VERTIGO – PART 3

The cards streamed in.  If you have ever deliberated whether to send a card, by all means, SEND IT!  You have no idea how loved those cards made me feel.  I set up a little table by the fireplace in front of my meditation perch and I carefully arranged all the cards, putting the prettiest, most inspirational ones in front.  At least once a week, I would gather them all up and read through them carefully and gain strength and sustenance from the love in them.  CJ sent me a card with a lighthouse on the front.  That was one of my favorites.  Max sent me several, including one with a bird of many colors; I put it on our fireplace mantle.  Its vibrancy made me happy.  Ellie Nonn sent me, must have been ten cards.  It seemed like one a week was coming in for a while there from her.  Those cards would tumble out of the mailbox and fill me with hope.


Where was God?  Very present.  God for me in the worst of it was the strength and power and ability in me to simply keep going.  To take a shower.  Feed Pablo and Toby.  To show up for work.  Cook a simple dinner for Rob and I.  To collapse after work on the couch and watch our shows.  There wasn’t much social life or much of anything else except at that time other than staying clean, eating, working and surviving.  And that was the God force inside of me. I kept going.  I was going through a horrible, horrible ordeal.  And I was surviving.  That is great power that stays with you forever. 

I was so worried about sweet Audrey Claire’s baptism.  I thought about her blonde curls and her sturdy little body, and I worried if I could stand long enough to be her Godmother at the ceremony.  I wondered if I was good enough – if I could really say those vows.  Nothing was clear those days.  In an act of incredible generosity, John and Candace assured me that they knew me and my broad spirituality and that was why they chose me to be the Godmother, one of the spiritual friends for their Audrey Claire.  They chose me, exactly as I am.  I stood up there by the baptismal fount proudly, full of emotion when Rob poured the water on her sweet little head.  Such a good girl.  And I stood through the whole thing without a hitch.


I paid more attention to my horoscope.  I threw the I Ching.


Judith called every day.  Every single day she called.  I will never, ever forget her loyalty and her hope and her encouragement, especially to keep moving.  She taught me how to work with the anxiety.  She is my friend - - and she is also a highly trained therapist.  She didn’t know a lot about vestibular neuritis, but she knew a lot about anxiety.  She told me about breathing into a paper bag.  She encouraged, “Detach from it, watch it, it’s not all of you.  Talk to it like its separate from you.”  She assured me over and over, “You’re not crazy.  That is absolutely, ridiculous nonsense!”  Edie declared, “Stare it down!”  I found my inner reserves of courage and strength. 


That gripping anxiety was the worst part.  I had never in my life experienced the actual physical symptoms of anxiety.  And it would come out of nowhere. We’d be watching a TV show, and say the music got a little ominous, or there was a loud noise, and I would turn my head and the dizziness would come on strong and I would be gripped with terror.  Am I going to have another vertigo attack?  I could feel the shaking inside.  It would pass over me like a bad dream.  Like a nightmare actually. But it did pass. 


I learned coping statements. I kept Daily Mood Logs.  I recited affirmations.  I learned guided imagery.  I went to peaceful places in my mind.  I rode the wave.  I imagined that I was a pyramid of power, solid, wide and expansive.  I was standing my ground.  I remembered the surviving tree from the Oklahoma City bombing.  I printed a picture of it and posted a copy on our frig and at work.  I was still standing with my roots deep in the ground, my trunk sturdy and my branches reaching wide into the sky.