The Two Kinds of Decay

Certainty

One day my neurologist declared I was of nearly normal strength and that my exercise regime, three slow thirty-minute walks per week, was far in excess of that of the general population.

I must have looked puzzled, because then he said, But you aren’t playing tennis or doing anything fun.

I wasn’t. I didn’t know when I’d lose all feeling in my hands and feet again, or need to save my strength for twice-daily trips to the bathroom, so it was hard to commit to a game of tennis, or even to a picnic, or a game of checkers.

I had moderate sensory deficit in my hands and severe sensory deficit in my feet. My hands and feet tingled and burned with fatigue and when I first woke, and there were numb patches on my shoulder blades and on my right calf.

I was still withdrawn from school and living with my parents, but my baseline strength was high enough that I could take a job at the bookstore where I’d worked in high school.

After a couple of weeks I had to quit so I could go to the hospital for a few days. The bookstore manager said I could have the job back when I was well again.

That happened twice, and the second time, the manager seemed to smile harder, to declare more vehemently that my job would wait for me. Maybe she feared I would sue her if she suggested my disability prevented me from doing the job.

It did, though. She’d already excused me from shelving new books. My arms weren’t strong enough to lift a stack of hardcovers, and my hands weren’t strong enough to wedge paperbacks onto the already full shelves. So I helped customers and punched sales into the register with my frail fingers.

After having to quit for the third time, I told the manager I wouldn’t be coming back. I felt sorry for her. She had a kid by a man who had left her. She was angry except when singing along to “You’re So Vain,” which is what we played every night at nine-fifteen, after the doors were locked and we were counting the cash in the drawers and calculating the X-totals and Z-totals at the front and back registers.

My college boyfriend called the day before his graduation. I said hello, and then I said I didn’t want to see him or speak with him. I already felt the numbness creeping into my hands, my face, my tongue. The antibodies would stay there until I replaced my plasma or died. Sever all complications now, the numbness said, no matter bow dear.

The worst hour was the hour between the moment of deciding I should be taken to Emergency and the moment I got in the car.

I used that hour to call the bookstore manager, my thesis adviser, my physical therapist, the home nursing coordinator, and anyone else I’d made plans with before admitting to myself I wasn’t going to stay out of the hospital — not this time.

I could have gone to the hospital without making any phone calls — everyone would have understood — but I preferred pretending I had chosen to quit everything. Chosen to get sick again. That it was all part of my plan.

I lied into the telephone receiver as I sat in a wooden kitchen chair, my aluminum walker leaning on the table next to me.

I’d covered the plastic grips of the walker with bright green pressure gauze and, over the gauze, a thin stripe of black electrical tape. Racing stripes.