Hyper-chondriac (26 page)

“
I
can get you some water, Mom.”

“I don't ne-ed any wat-er right now! I will ne-ed some lat-er!”

“Well, I'm sure Dad will bring you some when you're ready.”

“He's too busy look-ing in-to the lake!”

“What?”

“This morn-ing he was mar-vel-ing at a bird that had swooped down in-to the lake and
caught a fish
!”

Actually, that sounded pretty cool. So you're upset because he's not focused on you every waking second? I didn't know if my mother was getting worse, I was getting better, or both.

“And your sister just bought a king-size bed for Michelle!” she roared. Yelling was the only means my mother had to get attention. Her throat was one of the few organs that hadn't failed her yet.

“Why does a seventeen-year-old need a king-size bed?!!!”

It's not important!!! You can't walk!!!

“We should check into the hotel,” Nancy pleaded, tapping the part of her wrist that would support her watch, if she wore one.

“Oh, yeah,” I said. “We'd better get going.”

Down the hall from my mother's bedroom there's an original Peanuts cartoon from 1962 that encapsulates her world.

 

Panel one:

Charlie Brown says to Lucy: “It says here that the force of gravitation is 13% less today than it was 4½ billion years ago.”

 

Panel two:

Lucy: “Whose fault is that?”

Charlie Brown: “Whose fault is it? It's nobody's fault.”

 

Panel three:

Lucy: “What do you mean nobody's fault! It HAS to be somebody's fault! Somebody's got to take the blame!”

 

Panel four:

Lucy (with her mouth open really really wide): “FIND A SCAPEGOAT!!”

 

This was hung back in the day when my mother saw the humor in things.

 

DAY TWO

I got up extra early and let Nancy sleep in. It was four in the morning our time but I wanted to get this Zoloft intervention over with. As I sat across from my mother while she lay in bed, she reached over and rang her buzzer to call my father.

“What's the matter?”

“I ne-ed this bag of ice re-moved from my le-gs!”

“Why did you ring the buzzer? I can do that.”

“Your fa-ther is just stuff-fing his face in the kitch-en and he's three se-conds away!”

“I'm ONE SECOND away!!!”

Until recently, it was believed that our personalities were relatively fixed by the time we reached adulthood. But new research has shown that the neural networks in our brains are in a continual state of flux, which is called neuroplasticity. My mother's neuroplasticity is definitely in flux, and not in a good way.

“Mom. I just wanted to tell you that I've been on Zoloft for the past couple of years and it's really helped me.”

“I don't ne-ed it! I am not de-pressed!”

“I'm not depressed either. It's not just for depression. It'll take a little of your edge off. Believe me, it's changed my life.”

“I am
not
tak-ing Zo-loft!”

I guess the Ayurveda talk was on hold.

“Why not? It's nothing to be ashamed about.”

A year prior to this conversation, during a different hospital visit, my father had signed a consent form and the doctors had smuggled some Paxil into my mom's pile of pills. For five days she had no idea she was on a mood elevator. For five days the medical staff was able to tolerate her. The link was indisputable. Then she discovered that she was unwittingly taking something and stopped. Which I'm still perplexed over. She was refusing to swallow a pill that made her feel better? Why? I mean, one thing my mother's not shy about is taking medication. The previous afternoon I had picked up Percocet, erythromycin and Coumadin from the pharmacy. She also regularly takes Atenolol, Synthroid, Ambien, Lanoxin and Zetia. And those are only the ones I can remember. Was she doing this to spite everyone? Was there any logic to her reluctance?

She rang her buzzer again and screamed for my father.

“This is insane. I can take that bag of ice off your leg, Mom.”

“I do not want you to take this bag of ice off of me. Your fath-er can come in here and do it!”

It was hard not to hate her.

I know these are harsh words. But I'm running out of sympathy. I'm running out of patience. She's long run out of excuses for her abusive behavior. She would never have the perfect life, but she could certainly have a much better one. It would do her a lot of good to sit outside and watch a bird catch a fish in the lake. It would do her a lot of good to say hi to a neighbor instead of bitching about them. It would do her a lot of good to do anything, except what she was doing.

 

My brother-in-law is going blind. He's just a couple of years older than I am and he's going blind. Now, when you receive that information over the phone it doesn't register. Maybe it's an exaggeration. Maybe it's happening really slowly. Well, Nancy and I went out to lunch with him and let me tell you, my brother-in-law is going blind. He couldn't even make it to the bathroom without help. I mention this not to add another layer of benevolence to Debbie. I mention this because my brother-in-law has an amazing attitude. Although he'll probably never be able to see a computer screen for the rest of his life, his outlook is so positive, I'm not at all worried about him. He's already accepted his situation. Thirty-some years after her diagnosis, my mother still hasn't accepted hers.

 

That night Nancy cooked brisket for my parents and my mother actually came out of her room and sat at the table with us, a miracle in itself. The only other time she'd emerge from her confines was during Knicks games. Her illness had given her a surplus of idle time and my father had turned her on to the world of pro basketball. They'd put on Knicks hats and sweatshirts and watch the MSG channel together in pseudo peace, as if it were a tacit cease-fire. Since I was an ardent Nets fan, my mother would also watch their games, to give us an extra subject to discuss. But as bad as the Knicks had been of late, my mother was worse.

While the potatoes were being warmed up, Nancy and I managed to coerce my father into drinking some wine we had bought (with sulfites). My mother refused. It might interfere with her griping.

“And yo-ur sis-ter in-sists on clean-ing my bath-
room! I do not want my bath-room clean-ed!”

Nancy and I gave each other a look, as if to say, “Jesus Christ!
Of course
you want your bathroom cleaned! Shut up already!” Subjects that should have been immune from criticism were dwindling.

Despite the cascade of complaints my father was bubbly and happy, and because he probably hadn't had a drink in twenty years, perhaps a little buzzed.

“I feel goooooooood,” he giggled as he waved his hands in the air comically, his Mighty Thor cap perched atop his head. It had been a long time between smiles.

Then my mother tried to thwart his glee. And not in a fun way. In a mean way.

“I can-not stand th-is!”

“I feel goooooooood,” my father repeated, still ecstatic. He wasn't trying to taunt her, either. If anything, he was offering up some happiness, hoping she would choose to soak some of it up, like unconscious Reiki. It didn't happen.

“I am go-ing back to my ro-om! I can-not tol-er-ate this non-sense!”

Despite another sip of wine, the joy was slowly being sucked out of my father. He continued to wave his hands in the air and repeat his new catchphrase, but it was halfhearted now. The Mighty Thor hat housed no superpowers. He had been defeated yet again.

Multiple sclerosis has taken away more than my mother's ability to walk. It has taken away her sense of humor, her patience, her logic, her reasoning and any shred of optimism. Before all the brisket had disappeared from everyone's plate, she disappeared into her room, no happier than when she had last left it.

 

DAY THREE

Since my father couldn't get away from the house much, I ran a lot of errands for him: picking up prescriptions from various doctors, dropping them off at pharmacies, going food shopping and mailing comic books for him at the post office. He gave me several comics to mail to Canada to be insured for $1,100, which he said would cost approximately $30. I went to the UPS Store and was the only person on line. The owner of the place, a heavyset New Yorker who resembled one of the Ben and Jerry's guys, proceeded to take seventeen minutes (there was a clock above his head) to fumble his way through my transaction, finally arriving at the monstrous price of $76 to Ottawa. When I questioned the amount and said that my dad was a veteran of mailing things and was familiar with the rates, he told me that was the cheapest he could do. So I paid and went back to my parents' house to see what other errands I needed to run. I handed my father the receipt; he was furious.

“This is one-day service. It didn't need to get there in one day.”

“He didn't offer me any other options.”

“That's ridiculous.”

I was even more livid than my father. So I called the Ben and Jerry's UPS guy and blasted him over the phone. I told him he was a rip-off artist and pointed out that when I questioned the high price, he never countered with lower-priced options. He was incompetent and unethical and I demanded my money back. When he shouted back, I told him to “fuck off” and then slammed down the Donald Duck phone in the living room. I think that was the first time I said the “f” word in my parents' house.

All the hours of Tai Chi, all the yoga, all the ghee, steamed okra and aloe vera juice, all the scanning, all the laminated quotes, all my time with Kenyon, all the Zoloft—washed away in an instant. I was me again. I had failed.

I went into my mother's bedroom to tell my parents what had happened. Obviously, they already knew. I have a really loud voice. The amazing thing was how happy both of them looked. My mother was jubilant seeing me all riled up. And my dad was ecstatic because my mom was jubilant. It was the one pure moment of closeness the three of us shared the entire visit—actually, in many visits. Then, just as when I first began taking Zoloft, I had a moment of clarity; again I had ascended to the heavens and was watching myself from above, behaving as I knew I should. I took a deep breath and told my parents I didn't care about getting my money back.

 

The myth in my family has been that anger can control things. In reality, yelling at bank supervisors or UPS clerks or people in Hummers does nothing. And attempting to bully my mother into taking Zoloft is just another way of
me
yelling, by proxy of a Pfizer product. If anger was the only way to make my mother happy, then I needed to find another method. My family needed a new myth. I didn't know what, but it couldn't be any more destructive than the one we'd been using for the past thirty years.

Being ripped off $46 led to this revelation. Bread of Shame.

I'm always quick to point out to Nancy and my siblings that my mother still hasn't accepted her disease, but in some ways I haven't either. Although I've lived alongside her illness, I've never really acknowledged it. Just as my brother has tried to run away from it by going back in time, I've skirted over it by running into the future, trying to outrace it. Ironically, the only member of my family who seems to live in the present is my mother. And she'd be better off anywhere else.

Although we consistently speak on the phone three times a week, I've never really told my mother how sorry I am that she can't walk, that she can't drive, that her central nervous system is broken, that her survival depends upon those around her. I've never expressed true compassion for her condition, I've never expressed how her determination fueled me, how she continued to teach when she was first diagnosed, albeit lying on a couch, and how that inspired me to be persistent, whether in bodybuilding, stand-up or writing. I've never told her how lucky I am to have her as a mother. She never hassled me to get better grades (as long as I was trying), she never hassled me to get a “real job” (as long as I was happy), she never pressured me in any way, pre- or post-MS. This is a woman who never tried to control me. I should stop trying to control her. And, as Eileen from Anger Management said, stop trying to have expectations.

 

DAY FOUR

On our last day in Florida, I sat in my mother's room and stared at her vast collection of Beanie Babies. There were hundreds of them, neatly pressed against one another on shelves housed in glass, trapped.

I hugged my mother good-bye.

“I'm sorry you've had to go through all this.”

“Through what?”

“All these years, I've been blocking out that you've been sick. I mean I talk about it with other people but never really with you. I hope you'll forgive me.”