Dawning

Have days when you just can't get out of bed in the morning? Actually, you probably don't. Neither do I, for the most part. Although there is that lesser part, and this particular morning was one of those. Let us digress.

I am home, happily enjoying the company of Jane, turning out the lights together for the first time in several weeks. Then turning them back on around midnight. I have the feeling that I am going to vomit. But I don't. And then I do. A few hours later followed by similar events at the opposite end of the alimentary canal. In short, a sort of search-and-destroy mission through the intestinal tract. Source unknown. But in the end I am sapped. Oddly, I can't recall a similar experience for many years. This sort of thing just doesn't happen to me. But now it has, and that my body has recently been ravaged by time and space and Virgin Atlantic, has not escaped me. Whatever. I spent the next day sleeping, then in the evening had a very modest meal, then bade goodbye to Jane who was off for several days of priestly instruction in Florida. Nothing like a good night's sleep to put an absolute end to this episode.

Until the morning. Still a bit weak, I threw my legs over the side of the bed, did the usual kicking action to rotate myself into the vertical. With no result. Nothing was moving, at least not enough. I tried again. Another kick, an attempted situp, then nothing. What was I doing wrong? What was wrong with me? Suffice it to say that these attempts to sit up in bed occupied the next 45 minutes. Fortunately my morning helper knows where the keys are hidden. She let herself in.

But I did have a good three quarters of an hour to contemplate present, future, with a slight seasoning of the past. I am aging, after all. Is this what the future looks like? The backache that I picked up aboard Virgin's 747 was making these situps difficult. But why impossible? Hard to say. I was thirsty, not having quite got hydrated adequately in the wake of the previous day's vomiting. And what now? I really had no answer, except a strange belief that if I could only slide my bottom to the very edge of the bed.... Well, what? I would either slip to the floor or get my torso upright, then stand. In retrospect, this made little sense, but I was desperate. I knew what a turtle can feel like.

When my helper Lorna arrived, she kept asking why I hadn't phoned her. That I could not reach the phone being the simple answer. Lying crosswise in the bed in the usual preparation for getting up...well, I had few options. But it did cross my mind that with my thirstiness, dying of dehydration would be most unpleasant. And there was the opposite, the certainty that I would have to pee in short order. In terms of ways to go, this would not be my choice. For there were dire possibilities here, a perfect storm of bad human assumptions. That I was tired, sleeping in and did not wish to be bothered. That I wasn't answering the phone, because I did not wish to be disturbed, etc. How long would it have taken for someone to unlock my door? And am I really this helpless? Clearly, at times. Am I losing independence? Absolutely. No way around life.

I had two glimpses of mortality. For some reason, probably not biomedical, the night of the vomiting, in the early stages as I sat beside Jane feeling my heart beating and my breaths shallow...I conceived of another end. A heart attack seemed possible. More to the point, I asked myself if I was ready to die. And why not? Always a good question. I decided that with Jane and others I love at my side, yes. The problem is that slightly more than 24 hours later, there was no one at my side. And my side was losing. The end is frequently unpleasant...that is part of the problem. And facing this, well that is on the postgraduate level of existential development. And for now...I am simply too tired. But not too tired to absorb the message. And this is the thing about disabled life. Messages have to get absorbed or no life is possible.

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And what does it mean less than one day later, musculoskeletal truth revealed, grim reaper shoved somewhat into the background? Thing is, all it took was a brief session with my physiotherapy assistant Perry...who noted that I was extremely stiff, had lost range of motion and just needed some limb loosening...to get back in independent action. In truth, I went to bed that night full of fears and misgivings, half convinced that this horrible trapped-in-bed thing was going to happen again. But Perry was right. My legs were working just fine the next morning, my back no longer a pained, rigid shell. Up I got, as per normal. He is a sort of master, our Perry. Lucky that he could tear himself away from duties as a sports trainer at Stanford University to work over my body. He has spent his life working for various sporting organizations, the San Francisco Giants among them. Naturally, he is interested in games and their outcome. I do my best with sports. Unfortunately, I barely understand the rules. Actually, I don't understand the games, but I find the crowds' enthusiasm quite infectious.  And so did not mind having the television on in the background while Perry unfolded his treatment table and had a go at my hamstrings and quadriceps.

Of course, I could not see the TV screen, but I could hear the roaring and the commentary. Once it was all over, I talked to Jane on the phone, heard about her flight to Florida and told her about the evening's victory of the San Francisco 49ers, our local football team. Actually, they had lost, and her subsequent e-mails revealed a certain bafflement. Oh, well. Loss, win, and other nuances aside...at least I am ahead in the competitive sport of quadriplegia.

My real challenge these days is to master the phonetic difference between Don and Dawn, my delightful shipmates from Devon. All the options...oral reconstructive surgery, a live-in tutor and voice-regeneration technology...seem rather daunting. So I have decided to reconceive the problem. That is to say, in the best tradition of current American politics, I lay this matter squarely at their feet, Dawn and Don. It is they who have ill-conceived the entire matter. A short, sharp revision of popular culture, and damned if I am not home free. I simply ask those around me to cooperate. Which means thinking, speaking, and, above all, writing outside the box. Quiet Flows the Dawn. The Don of Civilization. An Oxford Dawn...downright rosie-fingered, by the way. A trip to Dawncaster. Don French as vicar. Dawn Quixote. And, of course, at my local Japanese restaurant, a steaming order of Dawnburi. I do ask everyone to cooperate. It's not asking too much.