My shoes.

With nothing evil or sticky on the bottom of my shoes that would indicate the reason for my new loopy walking stride, the doctor followed the standard protocol that every California HMO has on the first page of their play book — he ordered up a course of physical therapy.  No tests.  No X-Rays.  No MRIs or even simple blood work drawn.  Just a six-week course of Physical Therapy!  Certainly, I’m an advocate for physical therapy; it’s helpfulness is more-than beneficial for most.  But this is usually for people who’ve been diagnosed with something to therapy on.

Nevertheless, I went to PT hopeful that, with a few helpful exercises, I’d resume the ability to walk and chew gum again.  After completing twice-weekly visits for those six weeks, the physical therapist sent me back to the doctor with a note saying, “This patient has deteriorated.  I don’t recommend further physical therapy.”

By then, I walked like a person buffeting the winds inside their own personal tornado.  As hard as I tried to walk normally, after a step or two, those darned legs would wind themselves up in a tizzy and simply refuse to work like a coordinated set of bi-peds.  About that time, my right arm decided to drop out of the group and hung at my side like a limp string.  I’d purposely get it swinging, but I couldn’t keep up a normal leg-arm routine for more than a few strides.  It was clear that the right arm no longer wanted to play with the rest of the gang.  And the rest of the gang seemed to be having a break-up of its own.

The doctor was clearly annoyed.

After one more look at those shoes … Those Shoes … he pinched his lips into a tight circle and grudgingly wrote a referral to a neurologist.

The neurologist — a lovely woman with dark curls brushing her shoulders and eyes that could smile you right into a feeling of being endlessly hugged — had no interest in my shoes.  Instead, she pondered over my right arm.  “Let’s address the issue of your arm not swinging in a natural gait,” she said, all the while watching with those soothing eyes.  “We’ll do an MRI of your head and neck.”

At last!  A Test!

I was scheduled for two days hence and sent on my lurching, loopy way.  I spent the rest of my day busy at work, happy that I was to have a real, honest-to-goodness test.   No more shoe examinations or weeks of unproductive physical therapy.  I didn’t even care if needles were involved (as long as they had lollipops at the end).  I was to have a test.

Hooray!  A Test!

Four days later, I wished I could have taken back that test and … lollipops or not … never have had it.

Please note:  Tomorrow’s post may not occur tomorrow.  I’ll be traveling and at the mercy of the hotel internet access gods,  It’s more than possible that we may need to wait for Diagnosis Day.  Just think of it as a form of annoying this-isn’t-working Physical Therapy.

Again, please enjoy the music while your party is reached.

I believe we each entertain the notion that we’re immortal.  Being a card-carrying member of the Donna Summer, I’m-Gonna-Live-Forever crowd is part of our American meme and I lived that distinction with grand gusto — until one day fifteen years ago when I started walking funny.  Not ha-ha funny, but rather, kind of odd-funny.  As my grandfather might say, I had a hitch in my git-a-long.  My legs seemed strangely disconnected from my upper carriage.  To put it plainly, I didn’t walk — I lurched.

It was my habit at that time to arrive at my office an hour early, park my car and walk eight blocks back to a little coffee shop that not only had killer morning coffee, but also produced fine breads and muffins deep within the mystery of a large, hulking oven.  People came for miles to buy their specialty breads, most notably their pungent asiago cheese bread.  That morning ritual of walking the 16-block round trip coffee and muffin route was not only part of my exercise routine, it was also my time to gear up for what was always a grueling day in legal-land.  I worked as a paralegal for a couple of really sharp, very busy environmental attorneys.  The work was long, hard and deeply satisfying.

Until I started to lurch.

Walking those morning blocks soon became a challenge … not only for me, but for passers-by who felt compelled to avert their eyes from the lurching lady with a bouncing, scalding coffee in one hand and a swinging bread bag in the other.  They gave me a wide berth and I couldn’t blame them a bit.

Something was obviously wrong and the more I wobbled, the wronger I felt.

It didn’t help that this was midtown Sacramento, an area populated by a wealth of eccentric and gregarious homeless individuals.  With my lunging gait, I could have easily been mistaken as a well-dressed member of the morning crowd looking for a quick nip to overcome the previous evening’s bottle-in-a-paper-bag festivities.  The more I wobbled, the more accurate that assessment might have seemed.  Men shook their heads at me and women pulled their children close to their legs whenever I passed.

When one’s brilliance is darkened by the small gesture of a mother’s protective hand in response to a stranger’s ungainliness, it’s time to haul those lurching legs to the doctor for a consult.  My doctor’s response?  He grabbed the shoes off my feet and examined their soles as if therein contained the answer to all things medical.  My shoes?

My shoes.

In case you’re paying attention, above are rough and skimpy notes chronicling the early days before my diagnosis with a brain tumor nearly fifteen years ago.  I get nostalgic this time of year when I approach the anniversary of the removal of The Tumor.  (Note, the capitol letters — IMHO, tumors are big deals and deserve to be treated as such.)  I’ve recently been asked to write about my experience by a couple of friends — one who’s just been diagnosed with her own bright and shiny new brain tumor.  To honor these kind, yet push-me-from-the-nest, requests, I’m hereby starting a string of posts about surviving a brain tumor and learning to live with the New Normal after brain surgery.

Please enjoy the musical interlude until tomorrow’s post.