A Day After Coming Home From Your Second Hospital Stay In a Month

“Your” leg stopped working mid show in 2023 and they had to operate to un-trap the nerves.

You danced the show after.

This was then but… now? Now, just a day after coming home from your second hospital stay in a month, you find yourself face with a new symptom you’ve never felt before (except for handful of times it’s been happening this year and you told yourself it was the flu): worsening cervical spine symptoms.

Do “you” know this for a fact? Know. You don’t get a paycheck like the doctor’s do. But can you assume, given that you’ve had one cervical disc fully replaced a few years ago when it herniated, and know another “bulge” (ew) is visible on scans? Sure, maybe. But you put it out of your mind. Until your symptoms got worse this time, and you found yourself at a complete standstill, trying to work (currently, writing), work (setting dance back into gear. Don’t worry: As my health will never fully be cured, living WITH this sh*t is the only option, so complaining about horrible side effects is a way of letting off steam, not a means to stop the train), and parenting (which is work we also don’t get paid for, despite its rewards).

It was hard to drive my car home- which had been left hours away at the hospital when I’d been admitted. It was hard to type this column in every sense of the word. Every. Single. Word. See these silly words here? They hurt, they ached; their hopefulness, it harmed.

Shoulders that feel numb, nerves that twitch like spiders crawling down my neck and back, and pain that renders every sensation as if Novocaine (sadly, not the kind sung by The Eels) were injected into my upper body. How does one text friends back when speech to text still requires phone holding at persnickety angles? How does one thank friends and show gratitude for a world that somehow still see’s something in her, when the mere act of reply - in an odd, new, strange world like this- hurts.

This too (if my mother is right) shall pass… But behind it, a new fear of the next riptide, taking text interactions and “hellos” to friends and columns and thrice-implied work responsibilities (privileges!) away… Or, in the least, as now, make them so hard it feels like typing through a bee swarm.

So what now? It’s 2024 and you just survived 2 back-to-back back surgeries. Tara from ‘Dance Academy’ broke a part of her back and had some screws put in, and you have 2 fake discs, 2 “cages”, a multi level fusion, 4 screws and 2 bolts; through pelvis, through spine… and all in 1 week’s time. A second opinion to fix the failed fusions, finally. The right hands. The right call. But where is your marble to blame?

And will it ever end? Other discs look awry on scans- protrusions and degeneration and curvatures still there. But you have to look at all the plot-lines that say broken backs and robot parts “can’t dance” and put one foot in front of the other.

A terrified mind waiting for the next marble…

But the marble is you.

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