Unbeknown to you, Jim has been standing at the doorway watching his lovely wife reduced to gnawing away at a carcass, like a fox in the pack. You both have a good belly laugh over this.
“There are going to be a lot of weird images of me, honey,” you say as Jim cuts the chicken into pieces for you. “Images of me coping with my situation, images that I want you to erase from your memory banks. This is one of them!”
YOUR DOCTORS HAVE A CAFFEINE RESTRICTION on your chart. You think it includes chocolate. This was a self-imposed rule because none of your doctors restricted chocolate. You love chocolate with every cell in your body.
Eating chocolate is sometimes like sex. It feels great and you always want more. The day Jimmy brought you your first post-stroke blondie bar you were uncertain about eating it. But there’s an important moral principle at stake here: One should never be timid when it comes to chocolate.
The urge to have a piece of chocolate is greater than the fear of death. It’s only a few chocolate chips, and after all, it’s blond chocolate. You nibble and then wait, anticipating an explosion in your head. No trauma occurs, other than the realization that you can still eat chocolate and your hips can still expand.
PEOPLE YOU’VE WORKED WITH often bring lunches. Yoshi, a coworker who handled the Japanese products at your company, visits often. He always brings you something interesting from his culture. One of these was a little plaster doll with blank eyes. He explains that it symbolizes a goal. You color in a black spot on one blank eye while setting the goal you want to achieve. When you have reached your goal you color in the other eye.
Yoshi explains that the doll represents a proverb: “Fall down seven times, get up eight times.”
“It’s pretty obvious what my goal will be,” you say, catching a glimpse of yourself in the mirror. “I want to be a glamorous Hollywood movie star.”
He laughs. You stare at that lifeless, blank doll and then color in the right eye, resolving to heal your broken body.
The next time he brings you the most beautiful candy from Chinatown. Each piece is a work of art. They could have been glued in a frame. You don’t want to eat them because they’re so pretty, but then you decide to go for it. You take a big bite, expecting the beauty of the candy to enchant your tongue.
It doesn’t.
“What is it?” you ask as you try to think of a way to spit it out without hurting his feelings. Yoshi says, “It’s bean paste.” As soon as he says that, you don’t care about feelings. You only care about saving your taste buds from this foul trickery. You blast it right into a napkin.
After that episode, you enjoy offering this oriental “confection” to your guests.
YOUR FOLKS FILL ANY GAPS in the meal schedule. Dad brings you many meals. He calls too and says, “What do you feel like?” Then he goes to the pub below his office. You know he enjoys picking out your meals, because he orders all the things he enjoys but shouldn’t eat. Sometimes he brings elaborate meals and other times it’s something simple, like a burger and fries. Sometimes you’re so hungry, you’ll eat anything.
Except bean paste.
JASON, YOUR YOUNGEST BROTHER, doesn’t bring you meals. Instead, he brings you a steady diet of humor. He usually brings his milky morning beer breath too, while describing his single-life escapades. The rehab hospital is, conveniently enough, right next to the T station which is J.V.’s primary means of transportation. He is living at home with the folks in Andover while completing law school. On weekends he comes into Boston. He hangs out with his buddies, and then he strolls into your room on a Saturday or Sunday morning all ratty looking. Sometimes you get his funny visits coming and going.
You call him Bubbalubba. He describes his personal dating scene. One date he knew had ended early because he saw her slip out a side door with another guy. Once, you ask him what happened to the woman who had achieved girlfriend status (because he had more than one date with her).
He says, “I think we broke up.”
“Really? Why?”
“Because she had a party and didn’t invite me.”
Apparently she didn’t know she had a boyfriend.
The support system seems infinite. Between family and friends, you’re taken care of. One friend brought your absolute favorite chocolates, Stowaway Sweets. Not as pretty as the flower candy Yoshi brought, but it’s edible. And it’s real chocolate! To keep yourself in check, you make Jim keep the box out of reach and out of sight (“Put it on my left side”) and dole out two or three onto a tray before he leaves. You savor those chocolates every night and feel like a princess as you do.
You want to make sure that you don’t have any visitors who have a “pity attitude.” You don’t want the negative comments: “Oh I can’t believe this happened to you, Julia.” You want to keep yourself—and everyone else who crosses your threshold—positive. It’s a form of protection. Jim spreads the word. Your close friends understand.
Mom is in the room when Jim is working. Mom oversees the meal and visitor schedule. If you don’t have a lunch coming in with your brothers or friends, she’s there with a home-cooked meal—and it is never roast chicken on the bone! She is always mothering: straightening and cleaning the room, bringing in necessities, laundering your clothes, taking clothes home, washing them, folding them, putting them back, hanging cards, putting pictures up—you really appreciate her efforts. You know she has suffered, seeing her only daughter in this condition. You know that, for you, it would be agonizing to watch someone you love being in this devastating and uncertain condition. You’re relieved that you’re the patient, and not the visitor.
You spend a lot of time pondering why someone staying in the hospital is called a “patient.” Eventually, you come to a true understanding of the term. You have always had a very impatient personality, whether the problem is sitting in traffic, expecting someone to arrive for an appointment, or waiting for anything. In the hospital, though, you have to learn to be patient for someone to answer the call light, to help you go to the bathroom, to get something for you that is out of your reach.
You learn to be patient about everything.
You also have to be patient for your body to heal.
Your belief is that people who are truly patient live longer. In our society we are taught to do everything expeditiously. When you enter a hospital as a patient, you need to make patience a part of your anatomy.
Who’s Squinting?
Edie made bumpers for Rory’s crib. Edie said, “These are for Rory’s crib, and you can use them for all your children if you want. The color scheme works for a boy and it works for a girl, so you can use it for your next baby, too.”
That’s what Edie said to you.
“I’M STILL GOING TO HAVE A BABY. Right, Jim? Hop on, let’s make one right now.” Your speech is slurred and sarcastic.
Every day, it seems, people arrive and kneel by your bedside. The room is overflowing with flower arrangements. It gives you the feeling that you’re awake at your own wake.
Today Jim and your parents are kneeling at your bedside—Jim on one side, Mom and Dad on the other side.
You think it must be because they like to get eye to eye with you, so it’s okay. You’re all for that. If they want to kneel, let them kneel.
“Stop squinting,” Dad says, as if it was a helpful instruction.
“I’m not squinting,” you bark back.
“Yes, you are.” It’s like two kids bickering.
“Give me a mirror,” you demand.
He does.
“There, see?” He’s defiant.
The face in the mirror looks different than the one you remembered. The shaved scalp has shifted everything, and there are strange new hairs in unbecoming places. Your overall countenance is bloated. The eyes of the reflection are foreign and asymmetrical. The left eye remains wide open with a blank stare. The right eye is in fact squinting. But that’s only because it’s doing what it’s supposed to do—reacting to light and showing expr
ession.
You stare at the eyes in the mirror and notice that tears are welling up in both of them.
You are still going to have a baby, though.
Dr. Neuro has put you on some prenatal vitamins. Jim squeezes your hand through the aluminum bars on the side of the bed, and suddenly it’s okay that your mouth tastes like pennies and your head has a long raw scar and tiny metal ridges along the side of it and they keep telling you that you have something you know you don’t have but you have no idea why you know that.
It’s going to be okay. Everything really is eventually going to be okay.
Time wobbles again and your hand is through the aluminum bars, but Jim’s isn’t holding it anymore and no one is kneeling by your bed now, so it’s later.
Brace Yourself
ON ONE OF YOUR OUTINGS, you meet a little boy about seven years old being escorted around the ward by two therapists. He wears a bicycle helmet that protects his head and a leg brace similar to yours. He looks sad.
You have your therapist wheel you over to him and then ask both the therapists if you can chat with him privately.
HE HAD FALLEN OUT of a window and sustained a head injury that restricted his leg movement. He’s been a patient for several months. You feel for him.
“I understand how hard it is to be in the hospital when it isn’t what you had planned,” you say. “And I know what it’s like to miss your family and your home.” You point to your leg.
“Take a look at my brace.”
He does.
“It’s just like mine,” he says.
“Things happen out of the blue,” you say. “Only really smart people know this. People who aren’t so smart think things don’t happen out of the blue. They think nothing important can happen to you without you expecting it. But they’re wrong. You and I know. Right?”
He nods.
“You and I are going to have to work really hard not to have to wear a leg brace down the road,” you say. “But for now, it’s a good thing we’ve got them, because they’re helping us to move around, and we can’t learn if we don’t move around, right?”
“Right.”
You have this urge to reach over and hug him. But he hugs you first.
NOBODY EVER SEEMS to give you a pep talk. People who are sent to work with you are always concentrating on you adapting to your new crippled body and telling you how you need to accept it.
As they’re walking out the door after a session, they say, within your earshot, “She’s in denial.”
You say, loud enough for them to hear, “I can’t wait to get back to my yard to play soccer with my son.”
Numbness Is in the Eye of the Beholder
ONE MORNING YOU ASK your mother about the profusion of greeting cards in your room. She reminds you that Paul, your colleague from work, has sent you a card every single day you were hospitalized.
You ask her to bring the pile of cards over to you. You look through them. They are all dated. They are all different. He has never duplicated a card. Some days, you realize, you’ve received more than one card from him. He will have to start making his own cards soon, you think, because before too long, he will have used up every get-well card that ever existed.
You choose one of the cards at random and open it up. Paul has written on it, “Every day aboveground is extra.”
YOU DECIDE THAT APPEARANCE is important for someone who is overcoming a debilitation. Appearance sets your frame of mind.
You decide to feel good about yourself. You make sure you put your makeup on every day. Some of the staff think it’s funny. Your left side is completely paralyzed, your arm hangs like a dead tree limb after a storm, but there you are, holding cosmetic lids with your mouth. You put eye makeup and lipstick on every morning after your shower.
Putting on lipstick or eyeliner on the left side of your face usually produces a look that reminds you of a five-year-old girl getting caught playing with Mommy’s makeup. Your face is numb and there isn’t any muscle tone. It’s like putting on lipstick after a few shots of novocaine. What a mess.
You are going to do whatever it takes to feel good. If that means tricking yourself by using makeup, so be it. Whenever you have felt ugly in your life, you have always had an ugly day. Now you are putting on your makeup each day as though you were going onstage. You are acting, and the stage is life. You have had good days and bad days. You know that much. A positive appearance, you have decided, will help with the attitude.
Putting on makeup also gives you the chance to practice facial exercises. This is important, because the left side of your face is flaccid.
Paul teases you about your cosmetics: “She says, ‘Oh, I’m paralyzed, can’t do a damn thing.’ But hand her a cosmetics bag and she’s off and running!”
He’s right, of course. Makeup motivates you. You realize that, as part of your cosmetics routine, you would pay very close attention to the people who speak to you.
Whenever a nurse would talk, you’d look very closely at her face, and realize that her whole face, not just her mouth, was speaking. Her eyebrows, her eyes, her forehead—all moving in harmony, all working together in a seamless way that most people hardly notice, take for granted, and engage in hundreds of times a day without a thought.
When you demand a mirror and speak into it, you see that your right eye squints and is expressive while the left eye remains wide open, without any movement. The right eyebrow moves up and down; the left eyebrow is flatlined. The left side of the mouth is paralyzed and the tongue and gums on that side are numb. When the face in the mirror speaks, half of it is saying, “I’m not really here.” It looks disturbing.
So after the makeup you always exercise in front of the little mirror on your bed tray. You work on forming words, on smiling, and on eye expression.
“Mirror, mirror on the wall,” you hear yourself say to the little mirror one morning, “who’s the toughest of them all?”
As if in response, the madwoman down the hall wails a long howl, then starts to sob uncontrollably.
WHEN YOU WERE GROWING UP in a household of eight brothers (and two male dogs!), you often joked to your mom that there was too much testosterone in the house and that you needed to inject more estrogen in the atmosphere. Mom would roll her eyes and say, “You’re impossible. Where did you come from?” Now, on a visit to the hospital, your brother Joe reminisces about when you were young and wanted to prove that you were as tough as the boys.
“You sat yourself down in the kitchen,” Joe says, “put your elbow on the table, and said, ‘Okay, wimps, who wants to be embarrassed by being beaten in arm wrestling by a girl?’ And you proceeded to beat two brothers—and came close to beating me! You’re strong, Julia. You’re going to beat this. Only difference is, now you’re wrestling with yourself.”
The Babe
THERE’S A KNOCK ON YOUR DOOR and Mom opens it. It’s Berkeley, clutching a life-size cardboard figure of Babe Ruth. It’s the same Babe you had purchased for the company kickoff meeting…except with a few changes.
This Babe is adorned with tacky dangling earrings, a phone headset, a company logo baseball cap, and (what your mom notices first) a bulging jockstrap. There are signatures from everyone in the department. Berkeley explains that the earrings are because you love jewels, the headset represents what your department does, and the jock strap is a candy holder—for a vast store of Hershey’s Kisses. You always kept a chocolate jar on your desk for anyone who needed a chocolate fix—usually Berkeley. Now he’s returning the favor.
“How did you manage to carry it across the parking lot and up the elevator?” you ask, laughing. “People must have thought you were whacked. Did anyone say anything to you?”
“No, but a lot of people stared. I think they were trying to figure it out. Could I have a piece of chocolate?”
“Sure, help yourself. Maybe people think you’re bringing it to a Red Sox player who’s recuperating. You know—that whole Boston Curse thing. I can’t wait to
start offering kisses to the nurses. If they look perplexed, I’ll point to the jockstrap.”
You love the whole idea—and you love Berkeley for making you laugh.
“Put Babe in the corner so when a nurse comes in, she’ll think there’s someone lurking in the room. I can’t wait for the reaction.”
He does. He sits on the side of the bed. You wait there together for your first victim.
“Thanks, Berkeley,” you say. “Now, with the Babe on hand, I’ll always have company!”
Kisses in a jockstrap—pretty perverted. But I wouldn’t expect anything else from him. People are mortified when they walk in the room. It’s the goof that keeps on goofing.
Your Friend Pays a Visit
EVERYTHING IS ABNORMAL after your stroke, but your period, it turns out, is still as regular as clockwork. Lucky you.
The huge black nurse is cleaning you up. She has just placed a call requesting a diaper. Your heart freezes.
So it’s come to this.
She stands and throws a now-crimson washcloth in the plastic hamper.
“Do me a favor,” you say. “Take a look at my chart. Tell me how old I am.”
She stops in place, considers you for a moment, then goes to your chart.
“It says here you’re thirty-seven, honey.”
“That’s what I thought. It doesn’t say I’m eighty-four, does it?”
“No, dear—thirty-seven.”
“And it definitely doesn’t say that I’m six fucking months old, does it?”
She makes a little pout and squints at you.
“Yes, I’m thirty-seven years old. And I’m not going to wear a diaper. Please get me tampons from supplies.”
“This is all the hospital has.”
“Are you serious? Is this some kind of joke you people play with the folks on the head-case floor? What the hell do other women do when they menstruate while they’re in the hospital?”
Don't Leave Me This Way: Or When I Get Back on My Feet You'll Be Sorry Page 6
