I’m losing my mind. Some may joke,
“Well, Allen, we’ve noticed that for a good long time. Can you tell us
something we don’t know?”
So, never one to let a good question
go unanswered, here’s what you don’t know.
Three years ago, I photographed a
wedding north of Spokane. At the end of the day, I drove home exhausted, but
pleased with the work I had done.
As soon as I arrived home, I
collapsed into my favorite overstuffed chair with a cup of hot tea at my side.
That’s when it happened. When I reached for my eight-ounce mug of sweet and
spicy black tea, I realized I couldn’t lift the mug with my right hand. It was
as though my arm no longer belonged to me.
Feeling a little lightheaded, I managed
to walk to the bathroom at the opposite corner of the house where my wife happened
to be. I had one word emblazoned on my mind: Bayer. The word was scuttling helter-skelter
like a cast of tiny sand crabs behind my eyes. BAYER. I knew the word, but it took
me a full minute to blurt it out. Then another word came to my mind: aphasia—the
inability to use words.
My wife quickly drove me to the emergency
room where we were immediately admitted. What ensued then was a battery of tests.
Two days later—after having been poked, probed, scoured, and scanned—my doctor
spoke to me in solemn, hushed tones.
“You’ve had a stroke,” she said. “In
fact, we have discovered that over the years you have had numerous strokes.”
Now, I’m here to tell you that “numerous”
and “strokes” are two words you never want to hear in the same sentence.
Besides, how could that be happening
to me? I eat a healthy Mediterranean diet. I have not spread a pat of butter on
a dinner roll for fifty years. I’ve exercised every day of my life. The bathroom
scale hovers within a single kilo of my ideal weight of 162 pounds. I’ve never
smoked, and my alcohol consumption is limited to half a glass of wine once a
month at the most.
So why me? No one had answers—not the
neurologist, cardiologist, astrologist, no one. After all the examinations and
enough tubes to transform my body into a human bagpipe, they were all stymied.
My arteries were clean, and my heart was ticking like a jeweled Rolex. The only
possible culprit was sleep apnea—pauses in breathing while sleeping. (Additional
tests showed that I was indeed a candidate, so I was introduced to a CPAP
machine, which I have used ever since. Now I sleep through the night without a sputter.)
The news got worse. I asked the
doctor what kind of damage had been done to my brain.
“There are three regions of damage:
those that control balance, language, and personality,” she said, as if checking
off the ingredients for a cob salad.
Today, I can feel the ravages of a
brain on too little oxygen. I now have to be careful about slipping into a pair
of pants without a wall nearby for backup. I speak more slowly as my brain
strains to find the precise word. (That’s particularly annoying to me. I agree
with Mark Twain, who once said, “The difference between the right word and the
almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.”) As
far as personality goes, I have always been a borderline (my wife would say
“enflamed”) perfectionist, but now I seem to want everyone to be perfect—and right now, thank you very much.
But here lies the real anguish: According
to Dr. David Holzman of the Medical School at Washington University in St.
Louis, “sixty-four percent of persons with a stroke have some degree of
cognitive impairment, and up to a third have dementia.” If that were not bad
enough, Dr. Rudy Tanzi, professor of neurology at Harvard University, reported
that there is a link between strokes (had it), sleep apnea (had it), and
Alzheimer’s disease (may get it).
In the popular vernacular, I’m
screwed.
But
not quite yet.
For the time being I can still put
my pants on, write a coherent sentence, and carry on a decent conversation
without jumping down the throat of the listener—most of the time.
So I work like a Spartan. I’ve
published two books in the last two years, and I’ve just finished the second
draft of a new novel. Yes, I feel a sense of urgency, so every day I spend
about three hours chinking away at my computer.
As long as my brain will allow, I
will aim to make a modest contribution. That’s the way it has to be. For me to
check out before my time, before my brain completely abandons me, would be an
unjust, even a profane, swipe at life.
As long as I am able, I will
champion young talent, celebrate the arts, advocate for the oppressed, praise
reason, promote peace, and revere the seasons of life.
When I am no longer able, just pat
me on the head and say, “You were a good man, Allen. You walked in the light as
the light was revealed to you”—and that will suffice.
And when the candle burns out
altogether, know that I was grateful to be a minuscule and ephemeral flicker in
the immense ocean of the stars.
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