Schrodinger's Tiger - What Remains
I re-read Life of Pi.[1].
I had a number of letters about Life of Pi from readers, where they took on the metaphor of Richard Parker (the Bengal tiger) as applying to their life. A great number of letters from people who had cancer and the tumour was Richard Parker, and they had to survive with Richard Parker. One woman who was kidnapped by a taxi driver in a Central American country – in her mind, he was Richard Parker. Harrowing tales of people surviving and using the metaphor of this tiger and how they had to cohabitate with it. [2]
I apply it. My Richard Parker is my [bodymind](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bodymind_(disability_studies). He is the flare up, the pain spike, the dislocation, the getting worse, the depression. My survival depends on tending and dominating and appeasing it and I cannot survive without it. Sometimes he goes quiet, sometimes we have a tentative peace. He is an ever present fear, the thing I listen out for obsessively, the thing I have grown accustomed enough to ignore the cost of him and love him.
There is something self-obsessive in the effort to ignore yourself. Joint-pain-nervous-system-moving-wrong-shouldn't-hurt-hypervigilance-bracing self.
Treating each incident in the list as a one off, don't worry about it, yes it's odd and no it doesn't seem quite right but these are the words we have. I name the animals I and disconnected doctors in their separated specialisations can see. I am grateful for them.
**"if your fear becomes a wordless darkness that you avoid, perhaps even manage to forget, you open yourself to further attacks of fear because you never truly fought the opponent who defeated you."[1:1]
The Tiger always stirs. There goes writing, there goes reading, there goes movement, there goes the outside world, there goes the emotional regulation and the decision making.
Richard Parker also explained the animals’ strange behaviour... ...in the face of such a superior predator, all of us were prey, and normal ways of preying were affected. [1:2]
Plan Number Six: Wage a War of Attrition. All I had to do was let the unforgiving laws of nature run their course and I would be saved. Waiting for him to waste away and die would require no effort on my part. I had supplies for months to come. [1:3]
It was good enough for a while to think I could outlast the exhaustion, that my wits might hold me long enough for the aches and jolts and days in bed and nights up sick and sweating to just take care of themselves. That the flimsy life raft was strong enough for the shifting oceanic weather, that rescue would come for me or time would take care of the Tiger.
Pi came to his senses quickly, realising that “crazed with thirst and hunger he will surmount his fear, and he will do whatever is necessary to appease his need.... I tell you, if you wage a war of attrition, you will lose it! You will die! IS THAT CLEAR?” [1:4]
I am 32. My throat blocks at how to articulate the help I need, the steps involved in what I am doing. I begin to drop things. I drop a tin of beans on my toe. The preceding 24 hours sit already in my joints, hyperextended to getting the bathroom and oven and multi-cooker clean enough to not be burdensome or judgement-worthy by some metric that sits in my bones more real than anyone's patience.
The following day I have an appointment. I put my boots on. I wake up on the floor, my face pressed into the monitor arms I haven't set up yet. Before I go to wake my partner I text my therapist my apologies and add guilt at the wasted appointment to the list of sensations occupying my brainbodymindself.
I am in a cold sweat, which I forget to mention to a single medical professional I see after waking my partner up and getting a taxi to A&E. My toe hurt, but not enough in comparison with my hips, or my back, or my knees, or my ankle from avoiding putting pressure on the toe. Parts of me frequently hurt as much as my toe.
My face hurt, my lens had popped out of my glasses on one side. I popped it back in before getting up. My toe turned out to be fine. I couldn't put shoes on for a week, it ached for weeks, it still jolts with pain sometimes when I walk. I joke about it to friends. I do not tell my family.
I am in the minor injuries waiting room opposite a young man and his colleague, he has heatstroke from working in some kind of construction in the heatwave. Him and his colleague discuss his return to work. There is a forced, enthusiasm underneath his declaration that he really wants to get back as soon as possible. I want to encourage him not to rush, to learn from me that health is precious and precarious and not to waste his youth on work. He goes to throw up. I apologise and stow the other half. He seemed to need it, perked up a bit afterwards I tell myself. I know from experience that sometimes ones body just needs to react to what it's being put through. Whatever it is that it is being put through by whatever is throughing the put.
I tell my partner to head home so they have plenty of time before their course starts. I have been sent to ambulatory majors because my toe does not adequately explain my fainting. I tried to explain that the fainting is not anomalous. It is sometimes the only signal my body can send me through the fog and pain. I do not know how long I was unconscious. I think it cannot have been long, because it usually isn't.
I am called through. The EEG. The sticky things have trouble sticking to my skin. It is boiling hot in ambulatory majors. It was boiling last time I was here. The kidney infection. The multiple attempts at getting a vein. The perfectly executed vomit episode, perfectly reading the signs familiar to me from the various weeks where I have woken up in the smallest hours embattled by the same signs. Perfectly filling the mushed cardboard of the disposable kidney shaped bowl with the consequences of forgetting to tell them no opioids please, no NSAIDs.
I take every second alone waiting for the EEG to lie flat with my knees up and breathe through the heat and the sweat. I have the EEG, lying down, it is normal. I do not suggest we try again with me standing. I am distracted by the discomfort of the person administering it, by my sweat and the oddness of my skin and my sprouting hair and my chest. I was told to go to the green corridor after my EEG, so I go to the green corridor and the bathroom. I ask someone if I am in the right place, saying "I was told to go to the green corridor after my EEG." They tell me I am in the right place. I get a phone call asking me where I am. I say I am in the green corridor and they ask me to come back to majors and someone will take me for my x-ray.
I have been able to get myself around (ambulatory) with my walking frame, but my ankle aches from keeping my weight off my toe and it's beginning to connect my spine to my hips to my knee. I am taken to my x-ray. My foot is imaged flat, then I am given a plastic apron and instructed to lie and hold my toes out of the way. I struggle to lie down, my arm feels like it is being pushed and pulled out of its socket by the apron on one end and the crush between the bed and my body on the other. The problematic toe protests at the wrenching away of its sisters. I grit my teeth. I feel dizzy and sick. A brief discussion floats over my head - it's not broken and appears to be in its socket. I couldn't put shoes on for a week, it ached for weeks, it still jolts with pain sometimes when I walk. I joke about it to friends. I do not tell my family.