Photo by eMMe
I probably could’ve dog paddled above my Great Sea of Nothing for the rest of my life and not ever fully-realized how hard my body was working to hide what I didn’t want to remember. That might’ve been a minuscule amount of time given that a couple of organs had already skedaddled and a lightning bolt had stripped my brain of memories, however briefly, at that party five years ago…
If you missed the last newsletter describing this event, you may read the beginning of the story HERE.
…It’s true that all the blood can drain out of people’s faces when they are shocked. My partner’s hair literally stands on end and his voice squeaks as he gathers our coats from the pile on the couch at the mummering party. He asks if we should call a taxi (Uber wouldn’t establish in our area for a couple more years) since I am the designated driver and he and the other guests have imbibed enough to be the fool to perform for their supper on this frigid and typically boring February night.
Again, I trot myself through the stroke course, tongue to left and right, ABCs now said out loud, mapping the turns that will lead us home—though I do not mention I have no idea what our address is even if I know how to get us there. I watch him anxiously root through the pile of coats for a missing glove, now fully comprehending that my brain is malfunctioning. From the mysterious stroke filing cabinet, data continues to spew forth…Can I recall the names of my kids? Do I have kids? Oh yeah, I think I do. I easily count toward a hundred as my partner alerts the couple we’d driven with that we need to head home.
The car fob seems oddly familiar, the interior of the dash apparatus a bit strange, the parking brake is in the wrong place, and the knowledge for if it is engaged doesn’t arrive. My partner watches me intently when after a few stumbles, I start the car. As we begin moving, the rest returns as rote, a repetitive action like blinking or breathing and as long as I don’t try to think it through my body does what is necessary to get us all safely home.
Inside a house we have lived in for twenty-plus years, I am mildly surprised we have dogs, though the surroundings are strangely not strange. By the time pajamas are on and my partner has asked and been answered “no” several times to a question about an emergency room visit, I know there are two children, what their names are, and that the man I refer to as “my partner” is my husband. I work as a manual therapist, regularly see a mental health professional, and clearly, this is not a stroke.
When morning arrives, I wake knowing what and where Great America is and something had happened beyond anything I’d ever experienced before and that it would likely upend whatever I thought normal was. Even without a diagnosis, pragmatism and decades of dealing with trauma and mayhem have educated my spidey senses to understand when lightning bolts strike, plan on being electrocuted.
Visiting my regular doctor a few days later, she and I discuss my physical status.
“Your blood pressure is a little high.”
I laugh.
“Wouldn’t yours be if you’d forgotten what and where Great America is?”
She grins.
“I’d like to forget…but stop trying to make me laugh. This is serious.”
Her face strips itself of mirth, mine remains empty of participating in this drama.
“I don’t think it’s a stroke.”
The doctor softens her tone.
“I don’t either, but I recommend doing all the tests anyway so we have them as a baseline.”
“And what would those tests be?”
“An MRI and bloodwork.”
I agree to go through the motions while also decreasing hormone replacement therapy I've been dabbling in, in case it is causing weird side-effects. The MRI is scheduled for the next morning.
At a 6 AM appointment, I close my eyes sleepily as a young female technician slides me into the machine. Her last words before leaving the room are that she’ll be able to hear me from an overhead microphone once she reaches the command booth. In my hand rests a squeeze-for-help mechanism if I need to contact her. I’m not overly concerned about the twenty-minute test, figuring with my eyes closed I’d pretend I’m meditating, bashing the illusion when my snores are picked up on the sound feed.
Imagining myself seated on an empty beach, I take a long relaxed breath and release it, the expelled air bouncing off the nearby tube wall back into my face. Panic prods a burr in my psyche into alertness. Ancient shrieks of terror vibrate through my eardrums, faces bob behind my eyelids, and suddenly I cannot breathe.
Repeatedly pressing S.O.S brings no response from the technician. I chant a stream of words to calm my surprising hysteria.
Oh no. It’s okay. Just think of the beach. Breathe. I can do this. Where is that tech? Oh God, I’m gonna die.
My body pulsates as I resist the urge to open my eyes.
Don’t open them. Don’t scream. Don’t move. Don’t, don’t, don’t!
My brain is exploding, stroke concerns now seemingly true. Straps encasing my skull make it impossible to shimmy out. Warm, moist, cloying breath surrounds me, and suddenly, terrifyingly, I’m completely encased in a wool blanket, with the fibers scratching relentlessly.
Smoke Man has returned and won’t let me go.
The MRI tube tosses me into the Great Sea of Nothing to retrieve what I have forgotten, it sends me straight back to that house. It is the 1960s on a charming cul-de-sac in a sunny beach community, the Gidget horror story that was my childhood.
But at least my heart is breathing again, right?
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