She paused, frowning as if this was still too new a discovery for her. “I’ve never ever told anyone how much . . . I hate this.” The cane moved. “It was about the time I started drinking that I had to start using the cane. At first I actually had to work up the nerve to go out in public with it. It was awful; I was so self-conscious.”
“I know exactly what you mean,” Sandra Little said, surprise making her voice shrill and she blushed. “I had this walker for six weeks before I found the nerve to use it in public. I felt as naked as a jaybird that first time. But you know what?” She looked around the table for answers.
“What?” Pearl asked timidly, not certain she wanted to know.
“No one noticed! Here I thought I was going to be such a spectacle, but everybody was so wrapped up in their own little world, nobody bothered with me.”
Adrienne nodded. “Yes, I think that’s very true. But Nicole, please tell us what happened next.”
“Well. I just kept needing a drink. It wasn’t a physical craving, I knew it wasn’t, but I had to have it. If we didn’t have a few bottles in the house, I’d get edgy. But a few big drinks or several little glasses of wine would take that edge off. Sometimes after I consumed as much as I wanted, I’d get really angry over the least little thing. My kids started avoiding me, saying Mom gets really cranky when she’s had too much to drink.”
She looked around, disbelief wrapping her face and voice. “I couldn’t stop it, but somehow I knew I wasn’t an alcoholic, it was something else. I started questioning why? There were moments when I’d wake up in the middle of the night not remembering how I’d gotten to bed. Or I wouldn’t remember to do something my children had asked me to do. I would feel awful, but by the middle of the day, I’d need a glass of red or white—chardonnay, Chianti, Shiraz, zinfandel, cabernet, merlot, I got to know all the ones I liked. But it didn’t explain the need.”
“You said you didn’t think you were an alcoholic, but did you ever consider that going to AA might help?” Carl wondered, then waited for a small spasm of pain to leave.
“No, I never did. My husband commented a few times that maybe I should cut back. I started hiding things from him,” she admitted.
Adrienne tilted her head and asked, “What finally happened?”
Nicole’s voice got softer and she continued to keep her eyes away from Carl. “Several months ago I started praying. Every day. As I bought my wine, as I drank too much of it, I prayed. I couldn’t understand why God let me have a need like this, such a desire to make the world unfocused every day. There were a lot of moments I was really messed up, but I kept asking and praying. Last month I got my answer—in a dream.”
Elizabeth glanced around and saw that everyone—even Carl—was as captivated as she, waiting to hear more. After a moment, Nicole continued. “In this dream, I was with the husband of one of my dearest friends, and he intimated he was ready to take me up on my offer to have an affair with him.” A hand crept over her heart. “I have never, ever entertained a sexual thought about this man, but in my dream he was insistent that I had approached him, and I realized it must have happened in my, uh, inebriated condition. He got a little angry with me, then I told him something I hadn’t realized myself. I didn’t really understand about alcohol, I mean intellectually I knew it could affect you, but I never felt drunk so I thought I wasn’t. I never felt it impaired anything, but of course it did.
“When he demanded to know why I was drinking so much I said”—she paused, astonishment shining in her eyes—“I said, so I wouldn’t have to see the changes. I wouldn’t have to see the changes.” She repeated the words slowly. “Until that moment, I didn’t realize that emotionally I wasn’t coping with this disease at all. I’ve never admitted to myself that I’ve gotten worse, that I hate what it has done to me. All this time I’ve needed to drink to keep everything fuzzy to . . . handle it. It gave me a buffer, I guess. Well, once I realized why, the desire disappeared. The weight I gained from it, well, it disappeared along with the need.” She shrugged, too shy to look around.
“What a marvelous story. Talk about an answer to prayer. Thank you for sharing.” Adrienne beamed. Even as Nicole received smiles and nods of approval from everyone else, Carl cleared his throat.
“I don’t doubt you believe God gave you that dream, but did you ever consider that your subconscious, which has been working on your question for a year, finally came up with the answer?” It was a reasonable question, but the answer Nicole gave was equally so.
“I can’t speak for anyone else but, frankly, my subconscious just isn’t that smart.”
“Oh.” He realized she was probably right. “I see.”
Adrienne looked around the room. “Has anyone heard from Tammy? The woman whose husband was having a lot of insurance problems?”
Pearl answered with a frown. “They lost everything. They had to move in with her husband’s parents in North Carolina. His lawyer didn’t get the papers filed about the bankruptcy or some such thing. Tammy was not up to talking to me before they left; she was pretty upset.” She shook her head.
“Which is awful for her health,” Adrienne said grimly. She felt helpless and didn’t know of anything else to say and so remained silent, letting others speak.
Although she kept an eye out for Gregory Jamison, he didn’t make it to the meeting that day. Which was just as well. Although she had sounded confident to Elizabeth, Adrienne wasn’t sure if she should say something to him or not. This gave her more of a chance to think about it.
“Boy, she nailed that one!” Carol had just heard Nicole’s story from Elizabeth, although Elizabeth had not used a name. They had arranged to eat together at a Cary Town restaurant and were waiting for their food, taking advantage of the outside patio to enjoy a mild day.
“You think? Is that why you were drinking so much when you got back from California?”
“Emotionally I was a wreck, but I didn’t consciously realize I was using alcohol to stay numb. It just made me feel better. When your reality isn’t pleasant, it’s comforting to keep things fuzzy.” Carol shrugged. “Gordon has had his own emotional lapses, poor guy, but I think we both have a much better handle on things.”
Elizabeth looked thoughtful. “I wonder why I never overindulged? I mean, I think I’ve had some pretty crappy things happen here at midlife, but alcohol holds no allure. Frankly, too much and I go to sleep.”
Carol laughed. “You never needed it because you’re perfect. Remember? You could never disappoint your fan club.”
Elizabeth looked at her strangely. “What do you mean?”
“When we were growing up, do you have any idea how my mother and your mother held you on a pedestal for all the world to see—especially me. ‘Oh, Carol, why can’t you be more like Elizabeth? She would never do such and such; she would never say such and such. Oh dear, why can’t you . . .’ It used to make me want to gag, hearing how all the adults raved about you.”
Elizabeth’s face grew hot. “That’s not true! They never did that, and I was never perfect.”
Carol looked over the tall glass of iced tea she was holding and challenged, “Name one time when you were grounded for doing something awful all by yourself.”
Thoughts raced back in years and Elizabeth could think of numerous occasions of being grounded, but each had Carol involved. Her cousin watched, smug and amused, as flickers of memory danced over Elizabeth’s face. Several times she opened her mouth, only to close it again. “I know it happened; I just can’t come up with anything right now,” she said, irritated. “After all, we are talking about a lot of years here.”
“Keep thinking about it, and call me when you come up with something,” Carol said, maddeningly self-assured.
“Maybe I just handle things differently, is all,” Elizabeth pointed out. “And how can you say I’m perfect? That’s so unfair.”
Immediately Carol became serious. “But you are. You were the perfect child, the perfect teenager—God, that�
��s an oxymoron—and then you even married the perfect man—for you. You had the perfect child, the perfect life, and now you are handling having a dreadful disease, perfectly.”
“Don’t call it a disease; it’s an illness,” Elizabeth murmured, her face distressed. “Disease sounds . . . contagious.”
“Fine, fine, illness, whatever. Same difference.” Carol shrugged and then smiled. “And you’re wonderful. And I love you. So that’s all there is to it.”
The food came and they picked up their utensils and began to eat. Elizabeth was still unhappy about how her cousin had branded her. Then she remembered Virginia Mae and suddenly realized she had always acted in whatever way would make her mother happy. She did the same thing for Michael . . . and Kellan.
She wondered, as she slowly chewed the excellent food that now tasted colorless, if that was why, more and more, she was so unhappy.
They had no plans for the holidays. Michael was gone the month before Christmas; Elizabeth was too tired to mind. She wasn’t volunteering anywhere anymore, just intent on being quiet. She was keeping any energy for herself and knew it was something she had to do.
Later she wondered if perhaps she should have been doing something else. In hindsight, would it have made a difference?
It happened one morning in early December. She woke up, feeling an awful aching in her hands, as if something had crushed them during the night. In a very short time, they started refusing to do what she wanted. Before the day was over she was thanking God that Michael was out of town, because everything got worse. It was only by very carefully watching exactly what she was doing that she’d been able to call Carol.
Hearing the panic in Elizabeth’s voice, her cousin had raced over and immediately taken her to the neurologist’s office. Once there she had demanded the doctor see her cousin.
“I don’t care that we don’t have an appointment; she is in trouble NOW!” Carol’s voice was dramatic, loud, and authoritative. Everyone sitting in the waiting room quickly found out who Elizabeth Whittaker was and that “her hands are not working, she is in pain, she’s not going to wait a week or a month, she has to see Dr. O’Day TODAY!”
Elizabeth was too frightened to be uncomfortable with the scene Carol was making. Besides, it got her in to see the doctor with little wait. Once inside the small examining room, she couldn’t find any words to describe the pain; she had never experienced anything as horrible as this.
The doctor, however, knew exactly what was going on. “Painful paresthesia. I know, burning and freezing, isn’t it? Close your eyes and try to touch your nose.”
Carol’s hands clapped over her mouth as she saw Elizabeth miserably fail such a simple task.
Dr. O’Day’s face held no surprise. “Yes, I can get rid of the pain for you, but you will have to use physical therapy to get back as much dexterity as you can.”
“How long will it take? And will she get everything back?” Carol asked with urgency, anger erupting as the doctor sat back and shrugged. “I don’t know. We will hope for the best.”
It was as unsatisfactory an answer as she had ever heard in her life. But he had already turned to Elizabeth and begun speaking of the therapies available that would perhaps slow down the progression. Progression?
Elizabeth listened intently, clutching her hands together, frantic that this had to be over before Michael returned and before her mother found out.
Although she didn’t understand it at the time, her fear was magnified because she knew she had to keep this hidden from two of the most important people in her life. They would be too upset to see her like this. She had caught sight of Carol’s shocked face, but at the moment she knew she couldn’t do anything about it.
Thank God, Carol had not mentioned herbs or low-fat diets.
Once she was back home taking oral steroids, she consistently tried over and over again to establish communication between her brain and fingers. Over and over again she did the central nervous system exercises. She extended each finger and then curled it into a precise zero touching the tip of her thumb. Over and over and over. It took days before she started to feel a bubbling of hope. At last, she was actually seeing small improvement, a little bit each day.
The lie Carol told Virginia Mae was that Elizabeth had a dreadful cold, one that lingered for several days and then weeks. Her mother seemed content to call her several times to make sure she was mending. Michael also checked in regularly, and Elizabeth assured him each time she was getting better.
She discovered lying was exhausting, but it was what she had to do to get through this. Even though Carol had helped immensely, it was Elizabeth’s decision to see the specialist, her decision to take the medicine, and her decision to start one of the drug therapies.
Her decision, and hers alone. Without Michael’s insistence or her mother’s badgering. Taking control was frightening, yes, but at the same time—empowering.
She wanted to share these thoughts with someone and suddenly remembered Lynne Sears Howard. Elizabeth decided to write her a letter. She flexed her hands again and realized she wasn’t up to using her own penmanship—yet. Refusing to give it any more thought, she turned to the computer and booted it up. At the same time she sent up a prayer of thanks that she could still do this and smiled.
When she was finished, she checked the calendar to see which day she was supposed to see the doctor and start the new therapy. It would be the day before the first support group meeting of the New Year. At the last meeting, they had changed the date to the second Tuesday of each month. Good. She would take an aspirin that afternoon before the shot and then everything should go perfectly. She should be fine, just fine.
Singularly and collectively, she again stretched each finger. Central nervous system exercises—who would have ever thought there were such things?
Chapter Twenty-four
Sandra Little was going to be late on purpose, something that was not in her nature. This would be the fifth support group meeting, the first one of the New Year, and it was going to be a shocker. Today she had a secret that could only be shown and she was shivering with excitement.
At all the other meetings she’d come carrying complaints, lugging around the hopelessness of seeing her MS get worse. This despite being on a therapy that was supposed to slow these bad things down. So they said. In all fairness it had helped her younger cousin immensely. The therapy had kept her running and jumping and working and doing everything a twenty-five-year-old wanted. She often wondered if it was the fact that her cousin had started taking the medicine before there were any problems—was that what made the difference? Sandra had started taking the weekly shots after things had already started breaking down. The difference between her and her cousin usually made her feel sick with envy, but not today. Today she felt like she was on top of the world and could not wait to share the good news.
She giggled to herself. It was almost like she’d had a religious conversion . . . only better.
Her nerves were jangling with impatience and she checked her watch yet again. Twenty more minutes before it even started?
Darn. With muffled derision at having that second cup of coffee, she headed for the restroom for a third trip and hoped it would be the last. At the very least, it would eat up some time.
Thirty minutes later, she edged toward the closed door and reached for the handle. Taking a deep breath and wishing her stomach wasn’t fluttering like a tangle of hummingbirds (which were the meanest creatures God every made), Sandra Little squared her shoulders and yanked open the door.
She strode in briskly, legs strong and steady, arms swinging in perfect rhythm from side to side and felt every pair of eyes on her. “Sorry I’m late.” Her voice was high and breathless and she finally made it to the chair but instead of sitting down, she stood there with a hand on the chair and smiled like a lit-up Christmas tree. She was show-and-tell today, although no one knew it until she walked in.
Mouths dangled open. Shocked faces stared. Ev
eryone leaned toward her, trying to fathom the sight. All of them knew the score: A person with a chronic, degenerative disease does not get better.
Finally, Adrienne found her voice. “Sandra?”
Sandra’s satisfied grin split even wider, and she pirouetted gracefully before bowing deeply, “Ta-dah!”
Spontaneous applause and questions erupted as Sandra Little, the star of today’s show, finally sat down.
Adrienne finally hushed everyone by putting fingers in her mouth for an earsplitting whistle. Elizabeth stuck her hands over her ears. “I didn’t know you could do that,” she marveled.
Adrienne didn’t even spare her a glance but kept her eyes on Sandra. “Sandra Little. Explain. Immediately. How on earth did this happen?”
The small woman leaned forward and let her eyes race over all the eager faces. “You will never guess in a million years what I did.”
Impatiently, Adrienne agreed. “You’re right. And you won’t be so unkind as to make us try. Now tell.”
Sandra took a deep breath, brought her hands in front of her and clasped them. “Two weeks ago, my neighbor came to see me and saw that I wasn’t doing well at all. I had been lying on my sofa all day, I was sooooo tired.” She suddenly glanced at Elizabeth. “Don’t you get blasted tired of saying how tired you are all the time?” She waited for Elizabeth’s quick nod and then continued. “Well, my friend took one look at me and left, saying she’d be right back. Did I tell you we’ve known each other since the first grade? She is my dearest and closest friend. She wanted to do something for me.” She paused for a quick breath.
“Sometime today, please, Sandra,” Adrienne impatiently prompted.
“Sure. Well, she came back and brought me a joint. And I smoked it.” She sat back proudly.
Adrienne frowned. “Is that all? You haven’t done anything differently?”
Sandra leaned toward her with an urgent voice. “What I think is this. You know I’m taking one of the therapies for my MS? Well, after I smoked about half a joint, I started feeling different. And before my husband got home for dinner that same night, I didn’t need the walker. I did not need a cane. I started walking a little faster, Heck, I went outside and ran to the mailbox. And back! I had such a good time doing that I kept on doing it until I got a stitch in my side. It was glorious! I waited a few minutes and then did it all over again. The last run I made, my husband drove into the driveway and about had a heart attack. His mouth dropped to the ground and when he reached me I started doing jumping jacks—just cause I could. He about passed out.”
A Sundog Moment Page 24