Nerve

If the typical middle-age person stands before his bathroom mirror in the morning, wondering what it all means or how much longer it will all go on or what the "it" is that might or might not go on, I am atypical.  My question is: why is it all moving?  And can I catch it, before it falls? 

I have the unwavering sense that things are wavering.  Letting go of the edge of the bathroom sink to reach for a toothbrush seems increasingly unwise.  The wiser course would be to not brush my teeth.  Or maybe screw the toothbrush (through that hole in the handle) to the drywall, then rub my teeth against it, like a steer at a salt lick.  The other alternative would be to acknowledge that my balance is heading for that big neuromuscular museum in the sky.  At age 60, walking is becoming perilous.  As my Dr. Wu, practitioner of western physical medicine and eastern hard laughter, puts it, "don't have a fall."

Instead, I have a fright each morning and several times a day.  My usual stance before the sink is not stolid.  It slips this way, teeters that.  I can't keep my torso vertical.  Bending close to the sink while brushing my teeth approaches disastrous.  Especially in this hunched over posture, my center of gravity seems to drift.  Worse, I don't watch my form in the mirror, don't see the way I'm leaning, getting close to tilting, then dropping.  Don't have a fall.

I've had a certain amount of practical advice.  My physical therapy assistant tells me, flat out, that if you don't walk enough, your balance goes.  I don't walk enough.  It's easy to sit in the wheelchair, get up and sit in an exercise machine, sit back in the wheelchair -- a day of postural changes, aerobic exercise, and no balancing.  Caroline, my cousin the doctor, tells me that a tilting neck -- like mine, a cervical Tower of Pisa -- can throw anyone badly off balance.  So, there's that too.

One can't avoid walking, of course.  My dentist, her office still decorated with floor-to-ceiling nature wallpaper dating from the 1970s, runs a strictly walk-in establishment.  Railings on both sides of the steps.  Wheelchair parked on the sidewalk.  I enter with my crutch, clicking my way a short route from reception desk to treatment room.  The journey is getting longer and longer.  There seems to be nothing to the right.

Thing should be on the right.  It's on the right side that my body is paralyzed.  It's here, with a right arm as agile as a 2 x 4, that I will hit if I fall the wrong way.  Toward the right is the wrong way.  In a world divided into left and right, the chances of toppling rightwards hover around 50%.  That's the way I see it.  And I see it all the time.  For example, taking those tentative baby steps, crutch, lurch, crutch, lurch, from my dentist's waiting room, past the reception counter, and into the no-wall and nothing-to-grab open area between dental chambers, I take it slow.

On the way out, I take it even slower.  I pause at the counter to pay my bill.  But there's no bill to be paid, thanks to God and dental insurance.  There is a counter to lean against, but the same phenomenon occurs here.  The same bathroom-sink-tilting thing.  I stand and make a new appointment.  I'm relieved when the receptionist accompanies me to the front door.  Grabbing her arm wouldn't seem out of place.  Except, I'm not there yet.

I decide that I've missed the 11:37 a.m. train home through force of destiny.  There is a Safeway across the street from the station.  It is a land of sparkling linoleum, crisp fluorescent lights and sanitary food dreams.  The country Italian sandwich on focaccia bread is such a dream.  Because it is a $4.99 dream, I take it and head for my train.  The first seat is empty, the one marked reserved for the handicapped.  The second wheelchair space is full, occupied by a very burly guy with a half empty pant leg.  The war?  Diabetes?  You don't just ask people what happened to their leg.  The question implies that they have been careless with limb attachment, forgetting their own need to reach and ambulate.  Still, I climb out on a limb, now and then, when I sense a disabled person is open to discussion.  This guy wasn't.  Hi, I said.  He said nothing, just nodded that I should occupy the wheelchair space in front of him.

The problem was that the space in front of him was far from the seat behind him.  I wanted a quick hobble from wheelchair to seat.  Then a fast seat-to-wheelchair hobble as we rolled into Menlo Park.  It seemed reasonable to ask the guy to move.  Except he was as chatty as Darth Vader.  I saw a simpler, easier course.  Stand, walk around him, and hope the train didn't start moving.  My crutch, locked to the back of my wheelchair, would take too long to remove.

I got to the seat, braced my leg against the carpeted wall, dozed and drifted through my midday retired-person's slow ride home.  The 12:07 stops at every tree on the Peninsula.  Still, soon it was, Belmont, then San Carlos.  Just to be on the safe side, I stood and made my way forward while the train paused at San Carlos Station.  But not long enough.  I was holding onto the seat back to my left, thinking hard about the gripless window and the too-low railing, the latter mounted at wheelchair height.  The train began moving.  Never mind about too low.  I crouched and grabbed.  Awkward, but doable.

Whispering from conductors in the vestibule.  Snatches of "if he falls" and "trying to walk."  Downright discouraging, this sort of observation.  Also infuriating.  The train was picking up speed, a faint tilt here, small jerk there.  Still standing, I put my hand on the wheelchair control, felt its steadiness, let it give me neuromuscular strength.  That's how things are these days.  Feeling something solid either orients me in space or gives me the illusion of being oriented in space.  Hard to tell.  Enough to give me the courage to take one last unsupported step closer to the chair, swivel and plop into the seat.

I assured the conductor that I wouldn't fall on her shift.  These train conductor women are a particularly hardy breed, two-fisted gals who hustle people on and off with a certain air, casual and firm.  I wanted to tell her that we were brother and sister, all in favor of hustling, all in favor of firmness.

Back in my apartment, it was time for the crutch.  Marlou wasn't home, so in case I fell....  What's the worst that could happen, I asked myself?  I would fall and lie on the floor.  I would fall and break my neck a second time, further damaging my spinal cord, and lie on the floor.  So what?  So, OK.  I crutched toward the bedroom to take a nap.  Then I remembered that I'd left the keys in the front door.  Walk there, too?  Yep.  That's how the West was won.  Thirsty?  I crutched to the kitchen for water, conscious all the time that the vast emptiness to my right was sitting there -- but I wasn't sitting anywhere.  I was moving, and sometimes that's the best anyone can do.