Flare

It felt like a miracle this morning when I woke up: I could walk. This was not the case yesterday. When my clock radio went off, the pain was not only still there, it had intensified overnight, so that when my left foot hit the floor it felt like I'd been doing 85 MPH, Fred Flintstone-style, cross country. As if someone had dipped a fine gauge wire in gasoline, threaded it through my left leg, up to my lower back, and then set it on fire.

This is RA, folks. Unpredictable and excruciating. Most days, I'm not like this. But on the days I am, I have no idea how I'm going to get through it. I'm cranky, snappish, in a bad mood, because I can't even figure out how to walk the twenty steps from my office to the coffee machine or the manage two minute walk to my car from my apartment or get up the steps in my building -- I can't figure out how I'm going to get through the day without being in pain every single minute, pretty much unable to focus on anything else.

I limp from my apartment door to the elevator, ease myself down the steps one by one, holding on to the wall and the rails. I rest on the way to my car. When things get as bad as they were yesterday, I use the silver crutches that I keep in my bedroom closet. They help a lot. But when I'm like this, I can't get my own coffee. Or water. Or lunch. If I want to go to the ladies' room, I have to plan accordingly - devise the trip when hopefully no one will see me limping or using crutches, so I don't have to answer the questions, "What did you do to yourself? Are you OK?" or worse, have my colleagues look at me as if they know I'm not good enough or strong enough to be doing my job, that I'm unreliable, weak, and can't be trusted to handle my clients or projects.

Accordingly, I started the emergency Medrol pack. This is the only thing that helps me. Its side effects are legion. It drives blood sugar through the roof, and in my Type 2 diabetic current situation, I've got all the symptoms back - dry mouth, light-headedness, and the overwhelming need to consume, let's see: I'm on my fourth liter of water right now. The steroids also contribute to severe panic attacks like the one I had this morning, and the one I am trying to stave off right now by blogging, because hell knows, I won't be sleeping anytime soon. I can choose anything I'm anxious about: love, money, the novel I've written, Selichot, the friend I haven't seen in four weeks, my old job, the friend who got laid off this week (thanks, Lehman), my current job, the client who's pissing me off, the novel I haven't written, the friend I haven't seen in ten years, the focus group I have to pull out of my butt by tomorrow at 3PM, my retirement account, the High Holidays, the students I taught tonight who are struggling with family and religious and identity issues, the novel I want to write, the El Maleh Rachamim melody I have to learn by Yom Kippur - and the steroids help me to blow it up into another hurricane system sweeping the confines of my brain. And like Texas, New Orleans, etc., there's nothing I can do. Because the land itself cannot evacuate.

I know I'm sounding a little insane right now. That's okay: I'm feeling a little insane right now. So worried and yet, on Metro North earlier this evening, I know there are people with more worries than me. I know there are so many people struggling this week: afraid, with families, worried that it's all going to blow up in their faces, that their houses made of (credit) cards will fall. My company booked $156K of business this week: I do not have to worry like other people. My job is secure - more secure than it ever was in the Jewish world. I do good work and I try to do good works when I can. But I am so scared right now, scared that this pain situation is going to be forever and the only cure is driving me into this state of anxiety that's almost worse than being unable to function physically. What is the better trade-off?

Tonight as I was waiting for the train at Larchmont I was watching the headlights of the train move forward down the track - and almost so afraid to even admit this - I felt that I could understand the compulsion to jump on to the tracks. I would never do it, but I could understand the seduction of that moment, to be free of the worry and the anxiety, to be free of all this medication and these side effects, of these diseases and their dark roads forward. The endless hours of having to deal with meaningless tasks, the gym and the office and the constant wishing I was doing something that was life-affirming, that was helping someone, helping the world be better, instead of just being some stupid rat on a treadmill. But I stepped back from the yellow line, because if nothing else, Torah demands that I choose life. And being given the gift, the miracle of being able to walk this morning, was not meant for me to walk in that unspeakable direction.

In three weeks I have to chant my favorite words from the Torah...This mitzvah that I command you this day is not too distant, nor too difficult; it is not in the heavens nor across the seas, so that someone should bring it back to you so you can do it - no, it is very near to you, in your heart and in your mouth, and you can do it.

I know I can chant it. I just hope I can mean it.