She opens the cupboard above the sink and stretches her body as far as it can go. The glasses and bowls have moved closer to the edge of the shelves since I was here last.
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We’re a few hours in when something starts to go wrong with the epidural. Not all at once, but a creeping awareness of sensation starts to tug at my attention as I lie there and look at the trees outside, and read, and make small talk with my husband.
At first, I ignore it. But then I start to get nervous.
“I can wiggle my left toes,” I say, not really to anyone. Observationally.
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Who would have thought we’d be back here again? Me, blinded by your headlamp, white-knuckling a tooth-shaped stress toy with your name and number printed on it. You, on your swivel stool, tapping your running shoes to the eighties soft rock that seeps through the walls like the smell of the salmon your assistant reheated for lunch.
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My friends and I share six-word memoirs, which are supposed to be a story in a nutshell. This was the one I wrote yesterday: “Naked, I paraded through the jimjilbang.” I sent this stingy, six-word sentence out to them with no further explanation. Let them wonder. But for you, I’ll flesh it out: I recently visited a Korean bathhouse, and here’s a crash course in all things jimjilbang.
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“You want me to put that where?” was my first response when my pelvic floor therapist handed me a three-inch piece of plastic connected to a cord, which she plugged into a computer. It was a sensor used to measure muscle strength that we were going to use to test out my vagina muscles. “Ohhhh…kay, well here goes nothing.”
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When I was younger my mom called me Skinny Minnie. I’m not sure what she meant by this or why she called me it, but I know that I was confused. Even at a young age, I thought it was weird to have a nickname revolving around my weight -- especially because I wasn’t even particularly skinny; I was completely average.
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When I was a small child, my grandmother took me to see The Elephant Man, a movie about Englishman Joseph Merrick. Joseph was born with severe facial deformities and was exhibited as a human curiosity in the late 1800’s. The depiction of Joseph Merrick shocked me, but not for the reasons it shocked others. For me, the shock was recognition. I knew Joseph Merrick. I was Joseph Merrick.
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Dear Cerebral Palsy,
Although you are and have always been a part of me, I’ve worked hard to make certain I don’t allow you to consume my life. If I am honest, it has been a rather difficult process. Let’s start from the beginning though.
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On those rare occasions that I venture out into the world and interact with other humans, common courtesy makes people ask how I’m doing, but I never know how to respond. I’d say “I’m tired,” but my mind says I haven’t the right, haven’t earned that descriptor. When ‘tired’ is for marathon runners or physical laborers, when ‘exhausted’ is reserved for working 100 hours a week or a harried mom of 3, I’m not allowed to be tired. When the adolescent me had aches, they were ‘just growing pains;’ when youth me was feeling down I got reminded that there was ‘nothing to be sad about;’ and teen me falling asleep in class was labeled ‘bored’ at best or ‘lazy’ at worst.
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Part of me didn’t care what happened to the body. Mom had spent years abusing it, drinking and smoking, eventually producing the bloated, blackened cadaver before me. I had spent the past week alternately praying it into miraculous recovery and begging Mom to leave it because it was a completely useless thing now. On about the fourth day of her coma Dr. Carvahlo had suggest draining the infection and running tests on the pus. My argument was: who cares what the disease was, after it had shut down her kidneys, gangrened her legs and hands, and rendered her lungs useless? Two days later, Mom’s only working organ slowed to a stop - her heart.
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“When was the last time you remember feeling good?” I stared at the words on the questionnaire, my clusterfuck thoughts couldn’t show an example. I continued through the survey answering with ease, describing symptom after symptom of the problems doctors couldn’t fix. This questionnaire was my last hope.
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