Okay Fine Whatever

by Courtenay Hameister

  “I think this is probably being caused by your anxiety,” he added. “But let’s schedule a neurological test anyway, just to be sure.”

  He was referring to a four-hour neuropsychological evaluation involving remembering stories, numbers, words, and shapes; it’s apparently quite accurate in determining whether there’s something degenerative at play. Since it’s such a long test, it often takes a couple of months to schedule one.

  He recommended the test in March, and by June, I still hadn’t heard a word from the scheduling team, even after calling repeatedly.

  But I handled the wait with great aplomb.

  Or—the opposite of that.

  Each morning I would get up, and the first word that escaped my already-fretful mind would set off my nerves, but instead of just the usual quiet, nagging unease, I’d walk through the day with a crippling emotional buzzing that distanced me from every detail of my life. It was like living behind bulletproof glass but if the guy with the gun was in there with me. And of course, with more pervasive worry came more word-finding issues, which would then increase the anxiety tenfold until I was just a walking ball of electrified wires.

  But I still needed to go to work, and I still needed to try to hang out with my friends and my semi-new boyfriend of five months like a normal person.

  Much of my life felt like those moments after smoking weed with my workmates. It was like I was in a movie scene where people were talking but I couldn’t hear them; I could only see their mouths moving in slow motion while my brain whirred out of control.

  “You look cute today.”

  Thanks. I’m probably dying.

  “Do you have the show rundown finished?”

  I would, except that my brain isn’t working anymore and I’ll never have a job again and then I’ll die.

  “Do you want to go out or cook tonight?”

  Let’s cook because I won’t be able to do it for much longer and then we’ll have to break up because we just started dating and you’re not going to want to start feeding me and reminding me of what medications to take and doing that thing Ryan Gosling did in The Notebook where you write the whole history of our relationship of five months in a, well, notebook, because there wouldn’t be that much in it except for a lot of sex and us going to comedy shows and me peeing on your floor.

  One Saturday in May, after a particularly difficult memory week, some things went sideways at a Live Wire! show. I’d screwed up the seating for some important guests, a cooking segment I’d produced had proven far more complicated than I’d imagined, and I wasn’t feeling confident about an essay I was about to perform. This was all pretty standard stuff that normally I’d just deal with, move on, and chalk up to another night in the glamorous world of public radio. But during that period, I was starting each day frazzled, so by the time the show began that evening, I was already on the bumpy road to full-on decompensation.

  Adding to my agita was the fact that #28 had come to see the show, as he had every show since we started dating, and I wasn’t thrilled at the prospect of reading my essay and embarrassing myself in front of him. Some may ask, “After what happened in his kitchen, how could anything you did onstage possibly be worse?” You’d be surprised at how much more humiliating bombing onstage can feel compared to a nice, intimate pants-peeing. Just take your last mortifying incident—say, getting caught by another driver picking your nose. Now imagine that was a clown car filled with hundreds of people. It feels a little worse, right?

  I sat at the producers’ table, and as the show progressed, the urge to cry kept popping up at inopportune moments, like during a stand-up comic’s set or when Luke was doing his monologue or right before I read my essay. The show had just moved to Revolution Hall, a much larger venue than we’d been in the previous season, and the producers’ table sat in front of seven hundred and fifty audience members, as did the stage I stood on to perform my essay. So during the show, I was protected by the natural human disinclination toward self-mortification. My essay went fine, as it always did—a fact my brain never seemed to learn even after over a decade of performing them.

  To my great relief, the tears didn’t come. That is, until the show ended. They came at the exact moment the band started playing the theme music. It was as if that was the floodgate-opening cue. There was nowhere for me to go. The theater was filled with fans, cast, crew, and, even worse, guests whom I couldn’t let see me like this.

  I managed to get out of the building through a side door. I ran to my car and got in, sobbing.

  I wasn’t crying because of a few fuckups during the show, I was crying because every single day for months I had been imagining losing myself—imagining that I would soon forget every detail of my life and every person in it that ever meant anything to me—and I’d finally cracked. I sat there, drenched in tears and regret and sorrow I hadn’t allowed myself to feel all this time because I couldn’t have functioned inside it all.

  I started the car and left #28 at the theater.

  I got a few blocks away and got a text from him.

  Did you just pull an Elvis? Did you leave the building?

  I texted him back.

  I’m so sorry. I’m sobbing and it’s not pretty and I don’t want you to see me ugly-cry.

  Let me be clear: If #28 had just up and left me at an event we were both attending, it would’ve been a break-uppable offense in my mind—at least, immediately after it happened. It was just so overly dramatic.

  He was more understanding.

  Okay. Well, text me when you get home and we’ll talk about it. Drive safely.

  I’d finally reached a point where the thing I’d been hiding from him for three months had gotten so bad that it was now most definitely un-hideable.

  My boyfriend had a history of relationships with…complicated women, and I didn’t want to be another one, which was why I’d downplayed my fears since March.

  I’d let him know what they were but didn’t tell him that my anxiety was overwhelming and pervasive. That it colored almost every day and every experience. That my fear that I had some degenerative brain disease was the reason I hadn’t told him that I loved him.

  Five months in, that felt to me like a deal breaker.

  When I got home from the show, #28 and I talked on the phone, and even though I didn’t deserve it because I was a giant boyfriend-leaving asshole, he calmed me down. He knew a lot about anxiety and depression meds due to his experience with his family and exes.

  He was being kind and caring and understanding, but I thought maybe he was just waiting until I wasn’t in crisis to dump me. I was sure he had to be thinking, How the hell did this happen again? Is nut job my type?

  The next day, I put my relationship problems on the back burner and e-mailed my neurologist to let him know my symptoms seemed to be worsening. He said that due to the length of the test and staffing issues, the test scheduling was just going to take however long it took, but if I wanted to rule out certain pressing issues, I could get an MRI.

  Ruling out pressing issues sounded like a hoot.

  So I scheduled an MRI for the following week at 6:30 in the morning.

  The day of the appointment, in the most Valley of the Dolls moment of my life, I woke up at 5:45 a.m. and immediately took a Xanax.

  Xanax is a benzodiazepine and is dangerously addictive, but when you’re having a mild anxiety attack, it’s like perspective in a pill. Once you’ve taken it, all those thoughts that used to be racing are now sitting quietly drinking tea and reading the latest Nordstrom catalog.

  This wasn’t a mild anxiety attack, though. I was still the aforementioned ball of electrified wires, but the Xanax helped to keep the voltage below about two hundred.

  My brother came to pick me up at 6:15 and we drove out to the hospital in Clackamas, a suburb of Portland that’s just as uncharming as its hard-consonant-filled name suggests.

  I put on a gown and went into the room with the machine.

  The MRI is a hi
ghly advanced machine that creates a strong magnetic field (about a thousand times as strong as a fridge magnet) and uses radio waves to give doctors a 3-D image of what’s happening all up in your business.

  It looks like a giant doughnut with a tongue.

  I lay down on the tongue and the two technicians, Ashley and Rick, talked me through what was going to happen. The tongue would pull the top half of my body inside the doughnut (my words, not theirs) and the machine would make mechanical noises for about twenty-five minutes.

  Rick asked me if I was claustrophobic.

  Of course I’m claustrophobic, Rick. What kind of generalized anxiety sufferer would I be if I wasn’t? I’m not an underachiever, you dick.

  I just said yes.

  I’d seen people on TV get MRIs and it always seemed strange to me to be claustrophobic when half of your body was out in the open and you could see the rest of the room from where you were lying. It was like freaking out because you were afraid of heights on the first floor.

  Rick put my face into a plastic mask attached to the machine to keep my head from moving. That triggered a mini-freak-out, but it didn’t last. It did make me think that Hannibal Lecter would’ve skated through an MRI. Just another thing to add to his large list of accomplishments.

  “Okay, Ashley’s going to press a button now, and that will pull you into the machine,” Rick said. “Just let us know if you have any issues.”

  The tongue started moving and I was eased into the doughnut hole, an experience that would’ve been welcome in a Wonka-like dream (especially if it was a chocolate glazed) but was now presenting a problem.

  Nope. No. No-no-no-no-no-no-no-no-no. Oh no.

  “I need to get out,” I said as coolly as possible.

  “Okay, she’s reversing it, just stay calm,” Rick said.

  What. The. Actual. Fuck, brain?

  How was that scary? There were two feet between my head and the wide-open space of the hospital MRI room, but that didn’t preclude my thinking, Push that fucking reverse button, Ashley, because I will claw my way out of this miracle of modern medicine if I have to.

  I didn’t have to—Ashley got me out and asked impatiently if I had access to more Xanax. I could tell Ashley had met more than her share of MRI scaredy-cats and wasn’t having any of this.

  My brother handed me another Xanax and I chewed it so it would work faster. Rick and I waited for the new Xanax to kick in while Ashley mentally gave me the finger.

  After about twenty minutes, we tried again. Rick said he would stay by my side and he was rubbing the top of my knee, which sounds creepy, but I think they do it so you’ll have a physical reminder of the outside world while in the machine.

  I got pulled back in and seemed almost okay with it this time.

  And that’s when the noises started.

  As the huge magnets whirred around the machine, they made a high-pitched, repetitive buzzing, like someone was using the world’s largest hair trimmer on a giant. That went on for about five minutes before it stopped, and the loud, droning alarm started.

  Are we at DEFCON 1? Because if I remember my WarGames correctly, this is definitely the sound of DEFCON 1.

  Nope. Apparently, that’s just another MRI sound.

  That ended, and the next sound you’re supposed to be cool with was cued up, sort of a thump, drag, thump, drag, like a zombie in leg irons approaching.

  Am I being punk’d? Rick? Did my brother put you up to this? Because this is hilarious…ly cruel.

  Then more repetitive buzzing, then whack-whack-whack-clang, whack-whack-whack-clang, bump, buzz, whack, clang-whack, Are you fucking kidding me whack-clang with this clang-whack shit?

  At this point my fear was overtaken by comic glee. (This may have coincided with more of the Xanax kicking in.)

  I pictured Ashley in her booth with a bunch of Foley artists with jackhammers, chains, leaf blowers, and DEFCON 1 buzzers, and she was conducting them like an Orchestra of Unsettling Sounds.

  So modern medicine has come up with a way for doctors to see into our bodies, but in order for them to do it, patients have to experience what it’s like to be inside a running airplane engine.

  Twenty-five minutes and 456 fucked-up noises later, I emerged from the machine into the real world.

  I gave Rick and Ashley a closed-mouth smile that said, I’m really sorry. I know it’s illogical, but so are a lot of things. Have you ever seen a narwhal?

  So that was the end of the waiting-to-get-the-MRI anxiety.

  Now there was just the anxiety of waiting for the results.

  About a week later, I got them.

  I was shopping with my mother at Bath and Body Works when the e-mail came. I told her the results over a mahogany teakwood candle, which made the moment all the more special.

  Clean. No abnormalities, no brain tumor.

  As my mother drove me home from our relief-induced candle binge, I did a cursory search on what an MRI can reveal about degenerative brain diseases. Evidence of Alzheimer’s generally doesn’t show up on a scan until the disease is pretty far advanced. So after all that, the only thing the MRI had ruled out was a brain tumor, and I was happy about that for fifteen minutes before starting to worry again about what my failing brain might mean.

  Once again, welcome to GAD, where happiness is fleeting and holy shit, does this mole look like it’s grown to you?

  This battle with my brain continued until mid-July, when I finally had my four-hour neurological test.

  The test was nerve-racking, what with the future of my brain hinging on the results. It was a long series of puzzles and stories and numbers I needed to repeat back, and as I was taking it, I was sure I was failing miserably. But even though I went through the entire test in the throes of my ongoing anxiety, according to the results, I was fine.

  I did have mild aphasia, but apparently, it wasn’t due to a degenerative brain disease. It was probably due to GAD.

  My obsession about dementia was most likely because the stress of my impending job shift had triggered my OCD, almost exactly on schedule. Just like the previous two episodes, this one happened around a huge change I needed to make in my life but was avoiding. It’s a strange thing when your unconscious mind knows you need to do something before your conscious mind does. Also strange to have your brain essentially attack you to force you to make that change.

  This episode created intrusive thoughts saying that my brain was dying on me, and the horrible thing about this fear was that I couldn’t counteract it with logic.

  In past OCD episodes, my fear was always that I’d already hurt someone or that I would hurt someone, like I’d randomly grab a knife or a gun and suddenly do something I’d never had the impulse to do before, something that went against everything that I was and that I believed in. I could reason those fears away with simple questions: Have I ever attacked someone with a knife before? Do I want to do something like that now? Am I a psychopath? (That last one is a little hard to decide for oneself, but since I believe I’m an empathetic person and I didn’t watch American Psycho and think, Well, he seems like a nice young man. I wonder if he’s single, I felt like it was safe to assume that the answer to that one was a no.)

  But this dementia fear was much more problematic. The symptoms listed online for the diseases I was concerned I had actually supported my neuroses instead of counteracting them. This is why I’m sure doctors wish the internet had never been invented. It’s like throwing gas on a smoldering log. A really, really irrational smoldering log. And while it wasn’t likely that I was suffering from one of these diseases, it also wasn’t completely out of the question in the same way that, say, me grabbing a knife and stabbing my roommate was.

  Thankfully, once I got my test results, my brain decided to stand down. After one last gasp of a two-day freak-out when I went off the Xanax, I stopped worrying that I had a degenerative brain disease.

  But I learned something from a psychiatrist about generalized anxiety disorder during my
three-month stay in Stress Central. I learned that when you have it, even if you’re not feeling anxious, your anxiety is free-floating, just hanging around waiting for something to attach to.

  I knew that from now on, I needed to manage my anxiety or it would blossom into OCD episodes whenever I went through a big life change like moving, getting a new job, or a death in the family. Not exactly ideal times to have massive, crippling anxiety.

  I also knew that what I had to offer #28 might not have been a girlfriend with a degenerative brain disease, but it was a girlfriend with a mental illness that she’d have to manage for the rest of her life.

  We were watching the first season of Fargo on his couch when I told him that my tests had come back okay.

  “Well, that’s great!” he said, taking my hand.

  “It is great,” I said. “I’m relieved, for sure. But my doctor does think that my constant ruminating was probably due to another OCD episode. And it probably won’t be my last one.”

  “Well, there are ways to treat OCD, right?” he asked.

  “Sure,” I replied. “Medication, cognitive behavioral therapy. Exercise. The usual.”

  He shrugged. “That seems doable,” he said, looking into my eyes and not running or screaming or running and screaming.

  I looked at him closely.

  “It does,” I said. “It does seem doable.”

  He bent his head down and kissed my hand. “I’m so glad you’re okay,” he said. “I knew you were really worried. I hated that.”

  He didn’t seem fazed. Of course, he may have been fazed but pretending not to be. (I don’t want to disillusion anyone, but people in relationships sometimes lie.)

  Whether he was fazed or not, his response wasn’t to pull away from me.

  He pulled me closer. He let me know he was just as relieved as I was that my brain wasn’t going to die any time soon and he didn’t seem to mind that it was a little broken.

  I felt a surge of love for him caused by what was, on the surface, nothing.

  I loved him because nothing changed. He looked at me with the same eyes and held me exactly as tightly as before. He had learned my Worst Thing and his response was basically I’m so sorry you have that Worst Thing and that it brings you pain. Now, what should we have for dinner?