A YEAR AGO TODAY

So I sit and wait for a call from Doctor Ranjan.
I don’t want the call. I want to continue in the warm bath of ambiguity. If I don’t know, it’s not really happening. Mostly I feel like it’s not really happening.

When I see those doctors (doctors like Dr. Ranjan) there is some private, stubborn, proud part of me, telling me that they are wrong, I am fine, I have been in scrapes before and it’s worked out. I am a loner, a survivor, self reliant even if it hurts me. It feels better (in the end) to be able to be bitter if I choose. No studied gratefullness here.

Dr. Ranjan and the other doctors seem to be almost excited by my symptoms, like I’m a rare species that a graduate student in anthropology has the opportunity to witness... at last! (Or) like I’m a lazy participant on "the Antiques Road Show" with a unique piece of pottery worth thousands, yet it has no interest for me. Kindly take if off my hands and let me get out of here.

When I visit Dr. Ranjan (up at Columbia Presbertian on 168th Street in upper Manhattan) the building is tired and smelly and depressing. There is a support staff of irritable African American New York City girls who take zero pity on me, which I enjoy. The white middle aged doctors that walk by give me a solemn warm closed lip smile that offers, I know why you’re here, I’m sorry you’re here, but… welcome youngish victim.

I think... (I have no interest in your kind politeness).

Like naive criminals on their first day in jail I think, (you don’t know me. You think I’m going to be sticking around here? I live to be unstuck).

My brain. My spirit? My ethos. Whatever is that makes me, believes all of this will go away.

I want to make plans. I'm of course. overwhelmed. If I was confused about my life before, I am now so puzzled all I can think to do is... pick up after myself, read novels, and eat.

I had been drinking wine (nightly) but I realized that it was exhausting me. I always drink too much.
It used to be the hang overs. Now, I just can’t seem to get out of a funk of sleepiness. So wine is not a good choice.


I went to see "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" last night. It was enjoyably dopey, hollywood clichés and derivative, especially apparent when you look at the original short story (I skimmed it online late last night). But Brad Pitt is gorgeous sometimes. And all those millions of dollars to make pretty pictures. (The old age make-up just kills the purity of the film and story telling).

This is a movie that may find an appreciative audience, years later.

I did relate to the Benjamin Button. I feel like an outsider who is aging the wrong way and is doomed to a sad and lonely ending. (And like the character of Benjamin I like a good adventure). I loved seeing Brad Pitt get better and better looking, and the love scenes on the beaches of Key West were hot. Brad is appealing because he is gorgeous and so available to women. He is a cute, manly, charmer that only a girl could truly appreciate. He represents the best of the fantasy of having (a sexy boyish available boyfriend). He can’t help how well he moves, or how his expression might contain just the right amount of manliness, vulnerability, cool charm and sweet sexiness. He's channeling Paul Newman, Robert Redford AND Steve McQueen.

I think that Brad Pitt is a bit studied in his behavior, if he hadn’t become a movie star, he might have been just a cute, twinkly eyed dad. But maybe ALL those stars are making up that super, cool, handsome behavior.

As I sit in the movie theatre watching Brad (who I met once before he became a big star... he was nice) I have the foolish idea that I could be him with just the right diet, work-out guru, and glamorous circumstances. In a rough hewn cottage in the Keys, my shoulders would widen, my smile would charm, MY FEET would slip over a motor cycle just like Brad's.

I have to remind myself, I have to REPEAT to myself that I have a disease.
And it’s a terrible disease.


I might go to the Keys and act like Brad Pitt, but then (later) my life will be shit.

Maybe that's why the movie was giving me comfort, the idea of seizing adventure and living for the moment because (after all) we ALL end up reduced to diapers. In my case, my aging is speeded up not going backwards like it did for Benjamin Button.

Still, there IS the doom, the feeling of knowing that it will be difficult.


For now, thinking about it doesn't much move me, because I still have to figure out a way to pay the rent, to enjoy my surroundings, to nurse my resentments. To figure out... what?

I guess I could call Dr. Ranjan to make an appointment to see them.
They must have the results from my spinal tap, it’s been over two weeks.
But I want to deny this thing.


I have a problem taking on stressful confrontations because the results seem so finite to me.
And because the results may be stuck in my head (running round and round) for years.

Months?

So I wait for them to call me. As if it is an act of aggression on their part.
And what’s the big idea anyway? There's no treatment so why is there an entire floor devoted to it at Columbia Presbyterian? I guess there are other diseases they work on, but still, who are these people that want to study it?

I wonder if they must be a tad gleeful to get new clients into their empty offices.

When I go to their offices on 168th street, I'm the only patient in the hallways, their shabby examing rooms... for hours. And Dr. Ranjan seems to have this terribly, flexible schedule. These hyper special neurologists seem to have the opposite problems of other doctors, time on their hands.

A friend suggests it's because the disease is so rare.

I am a rare bird.
A rare bird who is "not to get down or despondent".