Auto-immune Disorder. The body, paranoid, lashes out at itself. So many possible symptoms, even the doctors can't predict what she will suffer.
Better. Everyone tells her, A day or two, you'll feel better. After a while they no longer say it. She can feel their impatience; we are all supposed to get better in a day or two. Take medicine, rest, get on with your life--everyone wants to believe this will work. The alternative terrifies. She knows she has betrayed them. If they have to believe in her illness, she will rob them of their own safety.
Clinic. White walls and coats and faces. The sick smell you can almost hear. On one wall, an X-ray of a hand, the fingers splayed wide. She lays her hand on top of it. If you look closely you can see an outline of muscle and skin outside the bones. So faint, it's hardly there, as though dressing up these bodies, we're all just kidding ourselves.
Darkness makes the body invisible. Before the illness she often woke late at night, and lay alone in bed as though floating in a tiny boat, adrift on an endless sea. She didn't acknowledge her body at those times but felt herself, as in the Tibetan Book of the Dead she studied in college, a pure and spotless intellect .
Endoscopy . Endocet. Effexor. Elmiron.
Fentanyl Citrate , transmucosal delivery.
Friends ask her to dinner. She says no so many times that finally they show up at her apartment, demand she come out with them, "shake off the dust." Five pairs of eyes on her. The restaurants have nothing she can eat but she eats anyway and then spends the night on her balcony, wrapped in a quilt and shivering. Wrestling down the nausea which rises up in nightmare waves. Whispering it's okay, it's okay.
Gastro-Esophageal Reflux Disease . Guilt. Grey hair at twenty-five.
Hypnotherapy. Imagine pushing a shopping cart up a steep hill. Fill the cart with heavy boxes, labeled with your symptoms. Feel how hard it is to push the cart, laden with boxes full of pain. At the top of the hill is a well. Drop the boxes in, one by one and listen to them splash. Nausea, splash. Exhaustion, splash. Knifelike pain. Splash. Splash. Splash.
Interstitial Cystitis. In this body she is trapped, a cat clawing inside a box.
Jealousy. She watches the TV on mute. Men and women play beach volleyball in a commercial for beer. Healthy bodies, golden and mocha, taut as the skin of ripe peaches.
K --on the periodic table, the symbol for Potassium. This, her doctor says, is what her body is "reabsorbing." Causing pain. She wonders if she should avoid bananas but forgets to ask.
Lactose intolerance . Cut out dairy. Caffeine. Alcohol. Grease. Red meat.
Mint tea. Melatonin.
Moon -- a Tarot card. The fortune teller, Mama Cara, turns it over with a gaunt, silver-ringed hand. The card is upside down. "The negative aspect of the moon," Cara says. She looks pleased. "Means you worry too much, worry all the time. You all about fear right now, girl. What are you so scared of?"
Neurontin . Naproxen. Nexium.
Oxycontin . The one in all the papers. But her doctor says if you take it for pain you don't get high. She swallows and it's true, no high except the delirium that comes with the absence of pain. No high, but what no one knows is, if she knew she'd be a junkie, she'd still take it. Pain turns you into a howling animal; you don't worry about details.
Pain leaves an echo behind, though. Even when it's gone she can feel it lurking, a vague humming glow. She knows if she concentrates on it too long it will bloom into red.
Pain Clinic . Waiting room full of people in wheelchairs. People with canes. She is the youngest there by at least twenty years. Mostly back pain, her doctor tells her, but there are a few others like her. Those for whom pain is mystery, its origin somewhere in the dark network of muscle, bone and vein. Somewhere, but no one can find it.
Questions her friends have asked her:
When are you going to get off those drugs?
This one just saw an episode of "Dateline" about prescription drug abuse.
Are you high all the time? Are you high right now?
This one possibly wants her to offer him one of her pills.
Why don't you try meditation, or yoga, or aromatherapy? Biofeedback?
This one's aunt eats Valium for breakfast, ever since her husband ran away.
Aren't you feeling any better yet?
Reiki. A laying on of hands, but not in the tent-revival sense. She tries it because her best friend sees it on Oprah and won't let it go. Reiki lady's office is dim and patchouli-scented. Reiki lady sits her down and walks around her, making motions in the air, as if she is too hot to touch. "I'm feeling a lot of static," she says. This costs $55.
Sekhmet. Egyptian cat goddess of healing. In the museum she has her lover take a picture of her at the feet of the bright blue-painted statue--kneeling, palms up.
Sex. After a long time she puts makeup on again. There's a man. And an unexpected gift of the illness. She listens to her body now, and more than before she knows what it wants.
Tofutti Cuties brand Soy Ice Cream Sandwiches . The day she finds these is a red letter day. To find pleasure in eating is like finding a hundred dollar bill in the street.
Ups and downs , her mother says on the phone. Life is full of them. You'll feel better soon. Just ride it out. This is vital for mothers; they have to tell their children that everything will be all right. She tells her mother, I know.
Visceral Pain. Associated with increased prefrontal cortex activation in the brain.
Weight gain. Weight loss. Etc.
Whales. With her lover, she goes whale watching. In a silver spray of water, the huge shapes heave themselves out of the sea. Their skin shines like glass around deep scars, grooves in their skin. And barnacles, crusty grey and white. She would like to touch that beautiful marred skin. Not smooth, like she had always thought, like the trained ones in tanks. Not smooth at all.