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[gutbrainaxis]

lemon balm

My first experience with ulcerative colitis pain was in June of 2018. I felt a searing pain under my lowest rib on my right side, stretching down to my pelvis. Later that night, I got my period. Aha, I figured. My period. Of course. That night my flow was so heavy that I had to supplement my tampons with dunkin donuts napkins, wrapped expertly around the crotch of my panties in an effort to not further stain my boyfriend’s bedsheets.

Towards the end of my period, I found that I was extremely constipated. My entire abdomen felt like a water balloon full of cement. I let my mom drive me to the emergency room, not her own, but rather the one she used to work at some 2o-odd years ago. It was frustrating to stop every few feet to meet my mom’s coworkers from 20 years ago.  I was hunched over and walking very slowly, in something like a bipedal fetal position. I don’t care how long ago you worked with my mom Sandra, my stomach feels like it’s about to explode. Intake was frustrating. A young, pretty nurse with an Apple Watch asks about my symptoms. I tell her my stomach feels like cement. Nothing else abnormal. Just the cement.

I finally get a bed in the ER. It’s a calm afternoon and my mom chats with the young nurse who gives me an IV. He completed part of his training at her hospital. They don’t remember each other. I get fluids and an ibuprofen and I’m discharged before I know what’s going on. I’m confused because I’m still in excruciating pain and I still don’t understand what’s going on. My mom says that I’m to follow up with my gynecologist.

Two days later, I’m at the OBGYN. My usual doctor, an advanced practice nurse, isn’t available, says the nurse. I catch her up on my medical history. I had had an abortion six months prior and yes I had followed up with the doctor and yes it had gone smoothly and no there was no pain. A white-haired gentleman speaks with me about my symptoms while pressing gently on my abdomen. He gives me a prescription for a vaginal ultrasound and leads me into his office, where we talk about the birth control I’ve neglected to take for the last 18 months. His office is decorated with pictures of his family and grandchildren and their crayon artwork. He strikes me as the type of man who is so knowledgeable about women’s reproductive health that he has embarrassed his daughters on several occasions. I learn that there is no medical reason for women to release their blood monthly. Did you know that the reason why the last week of a 30-day pack of birth control consists of sugar pills? It’s not because the woman needs to release her blood, as I had assumed. It’s a built-in pregnancy test. You could, theoretically, skip the sugar pill week. I leave the office with samples of NuvaRing in hand and sense of liberation from the Lutero-industrial complex.

We go to my mom’s facility, where a talkative Russian lady conducts my ultrasound and advises me in gentle terms to gain some weight soon. My ultrasound appears normal, although there is some evidence that I had a cyst on my left side that had already exploded or whatever. They don’t seem concerned.

Later that day, I go back to the ER. This time I give in to my mom’s advice and let her take me to her own ER. I’m reluctant to go there because I know she’ll be recognized and I’ll have to make pleasantries with all of her coworkers. It’s amazing how tone deaf they can be. It’s like, “Oh my how much you’ve grown! I saw you when you were 5 years old! Oh, you’re in horrible pain right now? Oh dear, you should definitely go to the hospital!” Still, I go.

This time they prepare me for a CT scan with contrast. I’m waiting for about an hour before I’m given a foul tasting drink that I have to down in order for the CT scan to appear with contrast. It looks like water but it tastes like freezer burn, if that makes sense. I take generous swigs and chase it with the thought that the taste is not as horrible as my pain.

They wheel my bed into a room with the giant eggshell colored contraption. I don’t remember much at that point except for putting my bra back on afterwards. I sit in the ER waiting for my results. It turns out that there is some thickening of my bladder wall, but nothing that causes any alarm or explains my symptoms.

Sometime around July 10, the pain morphs into something else. I remember waking up and immediately regretting being awake. I remember laying in bed paralyzed with pain. There was no comfortable position for any part of my body. I could not re-position my body without evoking the pain. I could not be awake. I took Naproxen that day, as per mom’s suggestion. No use. I took a good deal of melatonin in an effort to go back to sleep. Sleep was the only respite. There was a point when my body would not let me go back to sleep. It had been satiated. I was awake, regardless of whether or not I wanted to be. I stared at the flowers my mom had placed on my bedstand. Lemon balm sprigs, clipped from my aunt’s garden the prior afternoon on the way home from the ultrasound.

Lemon balm leaves are small, maybe just an inch in length. Its outer ridges are rounded. They have soft, tiny hairs that give it a velvety feel like a peach. They smell like sugar-dusted lemon, like a lemon bar pastry with graham cracker crust. I thought about the leaves. I thought about a single leaf. I thought about a single leaf so big that it could block out the intrusive daylight that continuously assaulted my eyelids. I imagined being a lady bug and sleeping under a hut made of a single lemon balm leaf. I thought about the cool earth underneath me, and the bliss of knowing nothing of the forest around me, only the packed earth below me and the leaf above me. I blocked out all other awareness. I let myself be encapsulated by its cool sweetness. I felt okay.

Later that night, my mom comes home from work. It’s close to midnight, or maybe just past midnight. She comes into my room and it’s dark. She says, “GutBrain?”I do not respond. The sound of her calling my name wrenches me from my lemon baum dream. I refuse to see her shadowy silhouette standing in my doorway. I can feel that it is there and with that growing awareness, I can feel the pain resurfacing with my consciousness. It grows logarithmically. She calls my name again. I can hear the concern in her voice. She asks me if I need to go to the emergency room. I grip the fringes of my daydream and lying as motionless as possible, I say, “Don’t… talk… to… me… it.. hurts”. A flurry of questions. I ignore them all. I grapple for the edges of the forest, the lemon balm leaf, my sanctuary. But it’s slipping away. Quick.

I whisper, “Sorry”. I know that I seem rude to her and I feel bad for that, but I also know that my guilt for being rude is a human emotion and at that moment, I couldn’t disentangle any aspect of my humanity from the pain in my abdomen. When I began meditating, I imagined walking through a series of doors and closing them behind me. I abandoned my belly pain in the same place that I abandoned all awareness of my human body and my human family and my human worries. When she called my name, it all came flooding back. I can’t unhear the sounds of her shuffling in the kitchen. The muffled voice of my grandma. I resign myself to being awake now. I use my elbows to leverage my lower half over the edge of my bed. My feet make contact with the carpet. A slow trek to the bathroom, lumbering under the weight of the magma in my body. Wince as I remove my pants. Sit on the toilet and stare at the cabinet in front of me as the pain galvanizes. Nothing comes out. I realize that if these doctors don’t figure out what’s wrong with me soon, I would have to kill myself.

  It was the first time that I had confronted that idea without crying. I had experienced depressive episodes and suicidal ideation before, but it was always like scratching a mosquito bite. It felt good to think about dying. I had imagined exotic scenarios that implicated those who had wronged me- donating a kidney to someone and then dying afterwards. I used to dream about my funeral attended by all my friends but not my boyfriend. I used to imagine my dad’s horrible girlfriend discovering my body in a pool of blood on the kitchen floor. I used to associate suicide with relief, justice, redemption.

It was only then, sitting on the commode, experiencing this otherworldly pain, that I felt that sadness of it all. It was only then that I realized that I didn’t deserve to die. I never did deserve to die. It was only then that I saw my own death as a tragedy. It was only then that I saw the injustice of my own death. It was then that I knew I couldn’t surrender.