I’m Thinking, But Nothing’s Happening

 

I’m thinking it is pretty pathetic to feel as if one has said all one has to say about everything, but that’s how I feel. 

My writing get up and go got up and went about two weeks ago.  I refuse to believe it has anything to do with recent medical issues.  Those kinds of things usually tweak the urge to write.  It did for a minute, but now…

Not even SCOTUS and its current activities have gotten my fingers itching to attack a keyboard.  Not even all the disgusting and demoralizing incidents of children shooting infants in the face and kidnappings of young girls have lifted the malaise in my head.

I’m thinking it must have something to do with the protracted demise of Open Salon and the slow traction Our Salon has experienced.  There was a time when I’d wake myself up in the morning with an idea for a blog post that half-wrote itself while I slept.  Of course that was mostly back when all the veterans were still there and I was busy building a readership.  A new commenter showing up on a comment thread was incentive enough to get the words to flow.

I miss that so much.  I miss the connection to so many people who have gradually disconnected.  I miss the excitement of having one of my posts selected by the editor.  I miss the different points of view on some of my more controversial pieces, even the ones that stood the hairs on the back of my neck on end.

The flame wars and dustups were monumental.  I seldom participate in them because they are counterproductive, but from time to time I would lurk on the edges and watch.  Oh, the variety of ways there were to tell someone that they are full of shit!  It could be downright entertaining.  Or upsetting.

Remember all the creative open calls?  One-hundred-word challenges.  Letters to our 17-year-old selves.  I even dabbled in fiction in response to an invitation to do so, and I’m not that into writing fiction. 

My mother has a favorite response to everything:  This too shall pass.

Really?

I’m thinking that might not work this time.

Falling Into Place

 

I woke up this morning feeling groggy and seriously unmotivated, but I had made a commitment for 10 a.m., and a commitment for me is like an Eleventh Commandment.

It only took the party in my mouth that toothpaste creates to perk me up.  Even the ever-present headache I felt when I first woke up was on its way back into hiding. 

A sudden burst of energy precipitated a flurry  of loading and unloading the laundry machines, folding and hanging clean clothes, dusting the bedroom furniture and getting dressed far ahead of schedule.  I was downright perky.

I grabbed my cell phone,my laptop and the plate from my bedtime snack and called Coqui, who was also a bit groggy today.  I took the first five steps down to the first floor of my townhouse with a lot of pep in my step.  This felt like a great day coming up.

Out of nowhere came a dizziness so sudden it literally sat me on my behind.  I kept trying to grab for the railing but felt as if I was spinning too fast to get a grip.  Everything in my line of vision was undulating and spinning with simultaneous nauseating speed.  The plate went bouncing down the stairs along with the dog, who was oblivious to my vertiginous state. I was conscious of the laptop tucked under my free arm – the one I bought only seven days ago – but I wasn’t at all sure I was going to be able to prevent it from joining Coqui and the plate.

Instead of abating, it got worse.  The part of my mind that wasn’t involved in trying to hold on to the railing and the laptop was running through the list of things that could be happening.  Heart?  No history.  Inner-ear disturbance?  Yup, maybe.  I had had long periods of time years ago when I had to take Dramamine just to get through the day.  The doctor dubbed it an inexplicable inner-ear disturbance.

As I laid my head back on the carpeted stairs trying not to allow the nausea to win, I remembered an incident about nine months ago as I was out walking.  Some arborists were working on one of the gigantic oaks down the street.  For whatever reason, it fascinated me that particular morning and I stopped to watch.  One man was so high up in the tree I had to tilt my head as far back as it would go in order to watch.  Somewhere between 60 and 90 seconds later my neck grew tired and I returned it to its full upright position, tugged on Coqui’s leash and took a step in the direction we were headed. 

The next step sent me careening diagonally across the street, flailing around for something to grab onto.  I stumbled to one knee at the same time I reached a parked car, against which I braced my body.  The wave of nausea consumed all my concentration, never mind the car coming down the street.  To say I was terrified is the mother of all understatements.

I crawled to the curb and sat.  Coqui looked at me with her licorice black eyes, head tilted to one side like the RCA Victor dog.  I was exhausted, breathing heavily and my skin was clammy.  Several minutes passed before I felt brave enough to try to stand.  After standing, I took one very tentative step, then another, until I believed the episode was indeed over.  I self-diagnosed:  must have cut off the blood supply to my head holding it back so long.

My doctor could only tell me that it wasn’t heart-related, after she did her examinations.  “Maybe it is a recurrence of that inner-ear disturbance you had all those years ago.”

Now I know it was that bitch Eminess*.  Little by little, I am beginning to recognize just how early in my life her symptoms starting interfering with my life.  Even when the neurologist asked me if I had any neurological problems earlier in life, I failed to remember Mr. Vertigo’s widely-spaced but pretty unforgettable visits. 

I also forgot the times when I was very young I would complain about a headache.  “Children don’t have headaches,” my adults would respond.  But I did.

The only residual effect of this morning’s visit is fear.  I didn’t walk the dog; just let her out in the yard.  That’s unheard of for me, but I didn’t know whether the spell was another isolated occurrence or if this time it would be the first of a series, more closely spaced.

I got through all of these events, obviously.  But before, I was able to dismiss them, put them into the archives of life’s little bumps.  Not anymore. Our friend Abrawang warned me I would want to blame every little thing on Eminess.  But I did my homework online and I called the doctor.  Of course, he couldn’t give me 100% assurance that it was or wasn’t, but I could almost see him shaking his head in the affirmative.

The symptoms, I will learn to handle.  The not knowing what’s coming next?  Not so much.

Eminess and Me

 

I have given her a name.  My new constant companion, Multiple Sclerosis or “Eminess.”  (Sorry Mr. Marshall Mathers or Eminem)

Sharing my personal business with others has never been a big deal for me. I’d rather be an open book than locked up alone with my own thoughts.  That’s why I don’t ever hide my age.  Who would I be kidding?  But illness is different, somehow.

I remember being advised by my manager to never reveal the fact that I was taking anti-depressants to co-workers.  He said they would think of me as “crazy” and would regard me differently.  He was probably right about that, but I did share the fact with a few close friends.  It wasn’t as if it would be news to them that I was battling depression.

As unpopular as it is to admit, I really do care what people think of  me.  I’d much rather be thought of as strong than as feeble.   “Healthy” and “in great shape” are certainly preferable to “fragile” and “ill.” 

When I started collecting the many symptoms that led to my recent preliminary diagnosis of MS, I would off-handedly mention the symptom-du-jour and immediately dismiss it as just another challenge aging brings.  That I am aging was obvious and could not be denied, but it is something that everybody does, whether they like it or not.

However, when I began to suspect, subconsciously, that these events might be related, I noticed myself becoming more reticent.  I only shared how I was feeling if somebody asked, and then I would more often than not sugar-coat the answer.  I enjoy the comments I get about my relatively youthful appearance and mobility, and I didn’t want to bring any attention to evidence to the contrary.

One of the reasons I started the current round of doctor’s visits was the struggle I was having in my exercise class.  Six months ago, I was able to do everything asked of us and with great energy.  Sure I would get sweaty and short of breath, but I was able to do the chair pushups, the squats, the kicks and the bends non-stop.  Now, the quads, the front muscles of my thighs, were becoming totally fatigued about half-way through the reps. I would have to stop, give them a few seconds to recover, and begin again.

Then one day the woman behind me asked me if I was okay, because she noticed I wasn’t as “into it” as I usually was.

I hated that.  I hated that it was showing, but I hated it more because I didn’t seem to be able to to anything about it.  I told the woman I thought I was coming down with the flu or something.  Yeah, right.

Last Monday I decided it was necessary to share the truth with the instructor, who was also jokingly getting on me about slacking up or staying out late partying.  I also told my workout buddy, a woman I met when I joined that class who has a similar outlook on life and a high energy level.  I did that because I knew she was becoming concerned.  In both cases, I asked them not to tell anyone else and to please not treat me any differently.

On Tuesday morning, Eminess entered the gym before I did.  The instructor was nicer and paid more attention to what I was or was not doing.  My buddy kept glancing out of the corner of her eye to see if I was getting wobbly.  She whispered, “Don’t try to overdo it!”  When the time came to move a chair in place to do certain exercises, she sprang into motion to get one for me…which I nicely declined.

I suppose I will have to make room for Eminess, a companion I didn’t choose and don’t particularly like.  She seems to want to take center stage and steal the scenes. 

As I lay in the MRI machine for forty minutes yesterday trying to ward off the panic of claustrophobia, I made myself laugh with a thought.  What if I really don’t have MS?  What if this image completely negates those lesions on my brain, the tingling in my face and feet?  Wouldn’t that be great?  I could go back to the gym and do my best impression of Roseanne Roseannadanna:  Never mind.

Then I could kick that freakin’ Eminess to the curb! I already hate the bitch.

Poverty, Atlanta-Style

 

Atlanta is a city unlike any other I have visited or lived in, at least when it comes to the visibility of poverty. 

Chicago has two complete “Sides” almost dedicated to the impoverished: The West Side and the majority of The South Side. People familiar with the layout of the city don’t find it difficult at all to avoid looking at the conditions under which far too many children are expected to survive. 

The same is true of Milwaukee – or at least it was when I lived there in the late 1960s and early 70s.  “Bad” neighborhoods (read: poor and crime-ridden) could be entirely circumvented with a little knowledge and a good road map. The only difference is which of the four “Sides” is which.

When I first came to Atlanta in 1993, I was almost amused by what the locals branded “bad neighborhoods.”  There are no tall tenement buildings, replete with gangways and pulley-operated clothes lines with someone’s underwear flapping in the breeze.  The “projects,” where many poor African Americans and Latinos were warehoused in structures like Techwood Homes, the nation’s first public housing complex opened in1936, were nothing like Chicago’s high-rise, cement structures, which seriously resembled the prisons many of their occupants’ sons and daughters would wind up inhabiting.  Atlanta’s were lower to the ground and sprinkled liberally throughout the city. 

When Atlanta Housing Authority CEO Renee Glover took over in the '90s, Atlanta had a higher percentage of its population living in public housing projects than any other U.S. city and it had more than its share of the crime that those projects attract.  Ms. Glover knew something drastic had to be done to stop the drug trafficking and gang violence that was rampant in the projects, so she followed the lead of other major U.S. cities and began demolishing the blighted complexes.  In 2009, Atlanta became the first major U.S. city to eliminated 100% of its public housing.

During the three generations of public housing in Atlanta, many cultural and policy factors combined to change the face of poverty inside the inner city.  White flight knew no class boundaries. Poor whites exercised what little privilege they had and relocated into newer public housing in outlying neighborhoods and suburbs.  As a result, aside from a handful of homeless, there are very few areas of the inner city where one can find poor whites.  And the word “poor” in Atlanta-proper (as opposed to the broader and more inclusive Metro-Atlanta) has come to be synonymous with “black.”

Which is also why the word “criminal” has become synonymous with “African American male.” 

The sad side of this story is the question, “Where did all those project residents go?”  Well, they moved into privately-owned slum dwellings concentrated in different parts of the same city.  The crime moved with them.  The front-end planning of Ms. Glover’s attempt at a solution was sorely lacking.

What makes inner-city living in Atlanta so unique, at least from my perspective, is the way pockets of severe poverty and pockets of affluence abut one another, at times with a drastic change in scenery after traveling only a few blocks.  To illustrate, the zip code I live in has the following statistics as of 2010:

Residents with income below the poverty level in 2010:

This zip code: 15.3%

Whole state:  16.5%

Median home value: $280,200

Less than three blocks away from my home is a different neighborhood with a different zip code.  This is where Martin Luther King, Jr. lived and worked.  It is where the MLK Center is located.  Here are its stats:

Residents with income below the poverty level in 2010:

This zip code: 29.7%

Whole state: 16.5%

Median home value: $229,786

It is nearly impossible to ignore the visible poverty in neighborhoods that ring multi-million dollar projects such as the Ted Turner Stadium, The Georgia Dome, Georgia Tech, and the Georgia World Congress Center; not to mention, the golden dome of the State Capitol.  When Atlanta won the bid to host the 1996 Summer Olympic Games, in spite of the piles of money spent on readying the parts of the city that would be easily visible by non-residents, some of the poorest neighborhoods just out of view were virtually ignored.

The Atlanta University Center, where the cities most prestigious historically black colleges – Morehouse, Spelman and Clark-Atlanta University – struggles on a daily basis with the crime that emanates from the surrounding impoverished neighborhoods.  Even the venerated Georgia Tech has suffered a rash of robberies and muggings at gunpoint.

City officials haven’t come close to eliminating the ubiquitous presence of the homeless.  Whether attending a performance at the Atlanta Symphony or queued up at the entrance of the latest night spot for young clubbers, it is a rare occasion not to encounter a street person.  Some are relatively well-dressed and well-spoken, some spin such pitiful yarns it makes you feel guilty to have the means to seek entertainment, and some are downright scary. 

The elaborate system of Interstate interchanges in downtown Atlanta have created a perfect spot for “urban camping.”  This man, known as “Geechie” finds the nooks and crannies under the overpass open enough to provide safety from other campers, but out of view a passing authorities.

 

 

 

 

In a slide-show story printed in Atlanta’s popular free newspaper Creative Loafing last November Geechie was described this way:

… a Charleston, S.C. native, has been homeless for about 12 years. He sleeps “on top of 15 blankets and under 15 blankets” in a little nook next to a bridge where he’s unlikely to be noticed.

In the next five years, Geechie said he’d like to have his teeth fixed, get his own apartment, and own a trucking company.

Those of us who have the wherewithal to access this post might sometimes think of ourselves as “poor.”  Next time I start feeling that way I am going to ask myself “Compared to what?”

It’s All In My Head

 

Those who know me well understand I spend the vast majority of my time inside my own head.  It’ not, I don’t think, because I am self-absorbed so much as I am self-curious and self-driven.

Last week I received the news that there is an 80 percent probability that I have Multiple Sclerosis. It wasn’t exactly unexpected news, albeit news I would prefer to have never received. MS tends to run in families; my mother has MS; her first cousin died from complications of MS; and another first cousin’s son was diagnosed five years ago.  

For years I have pursued the cause of a laundry list of seemingly unrelated symptoms, a journey that has sent me into the hallways of far too many medical specialties.  Daily headaches. Nerve pain in first one leg, then the other…seven years later.  Both disappeared.  Both feet have been totally numb for the past seven years.  Sometimes the numbness climbs its way all the way to my knees…once all the way to my thighs.  And before I could get the scheduled neurological tests done for that, the numbness traveled to my arms and hands.

As crazy as it may sound, I was relieved to finally hear that the problem is all in my head.  My brain is misfiring, failing to get complete signals to my limbs and sometimes my optic nerves. That’s happening because an auto-immune disorder is causing my body to destroy the covers of my nerves. Nobody really knows exactly why that happens.

 

So, I did not fall apart from the new diagnosis.  I have watched my mother cope with her crazy quilt of “episodes” for 44 years.  I knew I had no choice in the matter, that I would have to do the same.  And I am a tough old bird who refuses to allow much of anything to get the best of me.

Or so I thought.

I wasn’t prepared for what has been happening in the six days since I got the news.  Before the diagnosis, when I was at my workout class and the muscles in my thighs seemed to be weakening, I gave myself a bruising self-talk that included words like wuss and sissy.  When one week a few months ago I could barely walk a block without stopping because my legs felt like I was wearing concrete blocks on my feet, I remember being a bit concerned and wondering if, in fact, I could no longer stay in denial about whatever it was going on in my body, but I still forced myself to keep on going, telling myself “it was all in my head.”

Now I have another problem.  Now I KNOW why my legs are not working properly, but I still don’t want to give in.  I still feel like a wuss unless I force myself to make it through the dreaded stand-and-sit-in-the-chair-40-times-in-a-row portion of the rigorous workout designed for seniors.  Is that a good thing or am I being unreasonable?  If I accept the illness and allow myself to do less reps, will that be laziness or simply reality?  If I don’t fight every step of the way, might not the disease progress even faster?

I wasn’t prepared for this dilemma at all.  I seem to be more tuned in to the symptoms than I was before.  Well, before, I was trying to convince myself they weren’t there!  That they were all in my head.