too weak to cook meals, or even bathe myself, much less carry groceries. I could not drive my car, a sports car with a manual shift that was too hard for me to maneuver now; I had tried to drive and found myself uncontrollably canting to the left, out of my lane. Also, I was terrified in cars. Even when driven by Rob (whom I trusted), I felt vulnerable, as if every nearby car was about to crush my body, even if our car was coming to a halt. Still, I no longer needed round-the-clock nursing. I wanted to hire someone who could cook and care for me but who could also be trusted to drive my Porsche. Since this person would be with me for much of the day, I wanted it to be someone I liked—an equal, not a servant.
My friend Candace Hogan was a bit down on her luck that summer. She had a somewhat boring job in the city, but I knew she loved to spend summers in the country, especially in the Berkshires. And I enjoy her greatly. After some negotiation, she agreed to do it, and when the nurses left, she began to stay in the guest room in my apartment. She helped me to shower, cooked dinners (she kept her day job), and on the weekend drove me to the country. Isabelle made my morning tea and poured me an Ensure for lunch.
However, a new problem suddenly arose on Thursday. I was having trouble swallowing, because of a narrowing in my throat. I knew that if I could not swallow my own saliva, I would die, and in terror called my oncologist. Unperturbed, he told me to call Dr. Gerdes at S-K and schedule an endoscopy. Luckily, it took only a telephone call to Dr. Gerdes’s office to schedule the operation for the following Monday—the first of many such procedures I had over the next years.
An endoscopy involves sliding a thin wire down the esophagus to open up a channel for swallowing. The wire carries a tiny camera to photograph what is going on in the depth of the organ, so it is a diagnostic tool as well. With each operation, a vein had to be found for an IV. This was the hardest part of the process. The operation is painless: I was under anesthesia when they slipped the wire down my throat. Once, I woke up in the middle of the operation and told them I was awake: they immediately increased the anesthetic. I had felt only a pressure in my throat. Among the drugs they gave me was Demerol, which always cheers me up; I wake up laughing and joking. The kids say I should take it regularly. A few times, my throat was bruised by the wire or, perhaps, the camera.
The narrowing of the esophagus is caused by scar tissue as the ulcerations in the throat close up and heal. After my first operation, I asked Dr. Gerdes if the ulcerations would ever heal completely and the scar tissue disappear. This attentive man gives his patients thoughtful, honest answers; he said, regretfully, that he did not know. This surprised me: I still did not realize how rare was survival from esophageal cancer, or comprehend how terminal my diagnosis had been. Only later did I deduce that no patient treated at S-K for esophageal cancer had lived long enough for Dr. Gerdes to discover whether radiation-generated ulcerations healed. I gathered this mainly from his jubilation two years later when he announced that the ulcerations had indeed healed and explained that I was a miracle: he had held few hopes for my future.
Still, the problem with the esophagus became a source of anxiety when I was better and wanted to travel, because I could never predict how much time would elapse before an endoscopy would be necessary. When I needed one, I needed it right away: being unable to swallow triggers panic and can lead to death. If I wanted to plan a trip, I would have to consider when I might need another operation. Would it be in ten weeks or twenty? I never solved this problem: the six endoscopies I had were spaced twelve to thirty weeks apart. But this was one problem that ended. Blessedly.
May and June 1993 were filled with social events, doctors’ appointments, and weekends in the Berkshires. I was not writing or reading seriously, and despite my editing of Our Father, I was not certain of my mental sharpness. I was a member of the Harvard Graduate School Council, which was meeting early in June, and I had decided to attend what would be my last meeting (the term of office is three years)—it would be my first trip since my illness had begun. Then Harvard wrote that they were giving me the Centennial Medal, an award for accomplishment. A few years before, I had attended the ceremony when they awarded it to Susan Sontag. So I had to go.
Candace flew up to Boston with me, the luggage and I in her charge. We stayed at a Cambridge hotel, and Candace accompanied me to the cocktail party and dinner the night preceding the meeting. I barely got through these events, cruelly aware of my fragility and fatigue. I cannot say I enjoyed them, as I had in the past; I was testing myself, and just barely passing. But the next day, at the ceremony and luncheon, I found that some of my best old Harvard pals had been gathered and brought to Cambridge. LeAnne Schreiber, Michael Malone, Maureen Quilligan, Janet and Tim Murray, were all seated at my table, and their familiar boisterous good humor (not normal at these events) got me through the praising speeches and past my own sense of frailty. I had a marvelous time and found myself unexpectedly moved by the event.
After arriving at Logan for the return trip, Candace and I discovered that all flights had been canceled. I did not trust trains in bad weather; I had a terrible memory of a snowy day when flights were canceled and my New York–Boston train took twelve hours. So we rented a big Lincoln Continental, which Candace drove to New York that night, the two of us light-hearted and giggly as we whizzed along the empty dark highways.
Candace drove us to the country again that weekend. I could not yet stay there permanently, because I had too many doctors’ appointments. The following weekend, Rob drove me up. I had invited my father, my sister, and Fred for Father’s Day; except for the fact that the children did all the cooking and cleaning up, it felt almost as if I were well.
At the end of June, I began to work again. I noted this fact on my calendar in large scrawled writing. The Shakespeare Festival in Stratford, Canada, had earlier that year asked me to speak there in August. That festival has mounted fascinating productions of Shakespeare over the years and is one of the few places where the directors credit my Shakespeare interpretations in the program notes. I was thrilled to be able to make up for my cancellation the year before—I felt I was resuming my life.
On June 25, Candace drove us to the country, where I planned to spend the summer. I started to write an essay on King John, one of the Stratford productions for that year. I had not worked since the October before, when, on my laptop in the hospital, I finished the final draft of Our Father and wrote the first two chapters of a satirical novel about an aging woman’s ludicrous love affair. Now, using the laptop, I sat on my chaise on the screened porch and wrote for several hours a day. I was happy. I was not my old self—I was still weak and unable to do many things—but I could work, and I took huge pleasure in that, as I always have. Snags and problems may frustrate, but they also increase the pleasure of an intense effort. After I finished writing the Shakespeare talk, early in July, I began working on the copyedited version of Our Father; when that was finished, near the end of the month, I revised the Shakespeare speech and immediately began revising a long history of women I had worked on for twelve years, trying once more to cut it. It had been a five-thousand-page manuscript; it was now down to three thousand pages. I had to cut it further.
I also went swimming every warm day, and by July I was able to drive the car locally, to my physical therapist. Candace and I did errands together, and I supervised while she cooked—very well. The children came up most weekends, Candace’s time off. It was a treat to see them so often.
Late in July, the coven came for a weekend. I had a catered dinner and a picnic lunch (salade niçoise) prepared for the next day, when we went to Tanglewood. The following weekend, the kids and I saw a play about Brecht at a local art gallery and took a picnic lunch
to Tanglewood on Sunday. Some Saturday afternoons, we went to hear early music played by Aston Magna, a magnificent group that plays in a church in Great Barrington. A lovely summer, filled with pleasure, it was far better than I could have hoped if I had let myself hope. I was not recovered, but I was well enough to feel grateful I had survived. I was getting stronger week by week.
When the time came to go to Canada, I decided to see if I could do it on my own. Though Candace was supposed to have the weekends off, she was willing to accompany me. But I felt so good that I wanted to test myself. I would not have to do much walking, and if I could get someone to carry my bag, I should be able to do it. So I did. Candace drove me to New York (I still could not manage that journey), and a hired car took me to the airport. I arrived in Stratford on Friday, August 6; that night, I had dinner with Jean Davison, a Canadian librarian. I had met her in 1980, on a British-sponsored tour to China (the only way an American could visit China in those days). We took a train from Victoria Station to the English Channel, sailed across, then took trains to Paris, Berlin west and east, Warsaw (where Polish friends unexpectedly met me with overflowing bouquets), Moscow, Ulan Bator (where we were stuck for ten days, owing to a flood in the Gobi Desert), then on to Beijing, Nanking, Shanghai, Nan-ch’ang, Ch’ang-sha, Canton, and Hong Kong. It was a tumultuous journey, partly because of a jejune tour guide and partly because the directors had no backup plan for disasters. But I became friendly with a few of the tourists and had since corresponded with Jean.
I was to speak on Sunday. On Saturday, Pat Quigley, my festival liaison, took me sightseeing in Stratford, which had barely changed since my last visit, over two decades earlier. The next day, I was blessed with a wonderful audience for my speech; it was made up mostly of women (as are all my audiences), but these were feminist Shakespeare scholars, and their questions were brilliant; they were a great pleasure. Afterward, I had lunch with Michele Landsberg, the Toronto Star columnist, and her friend Ellen De Noon. We had so much fun together that I invited them to the Berkshires for a visit.
A Season in Hell Page 15
