Paen
The Road Back
My brother says he used to talk cars, girls and music with friends.
These days, they only talk of doctors, ailments and pills.
***
As for me, it was yesterday that I accepted my body back.
Thing is, when you face a serous illness that requires multiple hospitalizations, it changes you, body and mind. There is denial that it has happened.
There are two responses: you let it slowly kill you, or you fight it. In its early phases, you are not aware of the struggle. You can’t think about it rationally because your mind, body and soul are preoccupied.
Surviving takes a long time and a large measure of will, sometimes much more than you thought you had.
At some point, it is subconscious.
Eventually, it abates and short intervals of sleep return. Gradually, you step away from the pain meds and learn through experience what sort of pain is bearable and which demand a pharmacological boost.
As you recover, there is a point at which you entertain the possibility that you will outlive it, no matter what the doctors or statistics say.
***
There is a skittish wariness about the gradual return to something like normal, although you forget your previous notions of normal if you are smart and lucky, and take one day at a time.
It surprised me when, after eleven weeks’ rehab, I finally took note of progress. It was not merely a sensation or an awareness, but the numbers began to drift in the right direction.
At first there was a hesitant vacillation: a day or two of improvement, then a setback to the old, less acceptable numbers.
Sooner or later (in my case, eleven weeks) the numbers continue the trend for a few days, then a week at a time. You become averse to behaviors and habits that result in bad trends and internalize those that move you in the right direction.
For some of us with dubious will power, that change is a revelation.
As if you suddenly find yourself on the right path to freedom, the one you have sought unsuccessfully for eighteen months.
It is not a gradual thing, this realization that you could survive.
It comes a month or two after the glorious sensations of life previously unappreciated.
The small things.
Yes, for those of you who haven’t experienced it yet, it is the small things.
Thank God.
And my support team: Mike, Tom, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Lindy.