brookwood

2004 - Charla and Tom stood at the end of my hospital bed. I felt rather tired and under accessorized. A day of steroids can do this to a girl. The white patterned cotton gown and drab bedclothes. The plain striped walls and pale pictures. The exhausted looking television in the corner of my vision. Tom and Charla appraised the damaged/damage and smiled. They knew that I would eventually be okay, no matter what. It had been quite a scare, indeed. I would make it. I would find my way. Tom handed me a copy of Modest Mouse's newest record. And as he and Charla said their good byes and departed, I slipped the cd into my discman and reclined.



...everyone's a building burning
with no one to put the fire out
standing at the window looking out
waiting for time to burn us down
everyone's an ocean drowning
with no one really to show how
they might get a little better air
tf they turned themselves into a cloud

from blame it on the tetons by modest mouse

golden mouthed moments

I didn't expect it to be like this. Not now. Not during my first quarter back at school. Not in the midst of huge promising projects at work. Not now. But with the stress of it all came this, burning and bending, bashing in all plans.

FOALS // SPANISH SAHARA from dave ma on Vimeo.

I am on the tenth day of my MS relaps-a-cation. I've started a second round of steroids. With my trusty aluminum cane and a pair of padded slippers, I've overcome biting foot pain and an unbalanced gait to get from room to room. And the rest of the time...I lie here on the futon and wait. I rest. And hour after hour passes by. The light creeps up and down the windowsill. The snow keeps melting on the lawn, all traces of winter storms disappearing. And slowly, in their own achingly quiet way, my symptoms have started to melt away as well. Yes. I know it's going to take some time. Even so, I can feel strength returning and the smile returning to my face.

corrosion/colors

I climbed onto the table and stretched out, turning my gaze for a moment as I lay down, glancing lightly and quietly at the huge plastic and metal circular mouth of the MRI machine. My head came to rest upon a small pillow. The radiologist placed a frame over my head and locked it into place. I smiled up at her. "Woman in the iron mask," I nervously joked, staring up at the small mirror attached to the frame. My nose stared back, attached to a smile, attached to my eyes, my crinkled worry-worn forehead, attached to my face. The mirror was tilted strangely. It was supposed to reflect the radiologist's booth outside of the MRI room. It's purpose was to make the patient feel like they were not trapped inside a large magnetic machine, that the patient was still connected to the outside world. I kept staring at the reflection of my nose and thinking, "That is my nose. I like my nose. It's kind of pretty." As I thought these thoughts and kept quite still, the radiologist rolled me back into the machine, and then her voice came over the loudspeaker. "This should take about two hours. We'll take a break towards the end to do the injection. The first scan will be five and a half minutes." I closed my eyes. My breath became a slow rhythmic timer, my only companion. Charged little clicks and whirs resounded, then the pulsating, unending, staccato-ed "BUUURRRR" of the machine.



Give me this new lovely season. Give me cold air and cars rushing by. The leaves will start to turn. We'll sit on our porch in the crisp autumn evenings, smoking cigarettes and singing, squinting and smiling at the people walking past.

"i cross the line
and see a face that can’t be mine
through a long long night
to find a place where we all thrive
where every frail thing can survive
where we can live this dream of life..."

from handkerchiefs by the Winterpills

limitation

Gold and cream floral bedspread, darkened to a light brown by low blinds. The stiff and fuzzy arm of Theodore Ethan Bear across my face and the scent of Dreft detergent. The smell of soapy warm water and the clank of pots and the clink of dishes and the shadowed leaves peeking in, then waving from the window across the apartment. My gaze rests for a moment upon the leaves' dark forms, a grayish green with strangely bright edges. I lay on the bed with intentions to rest, turning, wanting to read, wanting to get up, wanting to...

"I don't want to have any limitations." I look up, pouting.

Jim the James smiles down at me, a warm smile, a momentary mocking grin passing quickly across his handsome face, warm again. "You spoiled brat. Everyone has limitations."

I thought, I once thought, I believed that I was superhuman. This is the thought of youth, unending emotion, unending energy, never ending life. As we walked up the steps from the park today and I gripped the railing for support, for balance and strength underneath my heavy feet, my heart dropped remembering a day when I could have skipped up those stairs with a smile and without a care.

"You must have patience. It's been a really tough summer. When it gets a little cooler, you can exercise, build up your strength again. Be patient. You'll be okay."

We spend the evening on the porch, then on the futon, listening to Grant Lee Buffalo and Will Johnson, being patient, being quiet, sharing space and love and warmth.

Thursday - yadsruhT

She turned to me, swathed in white blanket, her greyish-white, tossled, sleepy-haired head tilted to the side with a questioning glance. She looked up at Shannon. His brown eyes gazed down in a smile. "Don't you worry 'bout her, Ma'm. Sara's just been misbehaving today. That's why she's back here. Now you come along with me." He pulled her into the next room, out of my line of sight. She sighed a worried sound, one corner of her mouth turned up, the other down, as her gurney disappeared through the doorway. I pulled my warm, sterile blanket up around my chin, then up to my ears, inhaled and closed my eyes. When I opened them, I was staring at the ceiling, the florescent lights shaded by in intricate grate I'd not expected in this ancient department of the hospital. One row of big circles one row of small, one of big, one of small, and so forth, creating this beautiful, dizzying, dim pattern. The MRI tech pulled me into the next room. He helped me off of my stretcher and onto the little pallet. He handed me a pair of earplugs. I slowly laid back as he fasted the frame around my head and tucked the blanket around my feet. As the pallet sowly moved backward, my eyes followed the two lines of light above my head, in front of my face. Light blue, restful. My right hand, tense and apprehensive, finally calm. I closed my eyes as the familiar clicks began. I couldn't help but think, drifting in and out of the harsh sounds of the MRI, thebuzzbuzzbuzz, clickclick, buzzbuzzbuzzbuzz, how these uneven rhythms had a place somewhere, in a distortion art noise project by Lance, in the back corner of a Vanderslice song, in rolling of my everyday...everything.

They would find nothing. No new lesions, all clear. The pain would be ruled a muscle strain.



Tonight we will all sleep soundly. I will dream with a curling happy brow. I know now that all I need is rest. All I can think of now, beyond everything else, beyond any pain or discomfort is that in truth, I'm okay. Three years in remission and many more to come.

On Tuesday, the girls and I will pack up Ella, my Honda, and depart on our greatest adventure. SXSW. I can't even begin to tell you how ecstatic I am at this moment.

I'm really happy right now.

Amber and Will. Thanks for the chocolate milk and the cadbury eggs you brought to the ER. They made this little victory that much sweeter.