9th
The Triumphant Return of Mr. Rot
I’ve been in a rough campaign battle and I’ve lost – again. According to my personal polling results, it wasn’t even a close race. I am not going to be elected The Well-Woman with at least a four-year term guarantee.
I call my autoimmune disease Mr. Rot and he has returned. He’s right back at my side, as close as he can get to me and is he ever triumphant! He and I have been partners for so long it seems appropriate to give him a name. I have an atypical form of Wegener’s Granulomatosis, named for a distinguished doctor, who, unfortunately, was also a Nazi doctor. There is continuing discussion in the medical community about changing the name of the disease. Strip him of his awards posthumously, but keep the name. If ever there were a Nazi of a disease, this one is it. But, I just call it Mr. Rot. It suits his behavior. He feasts on my cells, munches on my tissues and tries to take away my chances for happiness and success. Once again we are at war, with no end in sight.
I officially declared part of 2008 The Summer From Hell. I moved from the bed to the couch to the hospital’s infusion room to admission as an in-patient inside the “Slammer” (my term for the hospital). My jokes about my condition have grown lame. I no longer have the energy to quip that, while others may think they are chic with trips to Italy, France, England or country homes, nothing beats chic like an August adventure in Manhattan from bed to couch to hospital.
I am sad and numb; but even as he steals my thunder, I stubbornly refuse to let him take away my humor. Mr. Rot is fresh and combative. Why doesn’t he get out of town? What I mean, of course, is why can’t he retreat from my body this instant? At the end of the summer I was ready to be finished — take the staircase to the next energy field or the celestial gardens – or whatever particular metaphor or theological belief about the after-life you prefer. Good-bye. Ciao. I was so over it all – putting up with Mr. Rot, being brave, having friends insist how heroic I was, or that they had no idea I was ill at all because I looked so good. But, I didn’t get that hall pass to leave forever. It wasn’t as easy as I thought it might be for a few blessed moments in the hospital. I was spared to live another day or more, and tell more tales. That’s what writers do. I write my stories with the hope citizens on the “other planet” will also find the courage to go forward or draw a laugh of recognition from our shared experiences.
I continue on with Mr. Rot, and as in any relationship gone stale, we have reached the stall-and-wallow stage. However, I do bow before his power and pay him respect. I spend the rest of my spark plug reserve attempting to make deals with him. I just quietly and talk only to him, “Here I am still sick as a dog and weary. Let’s have an agreement, okay, Mr. Rot?” I tell him he could play fair just once. “Why don’t you go away now, really disappear, for just a few years, and then you can come back. You’ve been far too constant a companion.” As usual, his response to me is physical, never verbal. If he could it would be a resounding rejection of my pleas — “No way. I am used to you. Besides, you know something, Alida? I’ve got to tell you, you’re really a great hostess.”
My reality trumps words and witty nonsense and I must stare him down. What is wrong now is that I’m so sick of being sick. I am hiding out from almost everyone. I thought by my silence I had given my friends a holiday from my troubles. It turns out I frightened them. Why can’t my performance as Mimi end? Can’t I just sing that last aria, collapse, die, and get off the stage? Get the hook. This Mimi is ready. I know I am ready. Curtain, please. But, just as I’m convinced I’ve had it with my life, I worry I might miss something. Maybe I’m as unstoppable as this disease after all.
Now I am searching for a plateau named acceptance but do not wish to journey to a place called complete resignation. I am as worn out emotionally as I have ever been. A friend asked me whether there was a danger I would become bitter because of the disappointment of not having a real remission despite the treatments. “Bitter would take energy, wouldn’t it?” I respond in my well-rehearsed theatrical role as “Sarah Heartburn.
I might well be on the road to bittersweet, which is not a good destination for an aging woman with a seemingly vigorous disease. Why is Mr. Rot so healthy and robust as I grow older, exhausted and sad in a way that takes words from me? Without words do I exist at all? A more terrifying philosophical concept sweeps through my brain-filters…without Mr. Rot do I exist at all?
I wonder if I will finally succumb to what I have fought against since childhood. Will I become a set of symptoms and manifestations of disease, totally eclipsed by Mr. Rot? Will he have the last laugh, the last dance, or in the worst-case scenario: will he steal the very last word from my lips, or hop on my laptop and write my last lines. He’s very crafty and he might well do that. –But not just yet.
-Alida Brill