Son of the absent-minded professor

I’m standing in the kitchen, but I haven’t a clue why I’m there. Again.

I mean, I got up out of bed and came in here for some reason, obviously. I scratch my head distractedly and dislodge a few scabs. Crap! I’m supposed to leave those alone. I try a mental checklist. Am I hungry? No. Am I thirsty? No. Did I need a cup of coffee? A glass of wine? No and no. Defeated, I wander back to bed, clueless about the mission I set out on less than a minute before.

This is my new reality. As my body heals, my mind dissolves. Probably, I’ve been out of my mind for a bit, but was just too sick to notice it. Now I’m well enough to be alarmed by it.

My short-term memory is absolute shit. I’m very easily distracted. I forget to calibrate my CGM, and often leave it behind in various parts of the house. Rather alarmingly, I frequently forget to take my insulin, both basal and at meals, with the expected results.

I can’t read because I lose track of where I am on the page, or I spend an hour re-reading the same paragraph without retaining the words. Other times I simply can’t make sense of the words that are in front of me.

The same thing happens when I try to process conversations, especially ones with more than one thought, or options to choose from. Please don’t ask me if I want a hotdog or a hamburger; the question is just too confusing. In the middle of conversations I forget what I’m talking about. I’m like one of those talking dogs in the Pixar movie Up that stops and shouts “Squirrel!” in mid-sentence.

Writing takes much more effort now. I guess I took it for granted how easily it used to come to me. Words, sentences, paragraphs used to flow from my mind to my fingertips, dancing on the  keyboard to form completed stories. Now I struggle for hours and doubt every phrase.

Oh, but it gets worse. Scarier, anyway. Packages arrive in the mail for me that are items I apparently bought on eBay. But I have no recollection of buying them.

Earlier this week, I tried to drive to town. It was a horrifying experience. Just keeping the car on the two-lane country road was overwhelming—too much sensory data to keep track of. Ten minutes was more than I could handle. I had to stop and let my 88-year-old mother take over.

Oh, and then there’s that stomach thing.

As the blisters slowly scabbed over, then melted away, like dirty snow on the side of the freeway succumbing to the returning sun, my arms were left covered with little scars that looked like a school of baby squid had attacked me. My legs are still a mass of scabs and I still fall asleep easily, but otherwise I’m healing well.

Sorry. What was I talking about?

Oh, yes. It’s easier with a written page where you can just look back and find where you went astray. An odd symptom showed up as the rest of my body began to heal. Or maybe like the whirr of a fan that’s drowned out by a blaring TV, it was there all along but now that the TV is turned down I can hear it. There is something wrong with my gut.

I’m not swollen or bloated. I eat and eliminate just fine and yet… And yet…

It’s hard to describe but I’ll bet this is what if feels like to be pregnant. There’s a constant pressure on my diaphragm. I can’t say if it’s pressure or pain. A little of both. I can’t lie on my side. I can’t tell if it’s from my lungs pressing down or my intestines pressing up.

It’s bilateral, the same on both sides, which, while odd, is also oddly reassuring. Liver stuff would be more right-sided. Spleen left. Appendix would be sharp pain, as would gallbladder or pancreatitis.

It got freaky enough that even though it was Debbie’s day off, I asked her to take me to the clinic. It had been 23 days since I’d last set foot in the building and instead of feeling home-like and embracing, it was strangely alien. I spent some time in “my” office, but it didn’t feel very me at all. It was strangely sterile. I felt like I was party-crashing someone else’s space. This is the place I spend the bulk of my time? Seriously? Funny, I can’t picture myself working here at all.

It was nice to see my co-workers—at first. I say that because they all said, “Hey it’s great to see you again!” Followed immediately by, “Wow, you really look like shit!”

I had actually been feeling a little better, but after hearing that 18 times, I was ready to go back to the ER.

But what for? To say I’d become an absent-minded professor with a bowling ball in my stomach?

Amway, I only remember snippets of that doctor’s visit—so this is third-hand from my wife—who was there at the time and has talked to my doctor several times since. This is his theory as I understand it, but he was quick to point out we have woefully little data on chickenpox in 50-year-olds, much less chronically ill ones, so the exact course of the disease is not well documented. But we do know that chickenpox can get inside. Oh, not in your mouth—although that happens, and I pity any poor soul that’s suffered through that. I mean that your internal organs can get covered with the pox like your skin does. Viruses. Those little fuckers get everywhere. But it makes sense, after all, chickenpox isn’t a skin disease. It’s a systemic infection that manifests itself via a skin rash—or maybe a rash on the lining of my diaphragm as well.

Of course the only way to know for sure is if I have an unfortunate encounter with a samurai sword. (Hey, it could happen—but let’s hope not—the last month has sucked enough.)

Moving on, did I tell you about the headaches last time? Those I remember. In fact, the first week of the illness I remember. It’s the last three weeks that are largely completely blank with little fragments of memory, some of which are apparently real and others of which were apparently dreams. Deb has been providing the reality checks for me.

“Yes, you did go to the ER by yourself the second time.”

“No, we didn’t go to University Hospital.”

“If Bill Clinton did come to visit you, I missed it.”

Really?

Wow. This must be what it’s like to get Alzheimer’s. Scary and sobering.

Hmmm…? Oh. The headaches. For days I had headaches. Not migraines. Not throw yourself off a cliff or in front of a train headaches. Just garden-variety annoying as hell headaches that did not respond to ibuprofen. Even the big 800 milligram babies did nothing to touch them.

My ‘pox discharge instructions from my second ER visit clearly said to return ASAP if I got headaches.

Chickenpox or the egg? Which came first?

I had told the folks in the ER about the headaches but I don’t remember if it was the triage nurse, attending nurse, or the ER doc I told—and I don’t recall if it was the first team or second team I discussed it with. Anyway, I decided that if the headaches got worse I’d go back. Then everything got so much worse…

Anyway—with the clarity of hindsight, my doctor is now convinced I did not completely duck the bullet when it comes to the scary side effects of adult chickenpox (and now I also know that there was some generalized worry at work that I would not pull through).

The stomach thing—he thinks—is the aftermath of internal organ involvement of the chickenpox. No lasting harm that he can detect via physical exam and lab work—but the impact of it is like being punched in the stomach by Popeye the Sailor Man.

Well, 500 miniature Popeyes.

The prescription: Watchful waiting to see if it worsens or improves. I perceived that it had been getting worse, but now I think it’s stabilizing.

Except… Except… Well, except I can’t really think at all!

And that, dear readers, seems to be a “gift” of my next major complication of adult-onset chickenpox: Encephalitis, a swelling of the brain. In clinical hindsight, there’s good evidence that my headaches were caused by my brain swelling from the body-wide attack of the virus.

I guess I had chickenpox on the brain.

Anyway, if your throat swells up, no big deal. So long as you can still breathe, that is. If your ankles, knees, liver, or even your heart swells, the body can compensate. The body is flexible. But your brain lives in a rock-hard shell of bone only slightly larger than it is. If your size 9 brain swells to size 11 inside your size 10 skull—you have a problem. A big problem. Encephalitis can kill you. It can also cause brain damage. Do I have brain damage?

I’m sorry. What was the question again?

But seriously, how would you know? I think the fact that I know I’m not right is a good sign. My doctor told Debbie he thinks it’s more like a concussion. He told her it’s like I fell down and smacked my head on the concrete. Six times. In a row. Really fast. That analogy I can remember!

So I can’t think right. I have no short-term memory. I can’t read. I can barely stay awake for more than a few hours. Hell, even driving is a challenge. How the fuck am I going to practice medicine? Being a diabetes educator is a bit like being a firearms instructor. It’s my job to teach people how to safely handle potentially deadly medicines. The thought that I might screw it up terrifies me.

I’ve always loved my work, but right now I’m afraid to do it.   

I get calls and emails from work. When are you coming back? I don’t know, I say. But what I’m thinking is: I don’t know if I will. I don’t know if I can.

Scarred by a school of baby squid. Beat up my miniature singing sailors. My head pummeled repeatedly into the sidewalk. It’s a hell of a way to start a new year.

Not that I remember a new year, but my wife says it happened. Hey, baby, are you sure Bill Clinton didn’t drop by? OK. If you say so.

Ummmm…. Hey, you wouldn’t happen to know why I’m standing here in the kitchen, would you?