Revertigo: An Off-Kilter Memoir

9. Revertigo

129 9 Re­ ver­ tigo I can’t find my haz­ el­ wood cane. It’s not in the down­ stairs ­ closet by our front door, where I was sure I’d ­ stashed it two and a half years ago. It isn’t in the car, where it had re­ mained dur­ ing all the ­ months I­ needed it, nor in my of­ fice ­ closet up­ stairs, the final rest­ ing place for stuff I can’t part with. I bend and lean to reach be­ hind a box of books by the ­ closet wall, in case the cane has fal­ len back there. It ­ hasn’t, but now I have, hit­ ting my head ­ against the edge of a shelf, ­ cutting the skin, rais­ ing an in­ stant bump. I fall be­ cause the world is ­ awhirl. For the last three hours, since I woke up at 6:15, I’ve been over­ whelmed by ver­ tigo. Ab­ so­ lutely no warn­ ing signs. I got out of bed and the room was spin­ ning. I ­ lurched to the bath­ room and back, grab­ bing at walls and door­ frames for sup­ port ­ against the sway­ ing and swirl­ ing all ­ around me. I had to kneel on the floor to put on my shirt, and I stum­ bled when I rose. I could ­ barely make it down­ stairs for break­ fast, hold­ ing onto the ban­ is­ ter, con­ cen­ trat­ ing on each step, and was too nau­ seous to eat any­ way. All solid ob­ jects ­ seemed like op­ ti­ cal il­ lu­ sions, veer­ ing out of place as I ap­ proached or ­ touched them. Try­ ing to keep my head still, A Spinning World 130 mov­ ing only my eyes, I could feel my back and shoul­ ders tight­ en­ ing up, form­ ing a shell. At 8:30 I ­ phoned my ­ doctor’s ­ triage nurse, who found a 9:45 slot for me on the sched­ ule. Now Bev­ erly is ready to drive us there, but I can’t find my cane and am not sure how far I can walk with­ out fall­ ing. It’s got to be here some­ place. The cane had been too im­ por­ tant to me for too long. I’d never get rid of it. c From De­ cem­ ber 1988, when the viral at­ tack tar­ geted my brain, until the late ­ spring of 2004, I ­ couldn’t walk with­ out a cane. ­ Through those fif­ teen years, the pro­ cess of achiev­ ing bal­ ance and stabil­ ity— slow as it was—pro­ gressed more stead­ ily and ­ seemed more ­ likely to suc­ ceed than the pro­ cess of man­ ag­ ing my dam­ aged mem­ ory ­ systems or pow­ ers of cog­ ni­ tion. Even now I’ll some­ times stag­ ger when I think, or hob­ ble and ­ blunder when I speak. So get­ ting free of the cane had felt like a huge vic­ tory for me. Once I’d ­ weaned my­ self from it, for the next three and a half years I kept the cane in our car, just in case. Then one morn­ ing, as Bev­ erly and I were load­ ing our bikes into the cargo area for an au­ tumn ride along the river, I’d no­ ticed my ­ cane’s tip jut­ ting from the co­ coon of an old blan­ ket ­ tucked ­ against the back seat. Yak­ king about the end of an era, feel­ ing fully con­ fi­ dent of my bal­ ance, I put the thing away at last, cer­ tain it was one of those mo­ ments I’d al­ ways re­ mem­ ber. The Stor­ ing of the Cane. Ex­ cept when you have brain dam­ age, you can’t ­ really be sure­ you’ll re­ mem­ ber any­ thing, ever. I know that, deep in my being. It’s why I have pens and pads in every room, in pock­ ets, in the car. It’s why I’ve ­ trained my­ self, over the ­ twenty-two years since I got sick, to write notes all the time, lists, re­ min­ ders, ­ things-to-do, ideas, ­ phrases or im­ ages I don’t want to lose. But I ­ didn’t write down where I put Revertigo 131 the haz­ el­ wood cane, since I was con...