Words

"You think that I don't even mean a single word I say. It's only words and words are all I have" I used to sing this schleppy song by the Bee Gees to my boyfriend, now husband when I was seventeen. I didn't understand the accuracy then.

I have finally had a moment of clarity, but only after I have left a crazed path of psychotic emails, dramatic weepy phone calls and a pretty fair wine drinking binge. Words are all my brain can decipher even when people talk, I translate their audible conversation to written word in my head. I may get a joke fifteen minutes later, if it's spoken, but text I can compute. So when the diagnosis I had received concretely on my hospital discharge did not match up with what the follow -up appointment with the neurologist and his conversation with Henry Ford Hospital. I just could not accept this. My mind could not process the incongruity and I stood holding out my paper proof, like Oliver Twist and his empty bowl.

"No, no, it says It was the narcolepsy." Right here, I realize hallucination is misspelled as well as sleep, but it is clearly printed under diagnosis

"She didn't mention that at all, just that there was no seizure activity". He stopped for a minute to put on his concerned doctor face. "Did they talk to you about counseling?"

"No, only the sleep doctor." I could feel the heat on my face and my red neck rash turning purple.
He calmly began searching through my records on line. "Yes, you were diagnosed with Narcolepsy in 2008" He kept reading not talking.

Good God, what does it say in that computer, but I reacted like I had rehearsed. I kept thanking him. I had felt so humbled and awed that he referred me to such a wonderful hospital. It was important to know if I really had a seizure disorder and I was very grateful for the testing. This was how I practiced it even though I could feel tears waiting backstage, never pretty in a fifty-three year old balding woman. I could only whisper thank you and reach out to shake his hand good bye. He didn't offer his hand.
THE RIDE HOME
... my brain did the transcription and every insecurity, every doubt, every bit of self-loathing engulfed my nervous system in a cataclysm of uncensored mania. I began sending out messages on the hospital web page to anywhere that I could in a blind hope someone would read them, take pity on my crazed carcass, and call me with some type of reassurance.
How ludicrous, I was responding just the way a person who was in desperate need of counseling would react. I'm taking a break from the medical world, from the pharmaceutical world, from self-medication, and back to sleeping and dreams of magical red birds welcoming me home.