feet, feet feet! How many different feet you meet.
My feet are getting the royal treatment these days, as I struggle to appease them. Find out what they need and supply it. They are so, so insanely fussy. My feet are tyrannical, impulsive. They run my life like deranged charismatic leaders.
Yesterday it was snowing lightly as I donned my extremely bare Donald J. Pliner hidden thong sandals to go to vestibular therapy. I was not going to see Vince and be put through the normal paces. No. I was going to have my precious feet cast in plaster for posterity. Let's bronze them! They are so extraordinary.
Matt, the charming "foot man" of Vince's operation is going to try and fashion for me removable facsimile of the so- critical sandal surface. My concept is to then place this surface into fur-lined footwear. (I got some Merrill slides.) These I will attempt to wear barefoot, so that the bottoms of my feet can retain their must-have contact with the surface, while the tops are cozily not getting frostbite in the fur. Also, what in mid-November may have seemed a charming eccentricity, now on the brink of December is seeming downright crazy. I'm getting looks. My toes are very cold. I won't get the inserts for a week or so and even then I don't know if this is going to work. I pray that it will, because I'm out of ideas.
It's been one hell of a week. I have been so $&@*&@#( dizzy all week. Just day after day of pure struggle. I don't know why. I don't know how to make it stop. I'm coming up on the six-month anniversary of my first vertigo attack and still, still in the weeds. A new twist too, which really scares me, is the falling thing. I've never truly fallen from dizziness through all this. But a few times in the last few days, I've almost fallen in a sudden and very scary manner. Time one: I was out of the shower and on firm ground, drying off my leg. THen I tipped over and caught myself just in time. Time two: I was on the basement stairs bending down on this little landing we have, sorting through laundry. I tipped over and caught myself just in time. Time three: I was attempting a delicate maneuver, to get out of bed from between a sleeping boy on one side and a sleeping cat on the other. I fell clean out of bed, doing sort of barrel roll onto the floor. Isaac witnessed it and was really shocked and amazed. So was I, although it was nothing more than a pride injury.
In addition to the falling thing, there's another sign of back-sliding: there's a constant hiss in both my ears now. I lie awake at night and try to match it to all known sounds. Crickets? No. Cicadas? No. Buzzing? No. Radio static? Not… quite. The hiss at the beginning of a vinyl LP? Yes. Yes… that's about it. During the day in the din of my life I don't hear it, but at night it seems quite loud, persistent, and even maddening. I read that some poor people have tinnitus (not tintin-itus, as I like to call it) that not only is heard by them, but can actually be heard by others! Like their ears are actually producing noise! Oh dear god.
Thanksgiving was pretty daunting, too. We were hosting, which was quite a challenge. I alternated between being really happy and empowered to do it (I love cooking! It's a creative project to make this all work! I can do it! I'm not an invalid! I will not be defined by my condition!) and just being so dizzy and tired that I questioned the sanity of not begging off. I tried to be extremely organized, but with the boys helping, there are wild cards in the mix. Making cranberry sauce with Elias was utterly exasperating. Chopping celery while ducking flying projectiles. I don't know. They just have a lot of energy, and feeling as bad as I did all week it was difficult to find them ways to expend it appropriately.
But it all came together well. The table looked lovely, for one. We rarely bring out all the wedding china and all the linens and whatnot. I had a major crise de serving pieces at the last minute and ended up with things like gravy in the creamer, pie on bread and butter plates, etc., but what the hay. I think it went well. You really need a full staff to make a meal like that go perfectly, with everything timed perfectly and on the table hot. One person just can't do it. I served our traditional grapefruit and avocado salad as a first course on salad plates on top of the dinner plates, which seemed like a good idea at the time. But the problem was I didn't want to stop between courses and carve the turkey (too complicated, right?) so I carved before we started. I covered it with foil and a warm damp dishtowel, but by the time it was on the table it was pretty cold. That type of thing. I burned the stuffing, or call it extra crispy. THe gravy was very silky and dark though. I followed Julia Child to the T and it came out as more than the sum of its parts. I got the turkey, a bourbon red, from a farm nearby where they also raise these adorable fainting goats. This summer I brought the boys over there and the lady let them give some miniature baby goats, no bigger than housecats, their bottles of milk. I noticed the beautiful flock of turkeys there, and then found out I could reserve one. So I can say for sure that this turkey was well bred and had a happy life before meeting her doom. (I've decided once again that eating meat is morally untenable, but I still continue to do it. My gesture towards morality is only buying ethically raised, grass fed everything.)
Maybe the piece de la resistance was the pie. I made it starting with a real pumpkin and hand-mashed it, which I think makes such a difference. So much pumpkin pie, which I usually hate, is like orange baby food. I was motivated by a recent incident involving Elias: I was in the other room when I heard a high pitched motor sound from the kitchen. I levitated three feet into the air and ran in full speed– my fear was that Elias had gotten his hands on the blender wand thing, which, let's face it, has an exposed blade. But no, it was just Elias, seated on the counter with the coffee grinder. It needs the lid on to run (although there's a risk he could defeat this security measure if he thought about it, which he will!). SO he was sitting there running it with little coffee inside, and he was also holding a chunk of wood recently shattered by Isaac in his taekwondo test. Was he intending to grind the wood? I don't know. I couldn't figure out the connection between these disparate objects. In any case, he said, "Mommy can you help me? I'm trying to make pumpkin pie and I don't know how!"
I don't know how to tell you this kid, but you're way WAY off. Maybe his ground coffee and wood pie will be all the rage in a couple decades hence. But seeing as he had an obvious interest in the process I got a pie pumpkin (it was so dry though that Ben had to break it open with an awl), baked it, mashed it by hand– not food processor, added ginger and cinnamon, maple syrup, cream and eggs, baked it. It came out so well that even I, a non-pumpkin pie fan, really liked it. It was not orange. It had texture. (Do you pre-bake the crusts yourself? My James McNair book says to, but I've never ever gotten that to work out right.)
Anyway…
Yesterday I had to take a third of an antivert in order to get myself together enough to go out to a nice dinner with Ben's sister and her husband. Grown-up time is such a gift! We had fun, ate well. These days I drink only sparkling water, and still the process of walking across a patterned carpet is very daunting for me. On these questionnaires about dizziness they always ask "Because of your condition do you sometimes worry that people will think you're intoxicated?" Yes.
While I was at vestibular therapy to get my feet cast, the guy needed to look at my gait carefully. He had me walk up and down this line, barefoot, several times. I almost fell once or twice. I swerved far and wide. I joked, "I'm really glad this is not a DUI test! I could never pass!" He said, "That's true." But he was not smiling.
I had a time there in October maybe where things were really looking better. I remember going to the gym and actually doing my biceps curls on the bosu like old times. And I remember Vince saying to me the next day, "We've never seen you look this good. But listen, you WILL have more bad days with this." I tried to brace myself for it, but still this relapse has caught me off guard.
The balance system is so insanely complicated it's a miracle that the human race can walk upright at all. What's wrong with me could be in my brain, my nervous system, my ears, or anywhere in between. It could be weird migraines or a sensory integration problem. I have high hopes that this neurologist that I'm seeing on December 22nd will be the code breaker. But I'm in a cycle of hope and disappointment with these doctors. In the meantime I can only remind myself, it's not life threatening. It's not life threatening. I don't have pain, like so many of the poor souls I meet in physical therapy. I'm not in chemo. I'm just sitting here on a couch in a sunny room that's rocking slightly, like a boat on smooth water.