(Un)Balanced

On that little trip to the hospital.

I thought it was an ear infection.

Last week, I was feeling kind of funny, like a hangover wooziness that just wouldn’t relent (it was a Thursday). Hot, kind of nauseous, unsteady on my feet. As if I’d stuffed a bunch of cotton balls into my ears. I watched some YouTube videos on ear crystals and made a last-minute appointment with an ENT way uptown. Four hours later, I was on my way home with a six-day round of steroids to nix the pesky vertigo. NBD.

For what it’s worth, I’m at a place in my life wherein I’m not fucking around with my health. I joined a gym in my neighborhood (and go regularly, to my complete dismay). I make sure to eat vegetables every day. I drink water, floss, try to go to bed earlier than my night owl proclivities would prefer. I’m 36 and shit hits different than it did a decade ago. This is fine. I feel fine. I felt fine. Until Wednesday.

I roll out of bed around 2am to go to the bathroom (see above: copious hydration), my studio apartment pitch black and deliciously silent. I plant my bare feet on the hardwood and stand. Except the floor is no longer level with the earth, and my head is tilted so far to the right, that everything vertical lives horizontally in my vision. Two steps forward feels like four steps sideways, and I drop to the floor and crawl the five yards to my bathroom door. Huh, I wonder, I must be really really tired. I repeat the exercise back to my bed and throw the covers over my shoulders as my head throbs in the dark.

My alarm goes off at 8:15 and my eyelids flutter. The world is spinning and my stomach roils. I attempt to stand to feed the cat and make the coffee, like any other Wednesday, but my body recoils from the motion. Sit, sit, sit down. I fumble for my phone and text my boyfriend, my sister, my ENT. I can’t walk, I type, anxiety clawing at my throat. I thought I was feeling better yesterday. The first says he’s on his way over, the second has made a call to the hospital’s ED, the third calls in an order for an MRI. Feels like overkill, but okay.

He opens the door and sees me still curled up in bed, an arm over my face to steady my gaze. He helps me get into some clean socks and a pair of shoes, hands me a trash bag when my stomach betrays me from the excess movement. We stand and waddle to the elevator while I cling to the walls as the world spins. 45 minutes and one more barf bag later, we arrive at the hospital.

Wristband, forms, wheelchair, gurney, IV, barf bag, pills, stethoscope, nurses, attendings, phone calls, CT scan, MRI, waiting, waiting, waiting. The results pop up on the hospital app an hour before a doctor arrives to explain the findings, but I already recognize the words. Demyelination, abnormal lesions, unsteady gait, vertigo, spondylolisthesis. I remember hearing them 11 years ago, at my sister’s neurologist’s office.

Multiple sclerosis.

I sit and stare at the words on my phone, awaiting the moment a doctor will come by to say them out loud and make them real.

I thought it was an ear infection.

My boyfriend, the artiste.

Friends text to say they saw my photo in the hospital and that they hope I’m feeling better. I don’t know how to answer them. I get checked into a room with a spectacular view of the East River and cry into my boyfriend’s shoulder. It’s not fair, I sob, painfully aware of how well I understand that world’s twisted sense of humor.

The next morning I send voice notes and texts, make calls, and endure more blood draws than I can count. The IV of steroids drips into my veins, promising to restore my balance and calm the flare. My brain is tired and woozy—all the unsteadiness of a night out with friends without any of the resulting, blissful buzz. I shuffle to the bathroom, waving off the nurse’s escort offer, and lean over the sink to finally brush my teeth. I look the same I think, eyeing my bare face in the mirror. How can everything suddenly be so different?

The neurologist with the kind face answers my questions, nods her head when I say I already have an appointment with my sister’s specialist, marvels that I’ve had none of the other quintessential symptoms. It’s different for everyone, she notes, as if I’m one of the lucky ones. I glance at my boyfriend’s sad eyes in the corner, wince at my mom and step mom’s shaky voices on our phone calls, swallow deeply at my sister’s knowledgeable words of stalwart encouragement. I wish I could call my dad, and also feel grateful that he’s not here to receive the news.

I cross a threshold into a new reality, something both known and unknown. I wonder what the future holds, at the odds of two sisters sharing the same diagnosis, at how long my brain and spine have been inflamed without my knowledge. Did I know?, I ponder to myself in the dark hospital room among the relentless beeps and too cold A/C as I struggle to sleep. Was every unwarranted foul mood a symptom? Every ache in my back a small flare?

I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know.

What I do, however, is that I’m still me. I’m not a sick person, and I don’t want to be treated as such. I don’t want to talk about it unless I’ve already cried in front of you for some other myriad reasons; I don’t want a flash of pity from across a crowded room. If I’m feeling unbalanced and grab for your arm, I want you to hold steady and let me right myself without comment.

So, that’s all for now. I feel better, I feel worse, I feel tired, I feel fine. I’m overwhelmed but not weak. I’m going to be okay. And for now, that’s going to have to be enough.

I’ll drink an Anxiety Beer to that.

xxHB