Letters from the Divide Identity Crisis About six months ago, I got a one-sentence letter in the mail from my doctor. I had been in for my yearly exam two weeks before, and because I was having some back pain that was getting harder and harder to ignore, she had ordered X-rays. The X-ray technician mumbled something about it being “a good thing” I came in but wouldn’t say more. When my doctor didn’t call me the first week, I allowed myself to believe that the tech had been wrong and that I was fine, but then came the letter that took my breath away: “You have severe end-stage disc degeneration disease of the L4-5 disc.” It was a sentence that could win some kind of contest for scare quotient per word. End stage? Didn’t that mean I was going to die? My doctor, of course, was unavailable by phone, so I got online; www.spinedoctor.com assured me that disc degeneration disease was neither exactly a disease nor necessarily degenerative. Then why is it called that?! It also informed me that nearly everyone has some degree of degeneration by the time they reach 50. It suggested that the degeneration could be the result of a single sports-related injury or due to general inattentiveness to simple activities like lifting and sitting compounded over time. Cue the highlight film of my injuries and inattentiveness. There are the years I was both a grad student and a river guide, where I’d sit through my classes all day at the University of Utah; drive all night to Moab; lift, inflate, and rig boats from first light until the clients arrived; row all day; set up tents; make dinner; and do dishes (bent over three plastic dishpans sitting on the ground) far into the night. There are all the backpacking trips, where I bit off more than I could chew in the planning and wound up walking long days and evenings, sometimes too long between water sources (hydration is essential, www.spinedoctor.com says, for healthy disc maintenance). There are all of those punctured Therm-a-Rests that I couldn’t be bothered to fix. Then there is my ranch, where I insist on being the one to fix the fence, haul the bags of horse feed, and throw 90 hay bales from my ’64 Ford truck bed into the loft of the barn. There is me, sitting in a hard kitchen chair, writing one book or another, not getting up to stretch for six- or eight-hour stints. There is the time, only a few years ago, when a golf magazine wanted me to write about a new course in the Bahamas. I don’t play golf, but I was so keen to go to Great Exuma that I figured, How hard could golf be? When the local pro, a funny Bahamian named Nelson Ranger, saw me hitting balls on the driving range, he said, “Wow, you must be a really good writer.” I don’t know how many times during the 18 holes we played together that I took giant swings that missed entirely, but I do remember that the next morning I could hardly move. And there is the moment, even more recent, when, staying with friends in Boulder, the man of the house asked if he could carry my suitcase—nothing more than an overnight bag, really—and, in considerable pain from the drive, I embarrassedly, gratefully, said yes. I felt an identity crisis coming on. If I was no longer the woman who could sling REI’s largest duffle across her shoulders and stride through an airport, who could pack an entire Dall sheep out of the Alaskan backcountry, who could keep putting one foot in front of the other, moving down the trail, no matter the hour, nor the weather, nor the last time she slept or even sat down, then who on earth was I? I finally spoke to my doctor. She referred me to a surgeon but warned that the surgery “probably wouldn’t work.” She said, “Call me if you become incontinent or if you lose the ability to lift your left leg.” I called an acupuncturist. I called an osteopath. I called a cranial sacral practitioner. There were hours of stretching and sticking and adjusting and release. My body and I have always had a pretty simple relationship: I asked difficult, sometimes impossible things of it, and it complied. Now it was my turn to do the listening. “Beet juice,” my body said, with some frequency. “Fifteen-hundred-dollar desk chair.” “Hot bath,” it said. “Nap.” My body wanted to swim in the ocean, so I took it to the ocean. It wanted eight hours of sleep and ginger tea every night. It wanted a rice bag shaped like a teddy bear that has to be heated in the microwave, so I bought a microwave. Most of all, it wanted me to be more conscious in my movements (not necessarily more careful), to drink a lot more water, and to remember to breathe. Finally, it reminded me to count my blessings. I was not incontinent. Not only could I still walk, and swim, and paddle, but these were the things (as opposed to sitting) that felt good. I did not have a tumor. I might actually learn something here without having to die. As wake-up calls go, this one was pretty gentle. And if I had to ask someone to give me a hand with my backpack, or a fifty-pound grain sack, or a fully loaded kayak, maybe that was a lesson in humility, in learning how to ask and how to receive. My back is feeling stronger these days, thanks to my team of healers and the path of self-care they have laid out for me. Irit, the osteopath, attributes my progress to the fact that I am an athlete, but I’m still scratching my head at all those years I spent thinking that the conversation between my body and me went world, the pain has taught me to pay closer attention. I am more present now—to each step along the high mountain trail; each stroke of my oar blade in the silver river; each scissor kick through the blue, blue ocean; and each sunrise walk with my dogs around our biggest pasture, seeing which new wildflowers are stretching their stems toward the sun. |
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