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friends I haven’t heard from and leave funny, upbeat messages on their answering machines.
    But as the days pass, and the cortisone wears off, I find that once again, I am weaker, stiffer, more inflamed. It’s harder to get up in the morning, harder to move around the house, harder to make myself eat. Desperate little thoughts flicker at the edge of my steely attitude, and soon I am doubting once more, I am thinking, Is this never going to end ? Thinking, What if I never get better ? Thinking, What am I going to do ? I consider suicide, but I can’t decide which would be worse—to cause my parents such terrible pain? Or to burden them with caring for me for the rest of my life?
    My doctor asks: Is it really that I’m in more pain, or am I simply not tolerating pain as well?
    I do not know. I cannot tell. My body does not seem to belong to me. That’s fine. I leave it behind whenever I can:through sleep, through daydreams, through a drifting, hazy vacantness.
    My doctor recommends higher dosages of anti-inflammatories, orthotics, patience. Leg lifts and toe curls. Riding a stationary bike. Walking in a swimming pool. Only now I’m unable to stay upright in water. I’m unable to complete more than a few full revolutions on the bicycle. The pain leaves me thick-headed, motionless, silent. I cannot sleep, and yet, I feel as if I’m never fully awake.
    In March 1987, he refers me to a pain management center in a separate wing of the clinic. There are pictures of Jonathan Livingston Seagull on the walls. There are rhyming poems illustrated with rainbows. People sit in a circle and talk about ways in which pain is merely an excuse for not living fully. If you want to move beyond pain, you must make a commitment to life! At the end of the meeting, everybody joins hands and admits they have no control over their pain, over anything. They bow their heads and turn themselves over to their Higher Power.
    I say, Uh, just so I’m clear. You’re empowering yourselves by…deciding that you’re powerless ?
    The man to my left, whose hand I’d rather not be holding, assures me that it will all make sense after a while. I have no doubt this is true, for the pain management center believes in “total immersion therapy,” and these people have been living here for three weeks with no mail, nophone calls, no outside contact. Such things are deemed “privileges,” and they must be earned by reaching “set goals”: giving up a wheelchair or cane, cutting back on medication. The man whose hand I’d rather not be holding has had chronic back pain ever since a fall. His face is ashen with the effort of sitting in his chair.
    I tell my doctor the pain management center is not for me. He does not seem surprised. When he rubs his hands over his face, I believe he is nearly as frustrated as I am. I like him because, unlike other doctors I’ve seen, he isn’t trying to avoid me or get rid of me, which is what most doctors do when it becomes clear that a patient isn’t getting better. He is practical, helpful, considerate. Other doctors have noted how I struggle to pull up my foot after taking each step, a condition noted in my chart as “dropped” feet. This doctor promptly prescribes a leg brace that fits into my shoe and keeps my foot at ninety-degree angle. It’s a small thing, but it removes my fear of tripping when I crutch, and I’m in a position to be grateful for small things.
    â€œLet’s try one more round of cortisone,” he says.
    The nurse swabs bright orange antiseptic on my ankles, on the inside of my legs, just above the knee, on my wrists. She tries to make me lie back on the table, but my doctor knows better by now, knows that I have to watch the needle, keep some semblance of control. He counts backward with me as the cortisone goes in, a feeling of impossiblepressure, a surge of heaviness pushing outward from within the