There is a man who often comes and breaks the monotony of my nights. He is on the “cath” team, a group of people who go from room to room “cathing” the needy. This means that he inserts a sterile catheter into my penis and pushes it through my urethra into my bladder. The force of gravity then drains the urine into a measuring container. When he comes, I am usually quite drowsy. The encounter is often dreamlike.
The light from the hallway shines brightly around his imposing body. The cathing process takes about ten minutes, leaving plenty of time to fill. One night I notice his forearms. At first I think it is just the relative darkness, but then I realize that he has incredibly hairy arms. I start to take more notice. Where he stops shaving on the underside of his chin, about from his Adam’s apple down, he is solid hair—no skin visible at all. This is an incredibly hairy man! Or is he? As the nights wear on, I begin to imagine, or dream, or whatever the state is, that I am being cathed by an ape. At first this image is funny, but after a while it begins to spook me. Now when he comes, I insist that he turn on the room light. I need to see him. The sighting is confirmed: This is the hairiest man I have ever seen.
So begins our speaking relationship. I make him show me his ankles and calves—solid hair. Turns out that this ape-man is also a great storyteller. I particularly like his cathing war stories. He once cathed a truck driver who had 4,500 cc of urine in his bladder—that’s four and a half quarts. Can you imagine all the times that man denied himself the relief of peeing?
Imagine this, imagine that. I collect stories, from Dr. McMeken, from the ape-man, from anyone who is willing to share. Anything to hold my wonder … the nights wear on.
6
Mind, Not Body
It is mid-January. Night and day bring only more waiting. This time I am waiting for my bones to heal. Both my neck and my back need to take hold, to throw down enough new calcium to support themselves. Until this happens, movement is risky, sitting up isn’t possible, neither is rehabilitation. So we wait—the three of us—my mind, my body, and the silence as waves of trauma continue to break along my shores.
When I turn my focus inward toward my paralyzed body, I feel no inside, no connection, nothing. There is no evidence that I am “in” there at all. It’s so different from when I look at my hand. In my hand, there is a sense of immediate presence. The connection between my intent and my hand manifests as movement. So intimate is the connection that it seems built into the very fabric of having a body. Not so when my mind reaches downward toward my legs. Rather than an immediate connection, my paralyzed body presents a brick wall. So abrupt, so foreign, the perceived absence of sensation is enough to make me nauseous.
This is yet another level of greeting the silence. I am now living in a body that presents silence rather than tangible sensation. When the nurses turn me from side to side, I do not feel my ankle bones knock together. I do not feel the warmth of my inner thighs touching or the comforting weight of the sheet draped over me. Within much of my body, what I have known as living has been replaced by a resounding silence.
This silence that I perceive within my body came upon me abruptly through a spinal cord injury. For most people, however, the process is slower. It develops through aging. Over time, the body becomes slower to respond, more likely to sit at rest, more content to observe rather than act. But in each case, the fundamental healing question remains the same: What aspect of consciousness will traverse the increasing gap between mind and body? The answer will depend upon our healing stories.
Through the medical model, I will encounter one kind of healing story. My rehabilitation will guide me to willfully overcome this new silence. In my case, it will not suffice.
In the short term, however, I take a very practical approach to this silence. I use the dislocation between my mind and body as a means of protection. I hear silence where there is pain. I embrace my neurologically induced rupture.
I target the IVs. I am so sick of them: the incessant pricks and pokes of needles, the hardened and painful skin around a long-lasting IV site, the constant hair-pulling from the tape holding them in place, the sting of new drugs dripping into my bloodstream. Thus far, the IVs have always been inserted into my hands and arms, but now these veins are refusing to cooperate. They have hardened, become wiry, and literally sunk deeper into my body. I am both tickled and saddened by their ingenuity—my body is fending for itself. But then it strikes me. How about the veins in my feet? Why not stick me down there? The medical vampires oblige; they too are frustrated and willing to try anything. I gain a much-needed reprieve. Blood draws and IVs don’t happen to me down there. They affect that other body, the silent one. I feel clever, like I am pulling a fast one.
Unfortunately, the veins in my feet prove to be no dumber than the ones in my arms. Over time, they too begin to hide successfully. I am presented with two options: Use my arms again or have my head shaved and begin using my scalp. I feel punished as the digging resumes in my arms. I am disappointed by my worthless feet.
The orthopedic doctors just won’t stop. Mainly, I deal with two fourth-year residents. Dr. Quinlan is an officer in the Army Reserve. She has short black hair, plainly cut. Small, wire-rimmed glasses surround hard brown eyes. Her upper lip barely moves when she speaks, as if she is clenching her jaw. This mirrors an absence of gestures—her arms are seemingly fastened to her sides. She is not attractive, nor is she unattractive, and seems to desire neither. She is a tough woman who embodies military discipline.
Dr. Basset is a balding weight lifter. Slightly pigeon-toed, a big smile, and even bigger arms, he obviously loves what he does. He reminds me of a boy playing grown-up. One day he tells me he can bench-press 390 pounds—I imagine the Incredible Hulk. Dr. Basset wants to fix the bones in my wrist. Apparently, the break in my left wrist was severe. Both he and Dr. Quinlan believe that it was set improperly and must be rebroken. I am assured that I won’t feel a thing. They will pinch a nerve in my armpit and my arm will temporarily become part of my paralyzed body.
The first time the pinching doesn’t work. The bone breaking will have to be rescheduled. I am not bothered; I will not feel anything anyway. The next time it works, and I lose the “inside” connection to my arm. They saw off my cast and also remove the splint from my right wrist. They want to take x-rays of both. Finally, I get to the operating room. I realize that I must have been given Valium because this feels strange but not frightening.
Dr. Quinlan approaches and tells me that my left wrist must be put in traction, to lengthen it before rebreaking it. She brings in a stand with what looks like Chinese handcuffs suspended from a horizontal metal bar. Each of my fingers is inserted into a finger cuff. My arm hangs downward from the fingertips, its weight providing the necessary traction for my wrist. She leaves. I am left alone, lying flat on my back, my unfelt arm hanging from a wire contraption that looks like a form of torture. The Valium must be helping. The picture strikes me as absurd. Inwardly laughing, I drift off into a light sleep.
I awaken to multiple bodies around me. I do not recognize the doctor who has my wrist. He is cranking it in awkward directions, yanking, twisting, doing anything to gain the desired break. He is unsuccessful. He tells me that once the body recalcifies a fracture, the bone becomes stronger than before, making resetting it more difficult. Dr. Basset’s physique is called in. But his ability to bench-press nearly 400 pounds is no match for the scrappy, healing bones of my thirteen-year-old body. At one point, he puts his leg over my wrist in an attempt to gain better leverage. He yanks hard upward. I see the muscles straining in his arms; I even detect sweat. Still nothing. My wrist is holding firm. By this point, I am laughing. The movie in front of me could not be better scripted.
I hear whispering off to my right, little snippets: “His other wrist isn’t healing straight. It needs resetting.” Another voice says, “But if we reschedule, it will take time. The longer we wait, the worse it gets.” I am still watching Dr. Basset’s futile struggle with my left wrist. So
mebody quietly grabs my right arm. Out of the corner of my eye, I see a sudden twist. A horrible cracking, more like a shattering, echoes through the room. On an exhale, “You fucking broke my wrist!” The pain blindsides me. “Who the fuck are you people! I can’t believe you broke my other wrist …” My voice quickly trails off into sobs and wails of unsuspected betrayal. Vaguely, I hear someone tell me that the cast will ease the pain. In furied silence, I watch as they form casts on both my wrists: one that refused to break and one that was tricked. The pain eases, but it’s too late. I trust no one.
Back in my room, hatred is not quite what I feel. I am beyond not trusting the doctors, beyond thinking I possess clever resources. I feel little and helpless and naked. I have to be ready for anything, from any direction. If they can break my wrist without anesthesia, then anything is possible. I withdraw and move inward. Although silence remains a tool, a perceptual buffer, it now becomes a place to stay, a place to wait. It envelops me. My body becomes seamless, the backs of my eyes ache with emptiness but also begin to flicker with a different kind of strength. Part of my living dies so I can continue forward. I move farther away from my body.
Take a breath, hold it, feel how the silence invades from all sides, how things become just a little more still. That’s what I am doing. I am riding motionless waves, holding myself thinner and thinner, making less of me for them to break, growing tougher through the silence.
Every day, all day, I lie in bed. So stale, not just the smell but the dullness, the lack of change, the lack of freshness. My only measure of control is throwing off the sheet that covers me. Just increasing the amount of air touching my skin can bring temporary relief, or so I wish. I begin to throw off the sheet more and more often and think nothing of it. Any control of my environment feels like a victory. I continue this practice for a period of time, perhaps weeks.
On this weekend, both my brother and Bob are visiting. They have been to a movie—Invasion of the Body Snatchers, the recent remake with Donald Sutherland. They enter my room bubbling; obviously the distraction has been good for them. Knowing that life continues outside of my room, that there are still theaters and popcorn and Junior Mints, seems a necessary thing, proof that the world still holds fun. Hearing about it feels like food.
“How was it?” I ask. They pause, fidget from foot to foot.
“Good,” Bob finally replies.
“Come on, give me more than that.”
“Why don’t you pull the sheet up?” my brother asks.
“Why?” He and Bob look at each other and burst out laughing. “What’s so funny?” I ask.
“Just that it’s hard to keep a straight face when …” Bob’s voice stumbles, “when you’re lying there naked like that.” His words pour out awkwardly.
“Matt, you’re sharking us right now.”
“Baring it all, as they might say,” Bob chirps in.
“I am not! My cast is covering me.”
“No, it’s not,” my brother says, his gaze cast downward.
“Yeah, it is.” Confidently, I reach for my groin. “Oh my god.” Sting rushes across my face like getting hit with a basketball. As I touch around my penis for the first time in months, I feel something strange. “James, is that pubic hair?” Tears stream from everywhere. I feel sick. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I thought you knew.” My brother steps closer, kneels next to the bed. “It’s okay.”
During my short three months in the seventh grade, the locker room called forth one of life’s painful unfoldings. Showering after gym hadn’t been too difficult, because other kids also lacked any sign of puberty—there was safety in numbers. But showering after basketball practice was different. I was the only seventh grader on the ninth-grade varsity team, a babe in the hormonal woods. Acutely aware of this, I longed for the changes ahead, for the time when I would begin the path toward physical manhood, for the time when I would join the others.
Instead, my rite of passage is a public viewing—for everybody and without my knowledge. How could I not know it was happening, not sense something, anything? Rather than pride and feelings of becoming, there is only embarrassment—my body’s changing innocence is exposed to everyone, from the candy striper offering magazines to the woman who cleans my room. But I can go nowhere, escape to nowhere. My only option is to silently absorb. I am without power, without pride, and now without dignity.
I feel de-spirited. It feels pointless to have a body. This is the problem with the silence gaining such a strong foothold: It can just as easily fuel a sense of loss, purposelessness, or even depression. Although silence lies at the center of wonder and appreciation, even strength, it also can breed powerlessness, indifference, and apathy. Robbed of my passage into puberty, I become less and less interested in having a body at all.
I am ripe for healing stories that guide me away from my body. It is where I want to go. A man in the room next to mine is lonely and a high-level quadriplegic. One day my mom goes over for a visit.
Upon her return, she looks rattled. It turns out that he is in his mid-twenties and lives in a nursing home. Incapable of movement below his neck, he describes a life of complete and utter dependency. He has a tough life, and his sadness unintentionally paints a dismal picture of living with a spinal cord injury. He leaves my mother with a powerful parting image: “I feel like a floating head.”
My mom and I are in a vulnerable position. We have no idea what living with paralysis will actually be like. Will I also feel like a floating head? We do at least know that my situation is different from his. I am a paraplegic, not a quadriplegic. I will be able to use my arms, to feed myself, even drive a car someday. Yet, despite these differences, his image is haunting.
My mom returns to visit me the next day. She impresses upon me another pivotal healing story after having struggled through a sleepless night.
“Matt, there are a lot of differences between you and the man next door.”
“I know. We talked about them yesterday.”
“More than that. He is a very nice man, but he’s not very educated. Smart enough, but nothing shining.” She pauses to see if I follow. My look is blank. “What I’m trying to say is that when he lost his body, he lost his best resource. That’s not true about you.” She pauses again and stares straight ahead. Her voice trembles, “I know you loved playing sports more than anything … you were so good at them. But Matt, you’re also a very bright boy. School has always come so easily. Do you know how lucky you are?”
“I guess so.” I feel anxious, like I’m being told that I will like brussels sprouts.
“Your mind is what matters now. You need to know this. Certain things are no longer options … playing professional sports, being a carpenter, a manual laborer. You know—things that depend on your body. The truth is, you wouldn’t have done these things anyway.” She turns and makes eye contact. “Do you know what I mean?”
“I think so.” What she’s saying feels important; I need to “get” it. I reach without fully understanding and simply accept. “I need to do well in school, right?”
“Yes, and concentrate on developing your mind.”
With this healing story, my mom offers a way to think about the rest of my life. I must move into my head and make my mind shine. Of course, this exactly matches what I want. My body feels foreign and full of pain. Things constantly go wrong with it, and it is even growing pubic hair without me. Being told that my future resides in my head, that it is my best resource, gives me permission to leave my body behind. I will move away from it and lead with my mind. That is what I will do.
Of course, none of this is exactly conscious. I do not suddenly decide, Okay, I am my mind and not my body. Instead, the drift is more subtle, slower. I pay more attention to my visitors, pay even more attention to the nurses. I let my body be turned from side to side; I do not participate. I stop listening to discomfort. I inwardly hold my breath and look outward, away from my body.
Take a moment to c
lench your jaw. Feel how this subtly separates the eyes, the gaze, the intent from the rest of the body. That is what I am doing. My body, especially my paralyzed body, continues to become an object. I judge it rather than connect to it. I leave it rather than feel it. This only deepens my sense of separation. It also gives me better access to anger and disgust. Both are effective ways “out” of body. Ask an anorexic.
I need anger. I need something, anything, because I am terrified. The screw above my right ear has become infected. The surrounding tissue burns and itches, but I shouldn’t have told anyone. Now they’re going to change it—remove the old screw, find another spot, and twist more metal into my skull. I am expecting a trip to an operating room, something to acknowledge what’s coming. But there is no need, I am told. The doctor will do it right in my room, right in my bed. This is not a memory that I want where I sleep, but I am not in charge of venue. I am given a dose of Valium and made to wait. When the doctor arrives, my mom has to leave. She cannot witness what lies ahead for her youngest child. She will return afterward to pick up the pieces.
I notice that the doctor is carrying a regular toolbox. “Is that what I think it is?” I ask.
“Sure is,” he replies with a smile. “See, it’s no big deal. We even use a plain old screwdriver, courtesy of good old Mr. Stanley.” He is trying to lighten the mood. It’s not working. What am I to do? Where will I go? My jaw tightens; an angry focus takes hold. I’m leaving. I lose track of his words as I work to move somewhere else. He is at the side of my head. Warmth begins to touch my ear.
Waking Page 6
