At the front of the medical clinic—I call The Mountain–is a revolving door. Most medical centers have revolving doors. It’s an efficient door, if you think about it, allowing high-speed entry and exit in and out of high traffic buildings. There you are on your way to meet a doctor. You step into the circular wedge large enough for one. The thick rubber edges whoosh as the glass dividers suck you in from the street and spit you out into the building’s interior. And voila, you’ve transformed from pedestrian into patient. Inside, you shake your umbrella or stomp the snow off your boots, and approach the attendant sitting at an information booth. You need directions. Information on where to go next.
My spinning through the revolving doors of The Mountain had many beginnings. There was the first spin in January of 2009 when a cyst ruptured in my abdomen and blood appeared in my urine. I heard the word cancer for the first time–a word my doctors soon dismissed in February after scans and labs. I dismissed the word too. Then the second spin began in March with routine meetings for counseling. This was a real beginning, the public release of six years of marital spinning so disorienting that normal had become abnormal, and abnormal had become the norm. Throughout this time, I co-spun with my mother through the revolving doors at her own cancer clinics.
I spun through revolving doors in boots, then clogs, then sandals; my back covered in wool, then denim, then cotton until my shoulders were bare.
*
At which point, the actual physical spinning began. I opened my eyes one morning and the world rotated on its axis—the floor, the walls, and the light fixture on the ceiling of my bedroom in my Berkeley Avenue home. I couldn’t sit up for fear I would fall onto that ceiling or through a window.
“I need help!” I screamed to whoever might be home.
My son Ryan appeared beside my bed, looking confused at the sight—his mother gripping the sheets with eyes squeezed, looking as though she might vomit.
“Ask dad to call 911,” I gasped.
It was Father’s Day—June 21, 2009–a day I had no idea how to celebrate given the spinning of my relationship with my husband Mark.
Then there was the ambulance, the stretcher, the bumpy ride through the pot holes, the lights shining in my eyes, the sounds of muffled feet moving across linoleum as my body was delivered to the emergency room; and the thud as attendants rolled my body onto a hospital gurney. For hours, I lay on that gurney exhausted, nauseous, disoriented, and unable to focus.
And finally, when the doctors said there was nothing else to do, they released me with prescriptions for Valium and motion-sickness medicine, and instructions to see a neurologist.
*
I soon returned on my own two feet to the revolving doors of The Mountain. One appointment lead to another and then another and then others. I called the clinic for referrals to specialists, listening to the familiar recording: “Your care is important to us. Please stay on the line.”
At long last, a doctor explained that I had lost one third of my balance function. “Why?” I asked. “We don’t know,” he replied. Of course, the doctors had their theories—perhaps an inner ear virus or a blood clot. They referred me a Balance Clinic for physical therapy for my brain. They told me my brain would adjust over the coming months.
I spun again through the revolving door of The Mountain in sandals, then clogs, then boots; my back bare, then covered in cotton, then denim, then wool. Co-spinning with my mother, marital spinning with my husband, spinning with doctors over unknown diagnoses. Sucked into the medical machine by glass panes with thick rubber wipers from the street to the interior of The Mountain. Disoriented, yet asking for directions on where to go next.
***
Writing Prompt: Create a list of moments when what was happening in your outer (physical) life matched what was happening in your inner (emotional) life. For example, perhaps your outer-and inner-lives were both spinning, or being neglected. Then create a list of words or sentences that describe these outer and inner experiences. Free write (without censoring yourself) a description of one of those moments when your outer life was reflecting your inner life.
Author: Pamm Smith
Image Source: Yury and Tanya on AdobeStock
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