The Drum-beat In My Brain

I've had what is known as an "essential head tremor" for decades. It's inherited. Kathryn Hepburn, she's got the same one I do, or rather, I have the same one she does, except she had her's first. Remember? She tremored all the way through ON GOLDEN POND. "Someday," my first neurologist warned me, "your voice could go, just like Kathryn Hepburn's."

This tremor nearly caused me NOT to become a psychotherapist, meaning this: I was embarrassed. What if my clients thought I was marred or deficient in some sadly awful way? Or worse - - what if they thought I was AFRAID of them? And how about this - - what if they thought I was constantly nodding "No, no, no, no!"??

But, as a friend told me tonight, "The tremor is simply a tiny part of your entire gestalt, and I look at the whole picture. When I first met you, I didn't think positively or negatively about the tremor. It is, quite simply, a very small part of you."

Indeed, very few of my patients have ever mentioned the whole-lotta-shakin-goin'-on at the top of my neck. Doctors don't mention it because it obviously is not a Parkinsonian in nature; mine goes side to side, Parkinsonian tremors go up and down. Once in a while a nurse patient will mention it, but other than that, my patients' just don't seem to give a fig. And if they don't, I don't.

Recently, though, I've wanted to re-enter the world of theatre, and nobody wants to see a woman up there on stage looking like a Bobbing Head Football star. I take medication, of course, but the medication does not work. Really, it's never worked. But it's the kind of medication one simply can not go off cold turkey and I am not a woman of patience.....I don't have the patience to get weaned. My mother breast fed me. Once was enough.

My first neurologist was brilliant. He was also arrested and imprisoned for sexually harrassing legions of his female patients. He never harrassed me, though. When it came to me, he'd say things like, "God! I love it when I see your name in my schedule book! You are like a pool of water in the desert!" Or better yet - - "You! you are like a tree! You are like a fine, beautiful, proud tree, standing alone amongst small, little, dank plants."

Well, yes. I could certainly see his point. And I was sad to have to learn how many innocent women (although one would be enough) he hurt. Goodbye, brilliant neurologist.

Hello, Idiot.

My second neurologist was an idiot, or so it seemed (and still seems ) to me. No social skills. And, worst of all....shall I say it? No metaphors! One day I brought a book by Dr. Oliver Sacks into his office (I happen to adore Oliver Sacks) and this neurologist looked at me and said, brightly, "I see you are reading Oliver Sacks."

To which I replied, "Yes. I have read all his books."

To which HE said, "And what do you think?"

To which I remarked, "I think he is brilliant. In fact, I would love to BE Oliver Sacks."

The second neurologist looked at me for a moment and then murmered, "But he is a MAN."

To which I whispered, "Yes. I know."


I met my third neurologist two weeks ago. She ran me through an hour's worth of tests and, at the end of the hour, announced, "I believe what we have here is MORE than an essential tremor. Your entire left side seems to be.....compromised. I am scheduling you for an MRI in order to take pictures of your brain. I especially want pictures taken of the thick, meaty part at the base of your skull."

The thick meaty part. At the base of my skull. She said it as if she were describing a meal. All that was needed was some juice or gravy in there and we would have had ourselves a feast.

So today I went in for the brain scan. Now, one of the little-known facts about me, by no means not the MOST eccentric fact about me, but unusual enough, I suppose.....is that I LOVE MRI's. I love the noise, which is incredibly loud and invasive. I love the encapulation. I love not being able to move. I love to create formulas by which to inspire myself with the unexpected rhythms involved in the various thumpings and bumpgins and screechings and screamings and wheezings that an hour-or-so long MRI can produce. I make up rhythms inside the silent, blank spaces. I create mathematical formulas. I try to find music to match up with the rhythms; inside my head I create choreography that one or two persons might dance to, inside the array of noises.

For today's MRI, the new neurologist prescribed a intravenious sedative so that my head would not tremor inside the magnet.One is not, after all, allowed to move. The nurse found a vein into which she stuck a port or a tube or some such thing, all the while exclaiming, "What wonderful veins you have!" I was Little Red Riding Hood. She was the wolf.

I was scanned by two other persons to make certain that I wore no metal: no earrings, no watch, no necklaces, no rings. "What about your bra?" the short blond nurse inquired, "any metal in that?" To which I responded, "I came here bra-less." In a tone full of pride and substance, as if I were saying, "I have come to conquer Rome."

They assisted me in laying down on the long white bed with the nesty-place for my head. Fat padded earplugs closed in around my ears (a new thing, since my last MRI). They gave me my instructions. I felt oddly joyous, like a kid at an out-of-town carnival.

At "half-time", the technician said, "We are getting lots of wonderful pictures."

"Go for it!" I responded. Lots of wonderful pictures was merely a bonus to the beat, beat, beat of the jungle.

And then, all to soon, it was over. The bed of the machine moved itself out and away from the magnet. I was once again in a normal room with normal noises and too few challenges. I was a grown-up woman in a Radiology Clinic who was slightly goofy from the sedation and whose mind was landing on every song about "dogs" she'd ever known. "I had a dog and he had me and Bingo was his name-o." "Had a dog, and his name was Blue and I betcha five dollars, he's a goodun' too. Here, Blue, you good dog, you." And, "How MUCH is that doggie in the window? The one with the waggeldy tail? How MUCH is that doggie in the window? I DO hope that doggie's for sale."

Don't ask, don't tell.

I sang my Dog-Songs to the friend who drove me home. "Mmmmm-hmmmmm," he kept saying, the way you'd say to an idiot who was singing you songs about pencils or beans, "mmmmmmmm-hmmmmmmm."