by Tao Lin
He couldn’t sleep. He felt uncomfortable from lying on his left side for too long. He began the arduous process of rolling over without triggering excruciating pain. Supine had stopped being a good position. He made it onto his right side after what felt like fifteen minutes. Only his face, arms, and below his knees seemed uninflamed.
Until that year, reluctant to think about it, he’d reductively viewed his nearly full-body pain as “hip and back pain” or “back pain.” Was it a muscle, bone, tendon, nerve, brain, and/or mind problem? Why did it change sides sometimes?
* * *
—
Four days later, at Li’s fourth massage, 21 held and talked into his phone while massaging Li with one hand. When he got off the phone, he said he was starting work at a different parlor soon, so was calling his clients to inform them of the change.
* * *
—
That night, when Li’s mom was on her nightly walk, Li entered the TV room. Taiwan’s new president, the first female leader of a Chinese-speaking country except for Wu Zetian 1,350 years earlier, was giving her acceptance speech.
“Mom hates this one,” said Li’s dad. “Female. Why does she hate another female?”
“Don’t say that,” said Li. “Mom already said she doesn’t hate her.”
“She does. She’s always criticizing her.”
“Then say she criticizes, not hates,” said Li, who didn’t understand Taiwanese politics or history. Years later, he’d learn that Taiwan had been part of the mainland until rising waters islanded it around twelve thousand years ago. His ancestors had arrived there from China sometime after China claimed the island in 1683. In 1949, the losing side in the Chinese Civil War, called KMT, retreated to Taiwan and ruled authoritarianly, under martial law, until the eighties, when the DPP emerged. The new president was DPP.
“I hate someone else,” said Li’s dad. “Mom hates this one.”
“Don’t say that. You know it makes her unhappy. Don’t say that when she’s here.”
“I can say it when she’s not here?” said Li’s dad, grinning.
“You say it every time the president is on TV,” said Li. “Stop saying it.”
He went into the kitchen to make fermented beet water. Weeks earlier, he’d introduced beet kvass and apple cider vinegar to his mom to replace Nexium for relieving acid reflux.
“Tell Mom to let me hug her,” said Li’s dad, miming hugging.
Li put beet pieces, sea salt, and mineral water into a glass jar.
“Whenever I go to hug Du—hug Mom, she doesn’t let me,” said Li’s dad. “That’s not good.”
It was the first time Li had heard his dad confuse his mom and Dudu.
* * *
—
Later that night, Li stood in the kitchen stirring brown rice, which he was fermenting to decrease its phytic acid, an enzyme-inhibiting chelator, and increase its GABA, an antidepressant neurotransmitter.
The kinetic oven, which Li’s mom had gotten to replace the microwave, dinged. Li removed almonds and walnuts, which he’d baked with ghee for his dad to bring to China. His dad was going to China the next morning for the third time that year.
“Your own son made you nuts,” said Li’s mom. “Are you moved?”
“Yes,” said Li’s dad in large dark glasses, testing beeping, flashing lasers.
“And fish oil and chlorella,” said Li, putting capsules and tablets in a plastic bag.
* * *
—
Eating lunch with his mom the next day, Li said he was stopping massage because the parlor contained toxic fumes and because 21 had used his phone while massaging him.
“Aiyah,” said Li’s mom, shaking her head and glaring. “He should not do that.”
“He’s very busy,” said Li.
Li’s mom said Thin Uncle’s back had once hurt so much that he could only crawl; after six months at a physical rehabilitation center, he was pain-free.
Li didn’t respond. He’d heard the story three times that year. It seemed designed to passive-aggressively get him to go to the rehab center.
“Have you tried the heat pad?”
“No,” said Li, frowning.
“Why don’t you try wearing it to sleep?”
“Because I feel it’s dangerous to do that and because I switch sides a lot at night and I don’t think it will help.”
“Then don’t use it,” said Li’s mom.
“I found a chiropractor online. Can you make an appointment for me?”
Ankylosing
The next day, Li woke at around noon to his mom outside his room saying she’d made a 3:30 p.m. chiropractor appointment and was going to the bank to wire money to Li’s dad’s employee.
“I’m sleeping more,” said Li quietly.
“I’m leaving,” said Li’s mom from the apartment’s front door.
“I’m sleeping,” mumbled Li inaudibly.
“I’m leaving,” said Li’s mom a minute later.
“Mom,” said Li. “I’m sleeping. Let me sleep.”
Two hours later, he moved bathroomward slower than ever, feeling vaguely humored by his decrepitude. He had to move delicately, with vigilant restraint, to avoid stabbing pain that seemed capable of making him spasm and fall.
He left the apartment in a stiff limp, cringing from body-control focus. He couldn’t turn his neck or bend forward. He rode two trains and four escalators and saw his mom, smiling and waving.
The chiropractor was a large American man who’d lived in Taiwan for thirty-seven years. Li told him about his parents’ mercury fillings. The chiropractor had also gotten his fillings replaced in Taiwan.
Li got X-rayed. The chiropractor said he and Li both had six lumbar vertebrae instead of five, making their spines sensitive. He said Li’s coccygeal vertebrae were crooked, his right leg was shorter than his left leg, his bottom vertebrae were thinner in back than in front and were fusing to his sacrum, and that he should get a custom sole.
Li agreed to visit the chiropractor thrice a week, then lay prone on a machine that mechanically stretched his back, giving pain a wavy, cyclic quality.
The chiropractor pushed Li’s skeleton, producing cracking noises. He made molds of Li’s feet, told him to drink three liters of mineral water a day, said Taiwanese masseuses used too much force, and recommended tai chi.
Outside, Li told his mom that in 2007 he’d seen a doctor about his pain who’d also said his legs were different lengths. Instead of buying an expensive custom sole, he’d padded his right shoe with paper towels and toilet paper for eight years, until switching to shoes with minimal soles the previous year.
* * *
—
That night, Li’s dad called from China. Li’s mom handed her phone to Li, who told his dad about the chiropractor and returned the phone to his mom, who said, “Okay, talk to Du a little more, say bye.”
Li’s dad asked Dudu about her day, then he and Li’s mom talked leisurely for a while. Their small talk moved Li, who’d recently felt more compassion toward his dad by considering how he seemed to have no friends. He only talked to Li’s mom, Li, Dudu, his employees, people he saw on walks, and, rarely and formally, his two sisters.
In bed, Li thought about chronic illness, which was worst in the States and rising globally. Maybe health problems would end U.S. domination, weakening the country into a new kind of partnership society—a meek, in-turned place of diseased people caring for one another—and also, eventually, history.
Humans everywhere were being nudged and shoved and pulled and lured away from matter, toward the increasingly friendlier dimension of the imagination—away from inflamed, deformed, poisoned bodies and the ad-covered, polluted outdoors, into beds, books, computers, fantasies, dreams, memories, and art.
* * *
—
>
On a walk the next day, as Li and his mom approached a turn, she said it seemed like Li’s pain went away—he seemed to walk a little faster—whenever they got there.
“It doesn’t get better here,” said Li, surprised by the flighty logic, which he sensed could, layering with his own uncertain attributions, lead to hopeless levels of confusion.
“No?” said Li’s mom.
“No. Why would it?”
“I don’t know,” said Li’s mom.
“You shouldn’t track my pain.”
“I’m not. I’m just talking.”
“It’s not good to track my pain.”
“I’m not,” said Li’s mom, and told the story of Li running into a table when he was two. She’d asked him if it hurt a lot. He’d said it hurt “just right”—not too much, not too little.
“It’s very hard to talk,” said Li.
“You’re very good at talking,” said Li’s mom.
“No,” said Li.
“Articulate and eloquent,” said Li’s mom in English.
“No,” said Li. “You’re thinking about my writing.”
* * *
—
Entering the kitchen very stoned that night, Li snickered, realizing his mom couldn’t hear his approach.
“What’s funny?” she said.
Li said he felt like a ninja. He put fermented kohlrabi on top of fermented rice and returned to his room.
* * *
—
At the chiropractor’s office the next day, Li lay prone on the traction machine. The chiropractor used something resembling a handheld vacuum on his back, seeming to electrically stimulate it, then hastily passed a rumbling, blow-dryer-like machine over his body and limbs, then pushed his skeleton in various places, then taught him a leg stretch and asked if his pain had decreased.
“No,” said Li.
“Did you drink three liters of mineral water a day?”
“No.” It hadn’t seemed sensible. He would’ve had to pee probably six to ten times per night. It took twenty minutes sometimes to get out of bed and up to an hour to nestle back into positions where pain settled into a sleepable ache.
* * *
—
“Did the chiropractor do the same things as last time?” said Li’s mom at dinner.
“Yes,” said Li.
“Nothing new?”
“No,” said Li.
“Then he makes easy money,” said Li’s mom.
“If he hasn’t helped me by the time the sole comes, I can stop going.”
Li’s mom suggested seeing a Chinese medicine doctor.
“They’ll want to give me drugs,” said Li.
“They don’t use drugs. They use Chinese medicine—goji berries, ginseng root, things like that.”
“That’s good,” said Li, dimly surprised he’d forgotten what Chinese medicine was. “I want to see a Chinese medicine doctor. Wasn’t your dad a Chinese medicine doctor?”
“Yes,” said Li’s mom, whose dad had died when Li was five. She and Li had flown to Taiwan for the funeral. A big black butterfly had landed on the coffin above her dad’s head and died there.
“Why are you smiling?” said Li’s mom.
“I like seeing doctors,” said Li. “It’s good for my novel.” He’d gotten increasingly interested in what seemed to be his new, simpler life. He’d imagined staying in Taiwan indefinitely, supported by and supporting his parents, tripping in bed, seeing healthcare professionals, abandoning his novel and nonfiction book for stories and poems—forms more suited to chronic pain, with which he could write for only an hour or two a day. The prospect had calmed and sometimes excited him.
“You look very handsome when you smile,” said Li’s mom.
News was reporting that a ceiling at the airport had caved in. There’d been no injuries.
“Don’t let the chiropractor touch your neck,” said Li’s mom. “I had a classmate who was paralyzed by a chiropractor. You should never let any type of doctor touch your neck.”
Li said he didn’t think that was a good rule, but that he’d follow it so that she wouldn’t worry.
* * *
—
“Who cured Thin Uncle’s back?” Li asked his mom the next morning, mnemonically muddled by pain. “A Chinese medicine doctor?”
“No,” she said. “The physical rehabilitation center.”
An hour later, he held her arm for support as they rode the elevator and went outside to wait for a cab to take them to the rehab center.
It was raining. They stood under an umbrella.
“Even though I can barely move, I don’t feel depressed,” said Li, with “depressed” in English.
“Why?” said Li’s mom.
Li said due to his GABA-enhanced rice and to eating a lot of fermented vegetables, which contained microbes that made serotonin, melatonin, B vitamins, and other calming compounds.
Li’s mom shared a Chinese saying—the chronically ill become their own doctors.
* * *
—
At the rehab center, a doctor examined the chiropractor’s X-rays of Li’s spine. He asked if Li felt stiffest in the morning. He did. The doctor said he might have “ankylosing spondylitis,” which Li and his mom hadn’t heard of before.
“I’ll inject him with steroids, then,” said the doctor.
“He doesn’t want shots,” said Li’s mom.
“Then what does he want?”
“The other therapies,” said Li’s mom.
“The electricity and heat lamp,” said the doctor.
“Right,” said Li’s mom.
As the doctor began to leave, Li asked if his legs were different lengths. He and his mom had agreed it was wise to wait until the ends of visits before asking questions.
The doctor looked at the X-rays again, then at Li’s feet. He said Li’s left foot was flat and that the length difference was due to standing askew during X-rays due to pain.
Li sat backward in a chair with a lamp at his hip and electrodes on his back, researching ankylosing spondylitis on his phone.
Wikipedia, which aggregated the mainstream, said it was a progressively worsening, whole-body arthritis with long-term inflammation of the spine. It caused chest constriction, lung fibrosis, and a hunched back. In advanced stages, ascending vertebral fusion could form an immobile column called “bamboo spine.”
* * *
—
“Maybe I do have AS,” said Li at dinner that night. It would explain why his pain was unpredictable and mobile and why yoga, inversion, massage, etc. hadn’t helped.
Li’s mom praised the rehab doctor for knowing of AS, which affected around 1 in 130 people. Li said they’d also believed the chiropractor. He imagined seeing another healthcare professional and changing their minds again.
After dinner, plateauing on cannabis, he brought the apartment’s cordless landline into the bathroom. Recording a voice memo with his phone, he dialed the chiropractor on the landline.
“Hello?” said the chiropractor.
“Hello?” said Li.
“Hello?”
“Hi,” said Li in English. “It’s Li? One of your patients?”
“Hi! How are you?”
“Good. How are you?”
“I’m okay,” said the chiropractor.
“I’m calling to…cancel Friday’s appointment?”
“Okay,” said the chiropractor.
“Because my mom and I decided we’re going to try a more affordable thing, that we found, first?” The rehab center was the equivalent of six dollars a visit; the chiropractor was sixty times as much. Just the sole cost three hundred dollars.
“Okay,” said the chiropractor.
“And if you could call us when the
orthopedic comes in.”
“When the orthotics come in.”
“Okay?” said Li.
The chiropractor was silent.
“Okay,” said Li. “Thank you.”
“Well, good luck to you. I don’t think you’ll get anything better than what I can provide, but that’s your choice. I’ll call you as soon as your foot orthotics are in.”
“Thank you,” said Li.
“Bye-bye.”
“Bye.” Li entered the kitchen grinning uncontrollably. He told his mom what happened, then went to the bathroom, looked in the mirror, and laughed more than he had in months.
* * *
—
In the morning, he felt like settling concrete from the neck down. He tingled with mind-distorting, vaguely psychedelic pain, like a mutant with superpowers gone wrong. After his parents left for a walk, he doddered rigidly toward the bathroom, propping himself against the walls with his arms and hands, feeling sometimes like he was lost or demented.
At the rehab center, he read that a symptom of AS was “alternating buttock pain” and that people with AS died early from strokes and heart attacks. Wikipedia, WebMD, and other front-page results on Google—which Li would supplant years later with DuckDuckGo after reading that Google censored, shadowbanned, and blacklisted natural health sites because its parent corporation since 2015, Alphabet, had ties to pharmaceutical corporations—said it was incurable and had no known cause and that three treatments existed for slowing the deterioration: synthetic drugs, surgery, exercise.
In his room, clicking past the corporate near-internet, Li found articles and videos in which people with AS, doctors, and researchers said the disease could be relieved and/or cured by healing one’s gut. He found KickAS.org, a site based on the work of immunologist Alan Ebringer, who had recognized AS as a form of rheumatoid arthritis—an autoimmune disease with microbial factors—and begun to test dietary treatments in 1982. The main advice seemed to be to avoid starches and certain other foods, which one had to identify through experimentation.
