Healing and Hurting Have a Similar Feel

I had a bad morning last week.  You know how it goes: you woke up late, so then are running late, only to realize you forgot something, and all along are in a terrible mood.

Oh, and the other added layer of life I deal with here and there: weird nervous system stuff going bizzaro-bezerk.  Its like a combination of icy-hot directly on your muscles, heaviness turned lightness turned numbness every half second,  mini-pains with pleasantly tingling nerve bundles as random as a wackado Christmas light display.  Electric, dizzying, off-kilter.  Silent on the outside, fireworks gone bad on the inside.  Freaky.

These symptoms naturally trigger shear terror and then a multitude of coping mechanisms.  As I have healed through the years, though, I have begun to believe a soothing truth in these unpredictable episodes.  And that is this: nerves that are healing feel the same as nerves that are hurting.

Its true.  My symptoms confirm it, my MRIs prove it, my neurologist affirms it.  And it is just like my momma said, "There is a lot going on in your body right now and maybe that is what nerves rebuilding feels like." 

These sensations  that were a part of my every moment 7 years ago, are periodic freaky spells now.   Sometimes the sneak attacks are all the more triggering because of their infrequency.  But I have this belief that marches against it with light: healing and hurting can have a similar feel.

I Still Baby My Right Side

I have been writing this blog mostly about my life change that happened seven years ago.  Mostly because, after years of surviving the ripple effect of this bomb (these bombs? and other associated land mines?) that dropped into my life, I find myself in a new place of acceptance.

And it was this week, that a spunky, loud spin instructor helped me along.  (She sold herself as a centered, peaceful, yoga-spin-combo spinner; I need to talk to her about her packaging.  Calm waters blue should not wrap a firecracker).

The music was thumping, but with a sitar in the mix, "Interesting..." I thought.  But I was down.  After all, my usual spin lady climaxes our workout with the Chili Peppers.

And we were off: legs spinning, heart pumping, breathing heavy.

"Lizzy!," she shouts, "Do you favor your right side?"
"What?"
"Do you favor your right side?  Do you have an injury on your right side?"

I mean, how do I answer this?  How?  Enter Lizzy A and Lizzy B.  Lizzy A speaks out loud.  Lizzy B uses lots of profanity, but keeps that to herself.

Lizzy A, "No, why? ... I mean, years ago, but..."
"Well, you are favoring your right side.  You are so young!  You are going to injure yourself.  Use your right side evenly."
Lizzy B, already as angry as a swatted hornet, "Um...okay.  Give me a f***ing second while I tell my body to please forget that it was HALF F***ING numb and took years to recover to where I am now.  And GOING to injure myself...going to..."  This is the mild version...
Lizzy A was honest, "I don't know how to fix that."
"Stick your right elbow out."   Lizzy A and Lizzy B, "Okay.  Thanks."
Mind you, the music is pounding and there is a workout class as our audience.

20 minutes later: "Lizzy!  Your right side!"
Lizzy A, "I'm trying!!!"  (My friend in the class laughed sympathetically - bless her).
Lizzy B, "And F*** you."  Lizzy A said this through her body language.

Some unearthed anger, much?  Yes.  And it says a lot of F-yous.  (Say an amen if grace sounds even sweeter). Thankfully, I have a filter that has functioned pretty well through these years of having a hidden handicap.  I know it is not HER fault.  It is my story still finding its voice.  And truthfully, this anger is mostly helpful, as it shows the places I have not yet healed.  If the F-bomb pops up, I know I've got something to move through.

And bless my spin instructor.  God bless her.  She really helped me; she saw me.  She saw even what I could not see: I still baby my right side.

Afterwards we talked for quite a while.  I shared bits of my story and she did hers too.  She has survived lymphoma: "It totally changed the way I did sit-ups."  Well, there you go.

My right side is sore this week and I am exhausted after my work outs.  Elbow out and this baby is growing up.  

7 Years Later: Chances

I've said it before and I will say it again (for the umpteenth time): If someone had said to me, "Lizzy, we would like to try a surgery where we cut off your head and reorganize some things in there.  It is an experimental procedure, with a 50% chance that it will reduce your dizziness and a 50% chance you will die," I would have said, "Sign me up."  The chance was worth the risk, in my little fantasy world created to describe the level of misery of my invisible injury.

So, I was actually happy to be back in the MRI machine that cold October day.  My symptoms were worsening and doing nothing was not an option.  I waited anxiously for the results from my neurologist.

The call came quickly, (in medical exam results sort of quickly), but strangely.  I expected the easy, monotone, Russian accented voice of my neurologist and instead I had heard the chipper, familiar, Minnesota-esk voice of my primary care doctor.

"Lizzy, it's John.  So - I got the results of the MRI.  The good news is that the lesion in your brain is healing quite nicely...  The other part, though, is that there seems to be a mass on your thyroid..."  The next day at John's office, "So, most masses in the thyroid are benign nodules, but some are cancerous.  There is roughly a 10% chance that it is the latter.  But who wants to walk around with a 10% chance of having cancer when we can know if it is or not..."

Good point.  Is this the point where he suggests that they cut off my head?, she thinks sarcastically.  (Your thyroid is in your neck, by the way).

7 Years Later: The Days of Darkness

I am not sure when I labeled this season of my life that I am writing about "The Days of Darkness," but the word picture stuck for its succinctness and fullness.  Thank goodness for Mexico, that Pocket of Hope in the black hole of the coming days and months.

Shall we bullet point through September into October?  That will make it a little more bearable:
- Return from Mexico and begin injectable medication.  Mistake liver failure for the "flu-like" symptoms that said injectable medications have as normal side-effects.  Stop injecting myself to let my liver heal.  Catastrophic liver failure averted.
- Right foot drops.  Meaning, my right lower leg stops working; Lizzy limping around.  Motor functioning lost.  (Let us rejoice when we tell our bodies to do something and it does it).  Crazy dizziness sets in; crazy.  "This is not right.  This would be a crazy fast progression of MS..."  Crazy: with great speed and recklessness.
- Lots of tests: peripheral nerve test (featuring electricity shots directly in the nerve), spinal tap (starring a needle the size of a pencil being stuck into the bodies nerve center), MRI, MRI, draw blood x20, brain wave test, shiney-lights-in-eye test (when you are upside down, left, right, and inside out).  You name the test, I had it.
- Lots of therapy: physical therapy (to learn to walk with a brace), vestibular therapy (to learn to walk a straight line), pruden-myo therapy (what the?), cranial sacral therapy, massage therapy, psychotherapy (for the creeping and crushing complication: depression).  There was more, but you get the picture.

The picture: The Days of Darkness.  The absence or deficiency of light during the interval of (what should be) light between two successive nights.

7 Years Later: Just An Earthquake

The inner ear has miraculous functions.  One is the levitating function.  This is part of what cues your body to feel weightless when you free fall, that you should push harder with your legs on an incline, that tells you you're more secure when sitting.  It is instrumental in the music your body makes called movement.  In my orchestra, it was a violin out of tune and on a different sheet of music: screeching, out of sink, and wildly erratic.

While I was sitting, I would suddenly feel like a phantom was pushing my body back.  When I was walking on level ground, it would feel like the ground was suddenly falling, ...or rising quickly and unpredictably.  My body would react "as if" and with in milliseconds of my sympathetic nervous system going into hyperdrive, reason would catch me and I would realize we actually hadn't entered into an Escher drawing or the movie "Inception." ("Lizzy, you aren't really feeling like your falling because in a higher state of consciousness you are careening down an elevator shaft." Although I did not say this to myself at the time because the movie did not come out until just last year, right?)  I would ground myself against a wall, in a chair, or keep moving in a deliberate walk to scream reality at my body that was totally out of sync.  And then I would break out in a sweat.  (That is a lot of work "behind the scenes," eh?).

Puerto Escondido had an earthquake the first night we were there.  I was on my hands and knees pushing my suitcase under my bed.  It felt like the ground was rising.  When reason caught me, I fell to my knees and felt around at the ground to remind me it was still; it wasn't.  I panicked.  "HOLY CRAP!  Save me!"

I looked at my parents.  And caught their eyes.  They were panicked too.  They were panicked too!

"I think that was an earthquake!" said my dad, just a couple seconds later.

"Phew.  Really?  For real? ..., ... Alleluia!  It was just an earthquake."  The locals talked about it for days.

7 Years Later: Esperanza

My parents had one more idea for my six weeks of FMLA.  They were going to Puerto Escondido, Mexico for a week..."why not come along?"

She said in her head, "Well, lets see...ummm...I am half numb!, I need medical care, I can barely handle the thought of being by myself for two seconds, (ie- I am experiencing some serious trauma symptoms, Mom and Dad!), and you want me to fly to Mexico City and waaaaaaaay south from there by myself?...!!!...!!!"

"We think you can do it."  Three weeks after my life sentence had been issued: Hope.

You see, the night I came home from the hospital I instantaneously grieved the loss of my plan for my life: my story was supposed to climax with me living in some remote corner of the world, in love, spiritually full, offering health to the masses (including glorious rays of sunshine and a constant cool breeze).  I think I heaved out through loud sobs, "I will never live in Africa;" it was symbolic yet real and raw.  How can you refrigerate injectable meds with no electricity?  I sobbed, and sobbed.  Grieved and grieved.

And Kindness stepped in through my parents Faith.  "We will get you there; you just need to say yes." And with fear that I let eek out in a constant state of teariness, (I quickly learned this was a way for me to prevent unpredictable, explosive bursts of anxiety), I boarded a plane with a kiss from my grandparents in Denver, navigated Dallas with God holding my hand, hugged and clung on to (for dear life) Gustavo in Mexico City, and fell into the embrace of my parents in Puerto Escondido.

"I was soooooo worried about you," weeped my Mom.

"I made it," my tears said as they bid good bye.  Puerto Escondido is hot!, with a constant cool breeze.