8:58am January 28, 2014

I hate denial.

Many times when I get what my friend calls a Mortality Reminder, I get this really intense denial.  Which seems kind of ridiculous.  I know I have health problems that, when things go really wrong, can turn serious, even life-threatening.  Most of the time, I can think about this, in fact I’m more matter-of-fact about the issue than most people are.

But sometimes, right when I most need to understand that this is real and that this is life and death, I go into such serious denial that I can barely remember whatever event set off the Mortality Reminder in the first place.

That was just happening a few minutes ago.  It was like there was a fog in between me and the memory of what happened, and a sense of total unreality.

But I must have some kind of anti-denial machinery in my brain, because just as I started to write about this, instead of a fog in front of the memory I was remembering it so clearly that I was scared it was almost happening again, almost like a flashback.

It was specifically the feeling in my neck.  It’s one thing when you relax your muscles and roll your head forward as far as it goes.  It’s another thing when your muscles are weak and your head is flopped forward.  And it’s another thing when your muscles are so weak you can’t move your head at all, and your head is flopped forward and you can’t move it.  The first two, your muscles are still at least somewhat supporting your neck.  The last one, they aren’t.  And the weight of your head pulling down on the neck causes excruciating pain.

That’s how my brain breaks through the usual denial.  And I have to say the thought of my head in that position is terrifying.  I mean the weakness I could deal with if it were some kind of long-term thing that wasn’t dangerous (which I’m not sure is true), but that was so painful (and so terrifying that I was having breathing trouble and couldn’t call for help until it was over) that I never want to go through that again.

But to avoid it I kind of have to stay out of that weird denial mode that tries to convince me that no matter how extreme things happen, I’m still somehow invincible.  Which of all people I should know I’m not, but it’s not an intellectual bit of knowledge, it’s a feeling.  And with things like this my feelings tend to whip back and forth between feeling extremely vulnerable and feeling invincible.                                                                                    

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