Ever see “Joe Vs. The Volcano” with Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan? Tom Hanks plays Joe, a depressed hypochondriac with a miserable factory job. Joe goes to the doctor and learns that he has a “brain cloud”. “I knew it!” Joe says, almost jubilant. The brain cloud is terminal. He’s going to die, soon, painlessly. So when Lloyd Bridges shows up at his apartment the morning after, to recruit Joe to take a luxury cruise ending with a self-sacrificing leap into a volcano, the idea is an easy sell. Joe hates his job, and he’s got a brain cloud anyway.
(Stop. I have to interrupt this with an excerpt of a breaking conversation with Maurya. All my children love to have conversations with me when I look busy. She says, “did you know that there’s a word in German that means both yes, and no?” I laugh. “You’re kidding.” “No, it’s true!” (notice that she could have said, “yes, it’s true”). “So if someone says to you ‘then you don’t want to go?’ you can reply, ‘yes (or no) I don’t, or ‘yes (or no) I do’. It’s all the same.”
Really? Why does this news tickle me so much?
Back to brain clouds. So the other day (two Fridays ago to be exact…I need to try more exactness) I went for a morning run, and loved it—stopped on a bridge and took in the sky and mountains reflected in the water and looked at a green field flecked with gold and the sun casting textural shadows on Russian olives. Had a healthy light breakfast, planted shrubs for a few hours, opted to take a bath before rather than after lunch, and lost my equilibrium when I lifted my head out of the water. I lost it, and it still hasn’t come completely back.
It’s the weirdest thing to be ok one moment, and then to move my head just so, and feel as if I’m stumbling off a carnival ride that was completely wrong for me. Wait—no, as if I’m still on a carnival ride that is completely wrong for me. The world spun, and kept spinning, and I was so nauseous and dizzy I crawled to my bed, where I lay motionless in frustration and fear, wondering if I should crawl (but I was still naked and too nauseous and dizzy to dress) into the kitchen for a bowl. Eventually (hours later) the spinning slowed (while the nausea persisted) and I could get up and do the minimal necessary night-time things. Like pick Frank up at the airport.
It was Sunday evening before I went to a doctor (I kept thinking the next day I’d be better). There is only one clinic open in all of the Ogden area on Sunday, with one lone doctor on duty. Goodness gracious. Really? But that’s beside the point. The doc looked me over, listened to my complaints, determined that I hadn’t had a stroke or anything scary, and referred me to an ear-nose-throat specialist. He figured I had vertigo caused by some inner ear aberration. The nurse scolded me for wearing heels when I was dizzy.
On Wednesday, the ear-nose-throat doctor was the very antithesis of Joe’s doctor (she might have been, in some obscure way, a little more like Lloyd Bridges—oh, and I’m no Joe either, thank you very much) . She was tiny and perky and cute and fresh and friendly and matter-of-fact. Her eyes were wide and amber-green and her face was covered in freckles. I was consumed with awe and curiosity as she showed me to her little treatment room. What journey led to her decision to become an ear-nose-throat doctor? Were her motives altruistic, or mercenary, or a rational blend of both? Why noses, ears, and throats?
“So this is what I think is going on”, she said, conversational and confident. She gazed intently into my eyes (she did that a lot throughout our visit; I eventually learned that she was looking for flickers that would give away my dizziness). “There’s these little tiny crystals in your inner ear; everyone has them; they usually lie at the bottom of our cochlear canal” (pardon my recollection of her medical terminology). “Sometimes they get stirred up, and float around in the liquid of your inner ear–you know, like when you shake a snow globe–and that makes you dizzy. We’re going to move your head around a bit and hopefully they’ll settle back in the right place. Ninety seven percent chance this will work, ok?”
Snow globe. Hmm. We tilted my head this way, and that, and hung it over the edge of the bed this way, and that, and I thought of my little girl experiments with snow globes, how a certain sleight of hand could make the snow really whirl for a long time. (And do your remember that early Pixar film short where the snowman tries desperately to break through the limits of his snow globe so he can hang out with the beach babe just over yonder?) The doctor scrutinized my eyes once more and said I think this is working (it does take a few hours) and here’s my card and call me anytime, anytime at all if you’re not feeling better soon. She patted my arm (her hand was cool and dry) and greeted her next patient.
I left her office weaving only slightly, and drove home (I’ve been driving the truck lately, but this was not a good day for it). The ear-nose-throat doctor was right. After several hours, the dizziness lessened. Thursday-Friday-Saturday it was almost entirely gone; though today I woke up fuzzy again. But I can handle it.
I couldn’t handle those first five or six sick days though. Looking back from the vantage of almost-regained normalcy, I am amazed at how much the loss of equilibrium affected my mood and energy. I was ill, shaky, and weak, and became depressed, standing in the hard baked dirt of my yard, looking at all the little things I’d planted, feeble and lonely in the impervious clay. And the encroaching weeds! Ugh. Digging a hole during those days was a serious mistake; it was unreasonably exhausting, and when the swampy, rotten smell of the uncovered earth hit my nostrils, I wanted to cry. Give up. Go west. Find a volcano. I couldn’t go on my morning run; I missed my conversations with the mountains. I was cranky with the kids, and not good company for anyone. I also was unable to focus well enough to paint, and with the upcoming art show, I felt the crushing weight of unmet expectations and a looming deadline. I am very glad to be feeling better now.
Painting again, running again, planting again, at a pace I can handle. Laughing (and even working) with the kids again (my illness rocked their world too, just a little). Enjoying dinner and a movie with Frank again. I am entranced by Utah’s beauty again when I am out in it (summer is so my season). There is magic and an ancient wistfulness in the night air (and thankfully, not a lot of mosquitos just now). I am eager to paint more this week, having made peace with last week’s sadly decreased output. Maybe, maybe I can still surprise myself. Frank built simple gazebo-like walls for the awning I will use for a booth at the art show, and has promised to make a few frames for paintings. Yes, or no, it’s all the same. I’m better. It’s all good again.
