Yelling at the Walls

One of the best things in life is when the baby is asleep in my lap -- I probably allow this more often than I should, she should probably sleep in her crib, but I adore it -- and she wakes up for a second, opens her eyes, surprised at first to be outside the womb . . . then she recognizes me, and squinches herself all up with big smiles out of pure happiness and (I imagine) a feeling of safety and contentment. To be able to make another person feel that way surely has to be one of God's greatest gifts.

It also makes me wonder if I ever felt that way in my own parents' arms.

Life is so nuts. How have people been doing this for the past 30 years or so -- since women went to the workplace -- or, rather, how have a certain socioeconomic class of people been doing this since the Industrial Revolution (without washing machines, no less. Of course, to be fair, they didn't wash their clothes, or themselves, very often)? I wept openly the other day (again to be fair, I do that a lot), just feeling completely oppressed by the utter lack of a moment to think, read, do something fun. Fun? Don't remember it. This is an important distinction, though: I have joy, often. As I described above and in many other ways, my sweet family fill me with joy. I am grateful for and happy about all sorts of things, from my Tyler candle to good polling numbers for Barack Obama, from sitting with my hubby on our new loveseat (aha! no more inability to sit together and see the TV at the same time!) to toddling about on our new patio, from taking a moment to blog to giving a successful training at the office (not to mention actually remembering how to find the office). But fun? I think the last time was in the mountains a couple of months ago, and before then -- not sure. There's not much of it, trust me.

Which reminds me: I should probably give you a health update. A couple of weeks ago, I went to an acupuncturist. I want to support and place my trust in Chinese medicine, being the latte liberal, the globally compassionate person I prefer to be, but the truth is I was freaked out. I couldn't feel most of the needles (which were all over my upper back, my lower back, and my feet), and the medicine she smeared all over me didn't smell too bad, but I lay on my stomach on one of those massage tables for nearly an hour, and I kept wondering whether it was safe for my neck to be in that position for so long. I realized then that I have a mental image of my spine that resembles a sleeve of shortbread cookies (Girl Scout Trefoils, in particular), crumbling at the edges, better for dunking in milk than for holding up a complex neuro-musculature. Anyway, I walked out of her office feeling no different (but smelling a bit exotic), but by the time I got home 40 minutes later or so, I felt remarkably different -- no pain in my low back, better gait. However, about 30 minutes later, I had to go pick Abby up from day care and haul that huge infant and her massive, leaden car seat, as well as all her accoutrements back home, and by the time Dave and I sat down to watch John Adams (Paul Giamatti is an amazing actor), my back hurt worse than it had in quite a while. I feel like this kind of disappointment happens to me almost daily.

Speaking of my back, disappointment, recovery and that monster of a car seat, I fell down on Thursday. At day care, there is a very annoying two-step curb that would, I think, be difficult for even a strong and healthy mom to maneuver with a stroller. I need the stroller to get the baby all the way through the playground and all the classrooms to the back of the school where the infant room is, so I had to settle for hiking the wheels up over those two bumps. I finally got tired of doing it, and worried that I was going to muff it, so I started parking farther away from the door and using the handicapped ramp. This meant only one bump on the curb, instead of two (don't old people go to this church? people in wheelchairs?). Whatever. There is also an annoying latch on the playground gate and another on the baby gate inside the school.

On Thursday, however, I got the baby into her stroller (it's one of those stroller-frames that holds the car seat -- you just take the whole car seat out of the car and snap it into the stroller frame) and rolled her partway up the ramp, when I suddenly lost my balance. I think my body just couldn't adjust to the angle, and I keeled over. Unfortunately, I instinctively tried to use the stroller to keep from falling, or maybe I hit it on the way down -- either way, I knocked Abby and her stroller over with me until we were both on our sides on the ground. Thanks be to God, she didn't come loose from the seat and the seat didn't come loose from the frame, so she was just lying there probably no more surprised than she usually is when we bump her around off our legs while carrying her. Until she saw my face -- then, no doubt seeing the horror and upset there, she started yelling. I immediately started fake-smiling and singing to her, and she calmed down immediately while I pulled myself up and righted her, hands shaking and, as it turned out, blood running down my face. I had to roll her back to the car, because my glasses had hit the ground (I think) and had gashed the bridge of my nose. I didn't have any tissues in my new car, so I used one of Abby's burp cloths to stop the bleeding. I was standing there glad that no one saw what happened, and concerned immediately with hiding the fact that I fell from the slightly dim infant-room attendants. Of course, later I was offended when I took Abby in, had a relatively long conversation with the attendants, and bled down my face apparently unnoticed by them. (One wonders not only about my bizarre obsession with what other people think about me but also whether the attendants would notice if my baby girl was bleeding down her face -- but more about that later.)

The next day, Friday, Abby was congested and snorky in the morning again, so I decided to keep her home from day care to try to help her and keep an eye on her low-grade fever (and to make sure she didn't start bleeding down her face, I guess). I spent the day lifting and bending with a grouchy, snotty baby, and then at 4:30 or so, I bent to lift her out of her Pack N Play bassinett where she'd been napping. My low back begged to differ, and I fell to my knees with a cry of pain, once again scaring my poor baby girl. (Like her dad says, more fodder for her book.) From my knees, I was able to lift her to a standing position in her bassinett, and then I sort of levered her up into the changing-pad part of the Pack N Play, which looks like a little helipad on the side of the bin. With tricks born of much practice, I pried myself into an upright position and immediately called D to calmly inform him that I'd thrown my back out again and that perhaps he could keep that in mind when deciding how promptly to remove himself from his meeting and bring himself home.

All weekend, then, we were back to D doing all the lifting and bending -- everything from laying the baby in my lap for a feeding to picking up a potato I dropped on the ground -- and my rising to new heights of whinging and coming up with new emphases on the word "Ow." He had to take Abby to day care today, and will have to pick her up tonight. We're both hoping it'll be better by tomorrow. I sat with my huge ice packs and downed muscle relaxants and Tylenol until my tongue went numb. D and I were both so angry. We both just sort of yelled at the walls, and tried not to offend each other in the meantime. We really love each other so much, but I feel guilty, angry, and afraid, while I think he feels angry, frustrated and afraid, and it just blows at times like this, in all meanings of the word. What drives me crazy is that things like this tend to happen just when I start feeling pretty good. On Wednesday before I fell over, I had started taking the dog out -- granted, just down the street to the communal mailbox and back, but still. Now, this morning, I am back to shuffling like an old lady from my home office to the kitchen as my excruciating back won't let my legs move. When, when will it be over?

I still haven't been able to obtain results from my 3/11 MRI, but my neurologist (you'll remember Dr. Maragakis) sent me his notes from our last visit, which happened before the MRI. He's officially off my list, now, because those notes made clear something he didn't -- although he can't explain what happened to my eyes last year, he seems to have decided that my gait and balance problems, as well as at least some of my muscle weakness, are actually linked to my spinal cord injury (aka "myelopathy") rather than to some other neurological phenomenon. This is bad news, as far as I'm concerned, because now I'm worried it won't get better.

So. I haven't decided whether to go back to the acupuncturist, but I suppose I will (if I can confirm it's covered by insurance). In mid-May, I begin water therapy in the heated pool at my physical therapy place, which is not covered by insurance. Meanwhile, my insurance company is trying to discontinue coverage for some of my therapy (after 5 years) and the disability insurer made "a mistake," such that we have to repay a huge amount of my disability money. Nevertheless, I just signed up to pay premiums for long-term care insurance, because who knows when those cookies in my spine might just dissolve in the milk and I'll need someone other than D to come and care for me in my home. I hope it never has to be Abby.

Lord, I'm getting maudlin now. I'll end on something better -- I love my new church. I'm going to be part of a "commission" planning adult education there. The rector is a bald guy with hip black glasses seemingly as conversant in Zen Buddhism as in the nature of the Resurrection, and although we don't agree on everything, the gang I've met at the monthly reading group is a really good one. Hurrah. Also, being back at work is not the worst thing ever. Speaking of which, I don't have time to explain further why one of my doctors is actually certain that I am getting and will get better, nor to tell you about the "energy healer" he's sending me to, because I really do need to work. But one of the things that makes me happy is writing here, so I decided to do it today. I hope D will forgive me, and I hope you will, too.