What gives me a sense of balance and stability in life? The fact that all dimensions of life seem to be working off of rules or principles that provide one with knowledge, understanding, and most important: predictability and equilibrium.
But how long would it take to become completely disoriented if all the little “rules and principles” shifted in ways that make no sense?
In order for a jar of mayonnaise to open, the lid must be turned counter-clockwise. To close it, rotate it clockwise. But what if suddenly out of nowhere, the lid wouldn’t loosen until it had been turned clockwise, and to tighten it again, you have to turn it counterclockwise.
What if trees just lay down for a few hours whenever they got tired? What if cars were suddenly all being driven in reverse on just Tuesdays and Thursdays. Maybe next week, you’d “reverse drive” only on Mondays and Wednesdays.
What if you went to bed in your regular bed, but then woke up in the morning in your childhood bed?
If over a 3-month period of time, one thing after another shifted inexplicably, would you feel lost and completely out of your element. Would you begin to panic as everything shifted?
You water your favorite flowers, and inexplicably they all die within the hour.
On March 2, 2009, I came down with a flu that threatened to bring on some nasty asthma. Consequently I “did the usual” and began a regimen of Prednisone and the antibiotic Levaquin. I should be “back to normal” in two weeks.
After 2 weeks, the flu was gone, but the asthma hadn’t lightened up at all. This had never happened before. I might as well have discovered that the refrigerator now opened from the back only. One powerful session with my therapist resulted in the asthma stopping right in the middle of our session, not because of a medication, but because of something the therapist “therapeutically located” that basically just set me free.
The next morning, I was sure I was back to normal, and everything would be fairly predictable again. A few days later, there was suddenly a terrible pain in my abdomen. I called my doctor and she insisted on a CT scan. Turned out an abscess in my colon had erupted. Much worse than just diverticulitis. Now, the new plan was to take a two-week nightmare regimen of two new antibiotics, in hopes that this would allow the lesion to heal. The sudden unexpectedness of this felt the same way I’d feel if the sun started rising in the west and then setting in the west too.
Okay, but still a little predictable, right? Not total chaos. “Just take these two new drugs for two weeks and stay on a liquid diet.” Soon, things would be totally back to normal, no doubt.
Two weeks later, the follow-up CT scan indicated that although the lesion had healed, the hole into my abdomen had grown larger. This meant I needed to immediately go to the hospital and be operated on. The moon might as well have showed up in the morning followed by the sun streaming through the windows all night. Chaos. Nothing predictable.
I was sent to the hospital immediately, and was given nothing to eat but ice chips, for the next three days, in preparation for surgery.
Okay, surgery. Just the surgery, and then I could go back to eating normally, and everything would surely be okay once more. Right?
I had the surgery, and there was very little follow-up pain. But suddenly Atrial Fibrillation and a bad case of asthma showed up without invitation. Gasping for breath and experiencing terrible fatigue from the fast, fluttering heartbeat, I felt like I was stuck in a nightmare and would never be able to wake up. Instead of beating normally at about 60 beats a minute, my heart was fluttering at 150. At one point, while I was arguing with one of the nurses, my heartbeat changed to 185 beats a minute, and doctors suddenly showed up in my room demanding to know what was going on.
I was expecting to be released from the hospital right after surgery. I was so eager to go home, but they said I couldn’t leave until the Atrial Fibrillation and asthma cleared up. Well, that took five days!,
The day after surgery, I fell trying to get to the bathroom. It was a hard fall, directly onto my tailbone. I fumbled around and finally was able to stand back up. I then continued to walk into the bathroom, dragging the IV pole along with me. I was almost expecting to see the bathroom walls filled with spray-painted insults like Loser! and Stupid Fool! Chaos was now a permanent resident.
By the time I got back to bed, in the fog of anesthesia and morphine, I completely forgot about the fall. The next morning, my tailbone area was in excruciating pain. It took half the day to remember that I’d fallen. An X-ray revealed that I had bruised (but not broken) my tailbone. This hurt far more than the surgery had.
Five days later, my asthma stopped, and my heartbeat somewhat stabilized because of the meds they gave me. An A-Fib outburst now only let my heart go up to 115 beats.
Happily, I arrived home, sure that within a week or so, I’d be back to my old self. Soon I’d be strong and capable once more, and the six-week nightmare would be forgotten.
I lay in bed day after day, overcome with a sense that everything I had thought was a kind of “given” was simply not. No instant healing occurred. I couldn’t stand for more than a few minutes without feeling like I was going to pass out. I mostly stayed in bed, day after day, stunned by what felt like worsening weakness. There was no sign at all that things would get better. My husband took a week off of work to help care for me.
One morning I awoke and found my ribs trembling from spasms that radiated throughout my ribcage. An unexpected experience, and one that was so painful that it knocked me up for days until I could get a chiropractor to help with it. After it came and went 4 different times, each time lasting about 3 days, we realized that the mattress was at fault, so we bought a new one. These constant depressing changes made me feel like not only was non-stop chaos taking place, but I began to feel like I was personally disintegrating. It felt like bits and pieces of me were breaking off and flying into the void. The center wouldn’t hold. Soon I would cease to exist. I began to feel real terror that made no sense to my husband. He would explain to me that I was simply taking two steps forward, and one back, but I would explain that I felt like I was disintegrating, and would soon cease to exist. This, of course, made no sense to him (or anyone else) at all.
I couldn’t believe that I’d go into the hospital with one thing and end up with heart trouble. Unthinkable. It simply made no sense.
It wasn’t just about wanting to feel like I had some control in my life. It was more about wanting to see something recognizable in my personal universe.
It’s as though a stranger has stepped into my shoes. Someone who is dull-witted and humorless. Someone who has no curiosity about anything, and only feels negative all the time. “She” now runs my body, and worse than anything was the sensation that I lost a valuable part of myself that would never return. I no longer recognize my own body anymore.
I no longer believe I will ever return to anything that feels normal. Every single day is totally different from the day before. Change is all that’s going on. I have lost my center and the ground beneath my feet. I float in a universe which decides my fate each second of the day by throwing dice. Nothing is for sure, nothing can be counted on. Everything is disintegrating.
At this rate, everything will soon be darkness and void. I will cease to exist.
We know ourselves through the predictability of our structure, but mine has disappeared. My personal world is an alien one, now. A science fiction world where anything can and does happen.
I recognize less and less of me as time goes on. And it is with a terrible ache that I miss the Terrill who loved Consciousness classes, who devoured books about Jungian psychology, who rollerbladed wildly along the walk next to the beach, who kayaked in the bay. The skier. The Terrill who found signs everywhere of inner sustenance and support. The Terrill who saw meaning in everything.
Yes, the one who saw meaning and significance in everything is the one I miss the most.
Instead, I am permanently stuck on a roller coaster ride roaring backwards into nothingness.
Epilogue: Just writing this out like this changed everything for me. I became more patient with the TIME it takes to heal, and with the changes that can happen simply from growing older. I may WISH that my body would always respond to added stress like it did at age 32, but reality dictates it just won’t.
By Terrill Smith, 69 yrs. old, author of a book for Middle School and High School teachers titled
Motivating the Bad Attitude Kids.