Before the Lights Go Out

by Lyza Fennell | Nov 17, 2024 | Writing

Before the Lights Go Out

The kitchen has trash and recycling strewn all over the floor. Watch your step; there’s glass. You were rageful and in despair. I’m here now. Oh, your Black Dog mug, your favorite, and the Fiestaware? I suppose it’ll break if it’s thrown. The dishes and glasses are haphazard in the dishwasher, but you’ve smashed some glass, so you can’t run the cycle.

I open the basement door and see the laundry basket turned on its side, pouring out your dirty laundry. Shhh, It’s our secret. You sit, I’ll clean, but I’ll make you tea first—Chamomile with local raw honey. I go to the papers and squat down, but my knees ache, so I rest them on the tile floor. Cushioned flooring would be nice but tacky and impractical. You also questioned my ideas.

I start to pick up the papers, bills past due, test results with dirty words written in black permanent marker, and junk mail cluttering up the recycling, like a virus taking over. The broom in the closet.

Soon we are drinking our tea in the comfort of your living room, on your teal blue couch. I remember the story. It was a fight in the store. In the end, you won; in the end, you will win, even if it wasn’t your plan. The tea is nice; its warmth soothes us. You lean back, resting your cup on your lap with one hand, and you laugh, so I laugh. The laughter spills your tea, and then you cry, so I cry. We put our tea on the coffee table and breathe and breathe and breathe.

You got a promotion at work; the money will help, but you only want to climb to the top of your tower and let down your hair. You realize you’ve been wearing it too tight and wonder if that’s where it started. I’m not sure I follow you.

“Keeping up appearances,” you say. And not being true to yourself. You were ready to check out, but not from everything you care about. Those things will stay with you forever, even if pockets full of memories are sewn into your clothes.

The air is warm outside, although the leaves are gone for the season. We climb on the roof; you balance at the top, stating, “I wish I could fly. I would fly away from here.” You reach your arms out, ready.

I cautiously walk over and guide you off the roof. Here we are, grounded again.

You must take care of everything before it’s too late. Where are the subscriptions? You’ll need to cancel or share a list. What are the bills? What, you don’t want to pay bills anymore? I understand, but the lights must stay on. This is your starting point: keeping the lights on.

What do we need to know so that they’ll shine bright even when you’ve left the room? I know you’ve always learned to conserve energy, and you thought you had. But carbon footprints can be evasive, but they’re always there.

Where are your papers? Let’s look through them. Oh, the pictures, the cards, and the journal entries. Let’s leave them for last. You reach for your wedding photo, tracing the happy couple with your pinky finger. The future was yours, and you weathered it, you did. You’re strong or stubborn or both.

You laughed when you found a note from a friend who always said he wanted to cuddle, and you always knew you weren’t the cuddling type. You like to toss around the bed. You always had punch-your-lights-out energy, but you tenderly turned off the lights in your children’s rooms.

You’re reading your journal; it’s OK to cry.

Don’t forget to put all the important papers in one place and do you really need 80 pairs of shoes? Will you ever wear this dress again? Then you told me where you were, how you felt, and why you wore it, and I knew we needed to keep it. You’re not sure minimalism has ever been your style, even in the dark, when the lights go out.

You wondered if you ignored it, it would go away. That’s silly; it was there before you knew it. No. We just adapt, change course, and amend. You stood up and reached up to the ceiling onto your tiptoes, stretching as much as you possibly could. Stretching is good, but the doctor said stretching won’t reset things.

Why you, why not me? I’m hurt, but I know you’re scared. You wanted to wear tutus and pink lipstick and dance around town when you’re 95; you’re wearing your light blue Converse and still flaunting your attitude.

It is what it is. What can we change?

Do your children have passports? Ireland is beautiful in spring. Let’s see what they say; we’ll get you there by plane or cloud, and they’ll never leave your sight.

You ask for an apple; you turn it over in your hand. This light pink fruit kisses your lips as you bite into its flesh. You’ve always been hungry. Satisfaction was always a dangling carrot away.

The doctors ran tests; you never knew you’d wish for something else horrible, but every test that came back negative made you cry. You couldn’t unsee that note in the portal. You always thought you were the shrinking violet, the one behind the scenes, but you’re making everyone stand up and notice now. They’re telling you this is serious, this is complicated. So you visualize another outcome, floating in the air like a balloon until they grab the string and pull you back to the ground.

You spent so long not living, and now you can’t live enough.

Diagnosis: You’re F*cked

by Lyza Fennell | Nov 15, 2024 | Writing

Diagnosis: You’re F*cked

It’s hard to know when it started. Subtle changes can be hard to notice. Looking back, maybe it was when you started coughing when taking sips of water or all of a sudden couldn’t open a bottle. You’ve always been sprightly, capable of almost anything your petite stature could take on: New York, San Francisco, London. You threw yourself into the whirlpool of life, one adventure at a time.

You didn’t realize you were on a new adventure. That day last July, when suddenly, your hands weren’t working. You couldn’t turn the key in your car. Your electric toothbrush refused to turn off. It must have been faulty. Not you. Opening milk bottles became impossible. Tearing open a letter? Forget it.

There must be a reason, you thought. Your intuition told you not to ignore it.

“It could be an impinged nerve or Parsonage-Turner syndrome. Let’s order an MRI and an EMG,” the mediocre doctor said. You looked at him, sizing him up—calm, efficient, entitled. Not the type you’d marry—such uptightness. The kind who leaves work at 5:00 p.m. sharp, gets home, takes off his shoes on a leather bench, and switches to his indoor slippers that have never set foot in the great outdoors. No adventure for those cozy foot coverings. Then he goes to the wine cabinet, pours himself a glass, and listens to calming, classical music. Everything with him is efficient.

The MRI was unremarkable. You began to suspect this was all in your head. Your EMG was unexpectedly painful, with electric zaps on your elbows making you wince. It won’t show anything, you thought.

You couldn’t believe when the doctor mentioned you had “diffuse findings” and pointed out those little twitches: fasciculations, she said. It would take you weeks to spell it correctly, let alone remember its name. She flicked your middle finger, and your thumb did a little dance.

“That’s a Hoffman sign. Your thumb shouldn’t move,” the doctor said. She was warm and friendly, with long, straight, auburn hair put up in a twist. “You need a referral to a neuromuscular doctor. You have issues everywhere, which suggests this is something coming from your brain or spinal cord.”

You always thought your brain was odd, perhaps tap-dancing aliens with typewriters, but you never expected this. When people used to say to you, It’s all in your head, you took that as a mental problem—not a brain problem.

“This could be a sign of a motor neuron disease, but I don’t know how your EDS or autoimmunity factors in,” she said. She told you she’d submit the referral and work on her report. You had a knot in your stomach, and your mind started to race, but the devil on your shoulder said, Be positive.

The following week, you twiddled your thumbs, you bit your lip, you ate coffee ice cream, and convinced yourself it must be something else. Mind over matter. Then the report came. It was pretty meaningless to you, but Chat GPT told you it looked pretty okay.

“Well, I can’t wait to see the specialist and get to the bottom of this,” you said. You always thought something was underlying but assumed it was depression or ADHD.

You were nervous heading into the follow-up with the mediocre doctor who left at 5:00 on the dot. “My geneticist says it’s EDS,” you told him, but he dismissed it. You and the mediocre doctor engaged in friendly conversation, but he seemed clueless, like he didn’t know anything beyond what he learned in medical school.

You felt at ease despite knowing that not just anyone gets a referral to a neuromuscular specialist. You hit the big time now.

“If you can’t get in with the top-notch specialist in the next month or so, I can ask my office mate if she can pull some strings at the local yokel hospital, her husband works there, but I can’t make any promises.” He smiled in his jovial, mediocre way. You noticed his shirt was iron-pressed flat without a crease. You could never get an iron to work that well. Must be the settings, you suggested.

You had the biggest eye roll inside your brain, smiling back at the mediocre doctor with the well-pressed shirt.

“Well, since this is out of my area of expertise, I see no reason to see you again,” he said, his thin lips producing a crooked smile. His eyes must have been brown, but you couldn’t recall, and you didn’t care. “I’ll turn you back to your PCP, and she can coordinate with you.” And just like that, the visit was over. You didn’t learn anything new. It felt like time wasted, like surfing the web.

You left the office, and he returned to his shared office, where he didn’t mention the referral to his officemate. He efficiently dictated his note without checking for typos and errors and moved on to room 27 for the next patient he’d provide mediocre care to, with his crooked smile, possibly brown eyes, and perfectly pressed shirt.

You headed back home and asked me to open the pickles. You were craving salt. You carried on with your day, hoping to get in with a specialist soon to get some answers. Some have waiting lists of 18 months. What the hell is going on with the medical field? 15-minute appointments. Time to go. Next.

Then your phone lit up—a new letter from the mediocre doctor. You logged into the portal and began to read his note. You notice the grammatical errors and have to look up certain terms. Then—you screamed. “No!”

You screamed so loud the neighbors complained. Don’t mind them—you deserved that scream. You weren’t sure what to say out loud, so in your mind, you shot missiles: I’m going to die. I can’t live in my house. My kids, my husband—who will run things? You tried to picture yourself in a different light, but the only light cast was from the mediocre doctor—who, in brown loafers, appeared on your computer screen—and you processed this news alone. You cried; buckets and rivers. You screamed like a colicky baby, or a red fox, or a sonic device. You threw things. The way you did when you were a child having a tantrum because nobody would listen to you. I understand; your pain is real.

How could this be? This was never in my stars. Why did it land here? Maybe a meteor destroyed your star. I’m sorry for the leftovers. This new star is dirty. You questioned your mistakes: Too many drugs drowning out your teenagedom? Thyroid meds failing, causing your TSH to hit 354? Maybe it was your negative attitude, but you insisted you were a realist.

“If it’s not genetic, then it must be something I did myself,” you said as your face tightened and twisted, as quiet tears streamed down your face. But you can’t think that way. That’s demonstrative, and it won’t do you any good, but you insist it must have been something you did. I held you tight; you needed that.

To be continued…