lifeinslowmo

[lifeinslowmo]

Life in Slow Motion

The Rage of Age

October 8, 2023

I quietly thanked God that I have never been hot. It makes getting older a great deal easier.

Graham Norton, The Life and Loves of a He Devil

I’m a pretty small girl. Not a small, pretty girl. Those are two very different things.

I have never ever considered my short stature a blessing. In fact, my brother and I call our (lack of) height a curse, and we thanked the heavens when our nephews shot up like overgrown weeds. Sa wakas, naputol na ang sumpa!

I have been on the receiving end of every ‘short’ joke ever conceived.  When you’re short, somehow, people always feel the urge to belittle you (pun intended). Some seem to be under the impression that having the advantage of a few inches gives them the license to make snide remarks.

 And it didn’t help that until fairly recently, the most accurate description of me was ‘mukhang bata’.   This Filipino phrase has two possible translations: one who looks young, or one who looks like a kid. Of course, what applies to me more accurately is the latter.

Don’t get me wrong.  I am, on the whole, not unhappy about the way I look.

That is, until the symptoms of my disease started showing, rearing their ugly heads and attacking my body on all possible fronts.  Consider these:

My face often feels like it’s being crumpled, causing deep grooves (a.k.a., wrinkles) to be prematurely and permanently etched on my forehead. (Early on, my doctor offered me free botox, but I declined, for fear that people won’t be able to tell if I am happy or sad.)

My skin, which has always been dry, is now super dry. As an added bonus, I also have mysterious black spots below my knees.

I have never needed eyeglasses, but in what seemed like just overnight, my vision got blurred, and anything printed using a font below size 12 just looks like a series of lines.

My feet are the ones that suffer the most when I’m experiencing an attack. They get all twisted in unnatural angles, with the toes clenching like small fists. When this happens, my feet become dark and swollen, presumably because blood isn’t flowing properly.

The most recent casualty is my hair. I am losing such an obscene number of strands every day, it’s amazing that I am not yet bald.

As you can imagine, I do not look like a kid anymore. And I certainly don’t move with youthful energy.

I have difficulty walking—I literally inch my way with the help of a cane, my body always leaning towards the right. Sometimes I tremble, but most times I freeze, stopping like an old jeepney with a machine that stalls.

 I can no longer wear jeans, because the stiffness of the material or the way they snugly fit can be quite uncomfortable during my bouts with rigidity, and may even prolong the “attack”.  And if I intend to walk even just a little. I have to be very particular with the kind of footwear I use. No heels that may mess with my balance, no hard sneakers that feel constricting.

In short, I now look like a lola.

No, I am not just imagining this. Salespersons, waiters, security guards, government employees, real estate agents, street vendors—all of them are calling me

‘Nay now. Most of them assume that my thirtysomething assistant is my daughter.

I suppose I should be grateful that by Nay, they mean Nanay (Mother), a term of respect, and not Naykupu, an expression of fright.

But then again, I never really asked.

[lifeinslowmo]

Killer Pain

October 6, 2023

I don’t want to live like this, but I don’t wanna die.

Vampire Weekend, Harmony Hall

I take pride in very few things, and this isn’t me trying to be humble. I am just not good in a lot of things. I can’t play any musical instrument. I thought I was going to fail high school PE because I was terrible at volleyball. I don’t bake. I don’t know how to juggle. I can’t swim. And although I haven’t really tried, I am fairly certain that I am incapable of learning how to play chess.

But, as I said, there are a few things that I am proud of, and those that immediately come to mind are not inborn traits or natural talents—they cannot be attributed to genetics.  They’re more about choices I make, such as my taste in music and my sense of humor. I know being funny and liking a particular song are quite subjective, and as opposed to say, being a computer whiz or a dog whisperer, they have no practical use and do not contribute to the overall good of humanity.  So, let’s move on to something that is at least useful—even if only for me. 

I take pride in having a high tolerance for physical pain.

This became evident in the few encounters I have had with doctor’s needles and dentist’s drills. I never cried, cursed, nor plotted revenge on those who inflicted pain. When 5 test tubes of blood had to be extracted from me for a research study on Parkinson’s, the nurse who was doing the extraction was more nervous than I was. ( I had to calm him down because he was breathing so heavily, he looked like he was about to faint.) Why, even the girl who occasionally threads my eyebrows has commended my tolerance for pain!

I think I was in my early 20s when I felt a searing pain on my foot. Then, to my horror, it started swelling like a balloon. By then, I was writhing, and stifling screams. My dad saw me and brought me to a nearby hospital.  After a brief examination, the ER doctor gave me an anti-tetanus shot, which worked wonders.  Apparently, I had a small foot wound that got infected, probably because I scratched it. I don’t know if he was exaggerating or not, but the doctor said that if we had waited any longer, the infection could have spread, and they would have considered amputation. My dad replied that he knew it was time to bring me to the hospital when he saw me crying from the pain, which he said I would never do unless absolutely called for.

In case there is any misunderstanding, what I am calling my 'tolerance for pain ' has nothing to do with my reserve of physical strength or inner fortitude. It’s more of an “it is what it is” attitude. Pain is only as big a deal as you make it.

Or so I thought.  

I have been diagnosed with PD more than ten years ago, and since then, the pain that comes with the attacks has been slowly but surely becoming more intense. In an attempt to let my friends (bless their concerned hearts) understand what I am going through, I have come up with descriptions such as:

It’s as if a giant corkscrew is inside my thigh and is twisting all my muscles into knots.

Imagine feeling the weight of a steamroller slowly running over your legs. And while you are rendered helpless and immobile, it comes back to do the same thing all over again.

It’s like having cement poured all over your body, and you’re trying to walk around in a full body cast.

What makes it even worse is that during an attack. I have a hard time breathing.  When this happens, I panic and have an even harder time, gasping frantically for air. Morbid thoughts run through my mind: can pain kill? Can a person die, not from a disease, nor a wound, but solely from pain?

Needless to say, I am not handling it well at all.

“Hindi iyan ibibigay ng Diyos kung di mo kaya.”  This is what people often tell me, mistakenly thinking that divine approval will somehow make the burden easier to bear.  Me, I’d like to think that He wouldn’t give me such a thorny crown. It just comes with being a creature made of flesh and bone.

But just in case they’re right, I jokingly pray, “God naman, huwag kang maniniwala sa sabi-sabi na kaya ko pa. Tsismis lang ‘yan.”

And,  I am fairly certain that the next thought that popped up in my head was His reply. He said, “Well, at least you still have your sense of humor.”

[lifeinslowmo]

Stalling

You’re afraid of death, and you can’t be.

You’ve got to accept the fact that everything we do here,

everything …is a stall.

We’re just trying to keep the game going, that’s it.

But ultimately, it always ends up the same way.

Scrubs, Season 1 Episode 4

So, lately I’ve been stalling.

At least it feels that way.

I’ve been putting off writing a blog, and here are three reasons why.

But first, let me just say that every reason here will sound like an excuse –especially to someone like me, who is a firm believer in “kapag gusto, may paraan; kapag ayaw, maraming dahilan”.  So, to save anyone from arguing with me on how inadmissible in court all my reasons are, I will be my own devil’s advocate and will object to every point’s validity.

The reasons are ranked, with no apparent criteria for ranking.

#3: I am busy.

Busy trying to earn enough to pay the bills and give compensation to the people who make sure I don’t kill myself accidentally or deliberately.

Why this is a load of cr**: Since my condition (or perhaps my medication) allows me only 2 to 4 hours of sleep every day, I have managed to binge watch a lot of shows (some, like Ted Lasso, more than once.) I have meticulously created Spotify playlists that each have 24 hours of songs. I have mastered Wordle. And I am re-reading my Nancy Drews.

So, I guess I am not that busy.

#2: I have nothing to say.

What’s there to talk about? Parkinson’s is too depressing, my social life or lack thereof, even more so. My career, although it had its ups, wasn’t scintillating, nothing to brag about. My home situation is too stressful to even mention.

Why this is b***sh**: Anybody who really knows me, and who happens to be drinking right now, has probably snorted the beverage out of his nose upon reading my second reason. Because I always have something to say. It may be a piece of trivia, an anecdote, an opinion, a judgment, or a segue to another topic that is not even remotely related to the subject at hand. It may not be interesting, or fresh, but there is always something.

#1: I am physically unable to maintain a blog.

Lately, I’ve been relying on someone more and more to type stuff for me.

At first, it was just on my mobile. I’m not sure why, but I always end up pressing the wrong keys. Maybe it’s because my illness affects…well, obliterates is probably the more appropriate term, my depth perception.

Pretty soon, it started happening when I type on the laptop as well. I can still do it, but I have to look at the keys all the time. Which was manageable, until my vision got blurry.  And my fingers would stiffen. And my body would bend so much to the right a la Pilita Corrales, which may serve me well if I were singing, but definitely presents difficulties in typing.

Why this doesn’t hold water: I am the one who typed this entire blog entry.

So here is the first installment* of my Life in Slow Motion.

The entries will be full of ramblings and musings, mostly about a very lackluster life.

But hey, if you’re just whiling away the time, why don’t you come stall with me?

*Hmm, curiously enough, the word installment has the word stall in between in and me(nt).