Schrödinger’s Cat Develops a Tic

I can no longer remember the year I became paralyzed; the year I went to bed with a severe backache, then awakened to the realization my legs no longer worked. I tried so hard to forget. It must be some twenty years now.

 

After the hospital stay, the disbelief, the mourning and finally the acceptance, I truly tried to make the best of my life’s awful turn. I re-qualified for my profession and finished my career.

 

I joined a gym to strengthen my abilities. It helped but the gym began to change out old equipment for new whose configuration now prevented my access. I left with a torn tendon in each shoulder which the osteopathic surgeon claims he cannot repair. A painful nightly reminder when I attempt to sleep with my arms under my pillow.

 

Circumstances favoured my move back to my hometown. Previous posts outline my search for a family doctor. Four doctors in five years to be precise. Does no one remain in family practice for long? The profession has a revolving door.

 

Sent for a colonoscopy, I was already on the gurney with a line in my arm when the clinic declined to continue; they discovered I had cardiac fibrillation. That was news to me. Numerous tests followed that summer. Beta-blocker increased; blood thinner added. I was sent home.

 

Covid followed but I dodged that viral bullet.

 

April 6-7, 2022: Massive excruciatingly painful spasms for two full nights. My right leg repeatedly tried to tear itself from my hip joint. I screamed in the night. Doctors yawned and sent me home for rest. I no longer had the tautness, the stability to climb into our family vehicle. Additional independence was lost and has not returned. I’m now housebound.

 

I had the foresight to sign onto our local disability transport provider prior to April 2022. A ride can be booked no earlier than one week prior to its requirement, however, when I try, I usually find no rides are available. They are booked up. I have only used them for medical appointments. To date I’ve not missed any appointment but only because I sat on a wait-list praying for cancellations, begged, or agreed to arrive two hours prior to and/or get picked up four hours post appointment. Bring a book.

 

Childhood friends have died, moved or have problems of their own. This loner can no longer get out to meet new people. It’s a quiet existence. Solitude, which isn’t too bad for a healthy introvert, but not for one who’s a cripple. 

 

So much of what I want to do I find too high, too low, too far, too late, too soon, too, too, too... Help when offered usually comes with a caveat: later. Need usually leaves before later ever arrives. My ability shackled by disability at first taunts, then destroys my self-worth. (see tale of two ceilings)

 

I love my wife dearly. Thirty-eight years of marriage, yet loneliness persists. All men desirous of physical intimacy with the opposite sex. Most men long for more than they receive. We men are sexual creatures; it’s not a conspiracy but a biological imperative; I won’t apologize. Thirty-eight years of marriage and I estimate all intimacy ended within the first seven years. I can only recall about seven such intimate encounters in those early years and perhaps only two remain vividly in my mind. Aside from post-injury sciatic pain, my injury is from my knees and below. I otherwise still function normally. Yet I will not ask for what is not offered and I won’t take what is not freely given. Touching now involves bumping into each other while passing in the hallway; an apology follows. We have become housemates. I never expected a celibate marriage.

 

To paraphrase Henry David Thoreau, Most men live their lives in quiet desperation. Yes David, I know.

 

That intimacy issue aside, my wife and I have taken separate bedrooms for no other than reason than the sequelae to my injury. Nightly spasms cause one leg or the other to repeatedly kick, often for hours. Turning over in bed is challenging, often a necessitating grasp of the mattress edge, headboard or end-table for leverage. Insomnia is a frequent intruder. Sleep comes only after spasms subside; remaining asleep is the challenge. In the early morning, pre-dawn hours, I have no recourse but to turn to my books, laptop or ughh, that dreadful late-night programming on sell-evision to occupy my mind when sleep evades.

 

Tic -an idiosyncratic and habitual feature of a person's behaviour.

 

And that’s where the tic comes in. Years ago—I don’t recall precisely when, I heard someone hurl the most foul language at me. I then realized I was alone in the room. That tic grew over the years. I need no reason to lash out at myself with the most obscene, filthy language. Immersed in some task, I suddenly, spontaneously, hear that familiar voice break the silence as it berates me. I tell it to shut up but it doesn’t listen. I turn over in bed at night and curse myself mid-roll. When dawn arrives I wake and sit up, then immediately curse myself. This is not normal behaviour. That tic is now entrenched. Permanent.

 

 

 

Is my current existence like that of Schrödinger’s cat? Do I now exist between two states, neither dead nor alive—or in both states simultaneously. Am I suspended in my own state of superposition waiting for some event to initiate a collapse to one outcome or the other? Life requires energy input; death total energy loss. I can never be whole again so death is destined to be the eventual outcome. I curse myself. Schrödinger’s cat has developed a tic.

 

Nothing more can be done to alleviate my varied physical pains. I told my doctor that I’m in a poor state of mind; he smiled at me. Should I seek out some “professional” about my declining mental attitude? No, I can’t imagine any able-bodied psychiatrist being able to blow a ray of sunshine up my pant-leg. Relentless pain and spasms for twenty years have worn me down—they’ve broken me. They’ve won.

 

Am I suicidal? No. When that angry voice that shouts obscene expletives at you and you realize that you and the voice are one and the same, well, you also realize you can never outrun that voice. You are inseparable. Your tic would follow you into the hereafter and lambaste you there as well. If already dead, can one commit suicide in the hereafter to take you away to some further plane or realm? And yet I believe that voice would still tag along.

 

I have no children. I have no relatives (that I have met). My wife and I celebrate holidays across the dining room table from each other. Table for two. I am also an only child; I have no siblings. Growing up in the country, friends, peers, were at a distance. You either make friends with yourself or an enemy; I have always teetered on that knife-edge. I have access to four rooms in our house, two of which are the kitchen and bathroom; I try not to spend more time in the latter two than necessary. Housebound. Isolated. It’s not living. It’s a bleak, depressing existence. What is there that I can look forward to? I can enumerate all the joys experienced in my lifetime on the digits of both hands and feet. My worst fear is that I’ll live as long as my parents. Pain and that damn voice torment me without restraint.

 

And so it goes...

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