Diagnosis (2010)
I like my doctor because when I say “ennui,” she understands. This was my answer to her annual question --- “How’ve you been feeling since I last saw you?” --- and I summed up the state of my health as … pause… ennui. We both laughed, such a great word, on-wee. We talked then about health and hope and their relationship, so by the time I left her office she (and I) had justified the aches, the fatigue, the anger, the “down” feeling as appropriate symptoms of being alive.
And so another year passes. The word at next week’s appointment will be simple: pain. But where should I begin, at the head going down or at the feet going up? I’ll make a list: left derriere radiating down the leg, the constant jaw and temple pain, the “hot” spots in the tissue of neck and knee, is that it?
All this is beside the point. What I want to tell you is something that, depending on when and where you grew up, you may not believe. But I promise, it’s true. In the late 1950s, in the south, we kids would run and play behind the fog truck. For fun. A lot. And the fog truck’s job was to kill mosquito larvae, and the fog was, of course, DDT. In my neighborhood we ran behind the truck, arms outstretched in front, stumbling around in the thick white cloud. Ray says he and his buddies rode their bikes through it, following the slow-moving truck through town. Nobody thought anything about it, except that it was great fun.
Emily C. played in the fog in her pyjamas. Larry W. remembers playing war in the front yard and falling backward, pretend-shot, into the grass; a poof of white dust would come up, and he’ll never forget the sweet smell. Yes, the smell, we all remember it. Karen O. tells about her parents sitting on the front porch smoking cigarettes and calling to her and her siblings, Kids, the fog truck’s coming, so they wouldn’t miss an opportunity to get cancer. We laugh, but is it really funny?
A few years ago, remembering all this, I told my doc about the fog truck and asked her to write it in my medical records. I insisted the next year, too, and will again every time I see her. What a ripe subject for some researcher at the CDC: a whole generation of southerners inhaled poison, over and over, for fun!
Ray has neuropathy, among other complaints, and the sensory nerves in his feet and legs (and now hands, and soon arms) are dead, kaput. Once when he was hooked up to a machine that measures nerve response, the neurologist actually checked to see if the machine was plugged in! And then there are the headaches and the vertigo. As for me, there is the 20-year history of fibromyalgia, the mysterious inflammatory episodes, the crushing fatigue, and the pain, the pain, the pain. The doctors tell us that various numbers are off but the tests are never conclusive. They say that nothing can be done. They repeat the words syndrome and idiopathic, and they scratch their heads.
Ray and I don’t really think we know better than the experts, but whenever something flares up, we give each other a certain look and whisper it: fog truck.
And so another year passes. The word at next week’s appointment will be simple: pain. But where should I begin, at the head going down or at the feet going up? I’ll make a list: left derriere radiating down the leg, the constant jaw and temple pain, the “hot” spots in the tissue of neck and knee, is that it?
All this is beside the point. What I want to tell you is something that, depending on when and where you grew up, you may not believe. But I promise, it’s true. In the late 1950s, in the south, we kids would run and play behind the fog truck. For fun. A lot. And the fog truck’s job was to kill mosquito larvae, and the fog was, of course, DDT. In my neighborhood we ran behind the truck, arms outstretched in front, stumbling around in the thick white cloud. Ray says he and his buddies rode their bikes through it, following the slow-moving truck through town. Nobody thought anything about it, except that it was great fun.
Emily C. played in the fog in her pyjamas. Larry W. remembers playing war in the front yard and falling backward, pretend-shot, into the grass; a poof of white dust would come up, and he’ll never forget the sweet smell. Yes, the smell, we all remember it. Karen O. tells about her parents sitting on the front porch smoking cigarettes and calling to her and her siblings, Kids, the fog truck’s coming, so they wouldn’t miss an opportunity to get cancer. We laugh, but is it really funny?
A few years ago, remembering all this, I told my doc about the fog truck and asked her to write it in my medical records. I insisted the next year, too, and will again every time I see her. What a ripe subject for some researcher at the CDC: a whole generation of southerners inhaled poison, over and over, for fun!
Ray has neuropathy, among other complaints, and the sensory nerves in his feet and legs (and now hands, and soon arms) are dead, kaput. Once when he was hooked up to a machine that measures nerve response, the neurologist actually checked to see if the machine was plugged in! And then there are the headaches and the vertigo. As for me, there is the 20-year history of fibromyalgia, the mysterious inflammatory episodes, the crushing fatigue, and the pain, the pain, the pain. The doctors tell us that various numbers are off but the tests are never conclusive. They say that nothing can be done. They repeat the words syndrome and idiopathic, and they scratch their heads.
Ray and I don’t really think we know better than the experts, but whenever something flares up, we give each other a certain look and whisper it: fog truck.
Whenever I have a particularly bad day, when I feel like I must be dying, I go back through my journals and find these notes: written in 1987! One simply said, "I feel like my body is a metaphor for the dying Earth." These don't make me feel better or lessen the pain, but so many years later they remind me that this is how my particular --- and blessed, and appreciated --- "living" sometimes feel likes, and that there will always be better days, better months, and --- count them ---DECADES.
