There Were Nine
The first neurologist was mean. He kept his back to me, clacking and scrolling his way through my information on the computer. Finally, he turned his rolling stool around and scooted up to me. As if both exasperated and weary, he said, You don’t have MS. He closed the folder, stood up, put his pen in the top pocket of his white coat. You are severely anemic, he said. Get some Vitamin D in you. No wonder you can’t think straight. Then he left the room. My head felt like a bowling ball. It was that heavy. I let it hang.
Was I being scolded? For not taking vitamins? For taking up his time with my complaints?
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The next doctor said I was an alcoholic. My lab work showed enlarged red blood cells. A sure sign. My organs were oxygen deprived. Quit drinking, he said. I already had. Even one drink gave me a night of insane restless legs and muscle spasms. Later I figured out what had happened. When I’d filled out the paperwork, I’d written in the family history that my sister was an alcoholic. And that her daughter was. They were dead.
Lesson learned. I’d also learn that enlarged red blood cells are often found in the bloodwork of those with MS.
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The next neurologist said he’d need to do a lumbar puncture. I told him about the scar tissue around L4, L5 where I’d had two laser surgeries for herniated discs. I told him I wanted the procedure done in a hospital. I’m good, he informed me, clearly irritated. I always do them in the office.
A week later I was in a fluorescent-lit room, lying on a regular exam table. Face the wall, he said. I turned, curled myself into a curve, touched the white plaster wall with my fingertips. It was as if hot wire slid into my back. He hit the nerve, then the bone. The serpent of my spine roared. My body burst into a sweat--my mind retreated deep inside me like a hurt animal.
I heard the snap of his surgical gloves being removed. He used his foot to open the small metal trash can where he threw the used gloves. Can’t get any. He made sounds doctors make when they are headed for the door. His face, already a closed door.
Try again, I said.
Really? I felt him staring at my back as he said it again, this time more of a statement than a question. Really. Then a tear of paper. A new needle. This time when it entered, I heard the beat of blood throbbing behind my eardrums. I saw the red and purple miasma you see when you rub your closed eyes. Once again there was the pop of surgical gloves being torn off. I craned my neck to see him at the door, which was slightly opened. In a matter-of-fact monotone, I whispered—Do it again. Through gritted teeth, he whispered, as if to himself, You gotta be kidding me.
Right before he left, slamming the door shut, he said, Nothing’s ever easy with you, is it?
Had he been my boyfriend in a past life?
I peeled away the thin soggy tissue paper stuck to me. I got up, shaken to the core. I never went back.
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At Mayo Clinic, three residents busied themselves behind me. I’d been asked to rise up in the yoga Cobra position as they prepared to stick a syringe into my back. One said, Sacrum, and lightly touched my back to show me where they’d go in. Sacrum, I thought, turning it over in my half-light tranquilized mind. Derived from the Greek word for sacred. One of the residents pointed to a screen right above my head where I could watch him thread the needle into the base of my spine. I thought of all of those years of yoga. All the times I’d been told to envision my spine. Now my spine branched white against a black background like a birch tree at midnight in winter. Soon I heard one resident tell the other that he’d gotten a vial full of spinal fluid. When I asked to see it, they seemed pleased. One of them held the vial up to the light. He explained that most of the spinal fluid they saw was cloudy, or even yellow or red. My spinal fluid, though, glowed crystal clear. I thought it must be a good sign. Yet the clarity was deceptive. I had MS.
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Over the years, I’ve tried to reconcile what I saw as the pure essence of me –bottled--with the disease that had leached into my Central Nervous System. I’d been taught in yoga practice to think of the fluid as the life force you could move up and down the spine with your mind. Often—in the way voices of beloved teachers stay with you forever--I can hear my teacher from long ago
instructing in her German lilt, “One vertebrae at a time.” That’s how she taught us to proceed. That’s how I have proceeded.
