Body Language

My body has a language: it sings in numbers and I am grateful to say that I can hear its song.

But first things first: I have been amiss in posting. Things fell apart and the center could not hold.

This anarchy has also been of my body's making. The humors flowed sluggishly; red stitched itself through the eyes; the eyelids proved unable to stay lifted long enough to let the eyes see; the balloon feet staggered, unbalanced; the heart raced to keep up and then slowed down, tired. All I wanted to do was to sink within and let my body have its way. My kidneys have failed, causing panic to shoot through an organic system that had taken its balance and well-being for granted. Undefined anxieties exploded and my mild distaste of needles loomed into a major phobia.

However, today, I am glad to report that the storm has been contained. My kidney disease has brought me many gifts and this entry goes out in acknowledgement of these gifts.

When I was younger, people teased me that I was not of this "modern" world, that I operated from some golden, pre-lapsarian past because of a predilection of seeing the world through romanticized glasses. I have never agreed with this; I am born in exactly the absolute correct age and I never had any pink prisms to filter the world's realities. This age suits me and I owe it my very life. Thanks to this wondrous age, even though my major organs have failed, I am aware of a feeling of undeniable well-being. I can enjoy my job, sustain a conversation, and savor a demi-tasse of coffee. Of late, I have even found the wherewithal to use earrings when I go out for dinner with family and friends.
Yes, these outings exhaust me once they are over; yes, I have muscle cramps that go on for days; yes, I have forgotten what it is like to sleep through the night; yes, my social life is seriously compromised. Even so, all this is nothing when I remember my body's desperate attempt to reach me to help it. I also remember my total inability to help.

Then, this age, this millenium came to my body's rescue and taught me to understand its language. I started dialysis, a miraculous process that helps my confused body to maintain balance, to come to terms with its condition. Patient experts taught me how to listen and talk with the flesh I inhabit.

I have always known that my body has an intelligence all its own, an intelligence that I have no understanding of, that I have been unable to access. But now, I have learned to balance my diet (the strictest kind) with the medications I have to take; I have learned to understand the relationship between daily weight, blood pressure, and the kind of dialysis solution (or dialysate) I use that night. I await my blood results with alacrity because that is how  my body speaks now. Last month, I celebrated my independence from Epogen shots and blood infusions to maintain my red blood cell count; my body actually beat anemia! A couple of weeks ago, my nephrologist congratulated me on controlling my phosphorous after months of trying to achieve the correct balance between including enough protein in my diet while avoiding phosphorous. It took almost a year of trials and failures to achieve the correct potassium numbers.

Every morning, when I take my blood pressure, record my weight, and finish my treatment, I am grateful for the ability to do so. Every evening, when I again take my blood pressure, record my weight, and begin my treatment, I am grateful for having lived the day. Yes, I do wish my life were easier, but more often than that, I am glad, so, so glad that it is as easy as it is!

The Geeta insists on the importance of making friends with oneself. The truth of this issue has been brought to me. I understand now that I need a lot of people and a lot of things, but all pale in comparison to how much I need to get along with my body. I am humbled by the incredible adaptability of my body, its admirable insistence on being my best friend, its stubborn loyalty in its refusal to abandon me, its ever-youthful willingness to accommodate new ways of replacing parts of itself, and at the risk of intense narcissism, I am so, so proud of being allowed to inhabit this wonderful machine that celebrates the spirit of being human with every breath it draws for me, with me.

I have learned to love my body with a completely different sort of appreciation and for that alone, if for nothing else, I wish to live forever with this body. There can be no gift greater than an aware life lived in a body that won't quit.

 

Derma

I have protection on my mind. Last week, I visited a dialysis center and it has brought the extraordinary quality of my skin to the fore. The nurse repeatedly emphasized the importance of keeping all infection away since I would have an open way in the body cavity. I nodded sagely in solemn agreement.

Later that day, I accidentally touched a hot kettle and the cat accidentally scratched me. My hand felt the accidents and as is my wont, I ignored them and went about my work. Today, I noticed the new, pale, unbroken skin beneath the little burned patch and the red angry scratch scar had healed over.

This is absolutely and totally incredible and magical! My skin is so perfect a protector to the rest of me, that my sensitive inner organs need no armor, no pelt, no spikes. The skin is alive, with an intelligence of its own and knows its job, which it pursues relentlessly, determined, it seems, to protect the rest of me beyond the foreseeable future. Protean in its nature, it changes its hues, shades, textures, and size to keep up with my changing body. A skin-less opening can spell so much disaster that a separate intelligence, diligence, and deliberation are constantly needed, and even then, it is only a matter of time when "human error" will lead to serious infections.

Previously, I have confessed my amazement at the miracle the body is, one's first and last home, one's best friend if only one would let it, whose betrayal leaves one broken in unimaginable ways. It must have indeed been a benevolent star that oversaw the evolving of multi-cellular mammals. And incredible as all other organs are, the skin is the one that gives us a face, expresses feelings, gives alerts to the rest of the body, like an interactive suit from a futuristic world.

Today, I m feeling a bit under weather (either a burst cyst or a pulled muscle, I cannot quite tell) and my skin envelops and comforts me better than any quilt can. It provides me further comfort, the kind only a friends-and-family photo album can. Instead of haunting my facebook for memories, I examine my arm, my leg, my face: here is the scar I got when I fell down the steps of my grandfather's house; that faint streak of paler shade is the medal of honor I received when I fell off my bike for the first time; that birthmark on my shoulder is the same I share with my daughter; this one I inherited from my mother; the wrinkles at the edges of my eyes are very much like the ones my father had, my favorite part of his smile.

How incredible that the connections I am always looking for, which bind me to the world I have trotted away from, are always with me; all I need is a mirror that speaks the truth!

The Journey Home: Un-willed

Finally, finally, the day has arrived: I am allowed to move into the new house whenever I want to, and I want to right now!

However.

Today has been a lesson in an uneasy, forced patience. I rushed home from work with images of moving in my unpacked boxes, my kitchen, the closets, even a few books, and hopefully the mattress, that I may at last, at last sleep there. I have been up since 4:30am in a frenzy of packing that is not really needed since I have not really unpacked. As I began lifting, pushing, lugging, pulling, I recognized that I would not be moving today: something has strained too hard in my back and I had to concede defeat.

Today, the sytem that betrays is within me; I have been betrayed by my own body, the primary house.

I have been forced into an inaction that refuses to negotiate with the large anxiety squatting in my throat. I await estimates, appointments that could help me cross the street. I sit supine, once again, unable.

I have heard of, read about incredible feats accomplished by a mere will to have it so. I wonder that my will is not propelled by a wind strong enough to cross this street. If the body is the first home, and it fails, where does one go to get a will strong enough to supercede the body's decisions?

I suppose it IS the mind that puzzles the will and makes cowards of us all: I know that once I do move, I will be faced with the gargantuan task of unpacking, something for which I have had reasons and excuses plenty to evade. What awaits me after I move is a great deal of sorting, building, more appointments, estimates, and the insurmountable charge for finding a place for all that must not be misplaced. I will spend most of my nerves and patience trying to hold on to myself as a feline war rages constantly, an inevitable accompaniment of changing living spaces while sharing life with cats, the plural deliberate.

Is that what my body is trying to remind me, as I watch all the cats busy with their individual meals in personally chosen corners? This truce among the cats has been expensively won. And it would be so much easier to chase the pain away with some ibuprofen, to lose anxiety in dreams of strategizing for better truces in better spaces, to easily solve all the heartache with the mind, since it seems to have all solutions. It would be so much easier to just internalize this landscape, get absolutely and irrevocably used to this not-mine space, with its boxes, the single book shelf, the slightly ashy mattress and the unassuming table, the bulk of all that must be moved.

The late evening rains beat urgently on the panes and doors, and the insistent wind weaves through the street that needs to be crossed. When I open the door to let the cats in, I see the new house waiting, its windows dark with night, all lamps doused, and I wonder what it must dream of, what truces it must resolve in its sleep.