Episodes

            I liked heat well enough until it became synonymous with pain, a dull once-forgotten pain that returned on a cool night in September. It seemed like an ordinary night, punctuated only by the usual conversation and laughter that filled my family’s dining room. Mami was away at work, so the rest of us sat down at the table to eat. I put out the blue placemats and set the table, enjoying the simmering cinnamon-garlic smell of the soup that Papi and my sister Elena were preparing. Soon they came in and sat with me, Papi at the head of the table. It was breezy and our heater wasn’t working that well so Elena and I had sweatshirts on, but Papi took his off; this was the first indication that something was different, although Papi often didn’t feel the cold as much as the rest of us did. He sat throughout the meal with a slightly removed expression on his face, as though he didn’t know what was going on. I was slightly worried, but I played it off as just him thinking deeply about something. Halfway through the meal, he remarked, “Isn’t it hot, guys? Why are you still wearing all those layers?”

            “Are you kidding me?” Elena exclaimed. “I was going to ask you the opposite question, I’m freezing my butt off in here! What’s up with the heater?” I nodded vigorously in affirmation; the soup was just too good to stop eating mid-spoonful.

            “That’s weird, I feel sweaty,” Papi said quizzically. “Maybe I’m just tired… I think I’m going to take a little rest on the couch if that’s okay with you guys.”

            “Are you okay?”

            “Yeah, maybe a little sick or something.”

            “Well do what you need to do, if you need anything just let us know.” I patted his arm reassuringly.

            “Thanks, love you.”’

            “We love you too, Papi.”

            We finished eating and went to do our homework, but when after two hours Papi hadn’t left the couch I knew there was something wrong. I went down to the living room, where he was laying down with worry all over his face.

            “Papi, tell me what’s wrong, I know something is wrong!”

            “Okay, well I don’t want to get you guys scared because I’m not sure…but I think I had an ‘episode’ at the dinner table.”

An ‘episode.’ That word meant something very different to our family than it did for everyone else, something much more gripping. What we called an ‘episode’ was a type of mild seizure, where your legs were incapacitated by a feeling of electricity coursing up one leg while fire ran down the other. Worst of all, they were a symptom of multiple sclerosis, a serious disease that for some reason liked my family very much. Several of my extended family members had it, and a few even died from it.

They were torture, these episodes, Papi told me after the first ones came in April four years ago. Torture to a man who lived his life with nothing but dedication, care and love – to a man who did nothing to deserve this pain. And they were torture too for the rest of us, Mami, Elena, and I, not knowing whether in a couple years he would be in a wheelchair or worse. They came steadily, several every week, until finally we battled them into submission. Or so we thought.

I sat with him there on the couch, the two of us sitting silent and thinking, until Mami came home; she and Elena came into the room and we told them what had happened. They sat down next to us, all of us trying to comfort Papi. We asked him why he was lying on the couch and not somewhere else.

“I’m afraid to get up; I might not be able to stand.”

            This shook me more than anything. I couldn’t speak, I couldn’t react, I could only sit there with a stupefied look on my face like I’d been cracked over the head with a baseball bat. It’s hard to deal with new fears, but even tougher to handle old ones coming back for a visit. I thought this specific fear had long since gone, gone away with the horrifying times. Like when Papi got out of the car with me and we walked towards the front door and halfway through the front yard he stopped and his legs started shivering and he started shivering and I started shivering just from watching. He always said the same thing after these ‘episodes’: “Don’t worry, just gimme a minute. I’ll be fine! I’ll be fine…” But to me it wasn’t fine. My dad was hurting and I couldn’t do anything about it; and again this was happening, it was happening. And I didn’t know what to say. No one knew what to say, so we just sat together and stayed close.

            When Papi finally did get up he was able to stand, walk and do everything normally. Wow, did that make us relieved! Part of the weight was lifted, and I could breathe again. But the ‘episode’ had still occurred, which meant there was still a chance that the disease had come back. One of the toughest parts was going to school that next day, sitting in class and trying to listen to the teacher while worrying whether my dad was going to be able to walk next year. Everyone was talking about college in my history class, so I contemplated my plans. I had always wanted to go to New York, and I loved the schools there, especially Juilliard. However, I thought, if Papi was still sick there was no way I was going to leave. I decided to work much harder on my previously carelessly-compiled UC application.

While I was at school my parents visited the doctors of course, just as they had four years ago. The process was always the same: run a bunch of tests, wait for a few weeks, get called in for the results. The waiting was almost always the worst part, except when the results consisted of the words “we have no idea what is going on, sir,” which was often what occurred. After the original diagnosis we received, the doctors didn’t seem to know much at all. A few weeks of visits showed that they were pretty much resigned to a slightly ashamed nod, a shrug and a helping hand out to the door. It was terrifying not to know anything about what was happening, and to be unable to do anything but watch the illness take its course. Mami was especially scared, and incensed that the doctors seemed not even to be trying to help anymore. She took this anger to the last place I would have predicted – the Internet. Half of every day was spent surfing the web, mostly European medical journals, on how to cure multiple sclerosis. This went on for weeks, until one day she sat us down and said she was going to try her own methods to cure Papi.

And so it began. A diet – no grains, no dairy, no legumes, no alcohol, no sugar, only fruit, vegetables, nuts and some meat. About twenty vitamins and supplements, three times a day. Acupuncture every two weeks. Chiropractic care once a month. Tai-chi every day. Weightlifting and strength training. She pulled out all of the stops – and incredibly, it paid off. Two months into Mami’s regimen, the ‘episodes’ suddenly just stopped coming. Papi steadily got better and better until soon he was back to his old self – we even started playing basketball together again. In fact he seemed even stronger and healthier now than ever. We were stunned; even Mami didn’t actually think that what she suggested would completely cure all of the symptoms. The doctors explained that the disease could simply be in remission, but that if the symptoms didn’t return for eight years then the illness could officially be considered gone.

Yet here it was, back again after four years, and everyone was tired. A week after the dinner incident, I was alone with Papi; Mami was still at work and Elena was asleep. He was laying down again – he seemed to be doing that a lot lately. This time it was on the upstairs bed and he looked more tired than I had seen him in a long time. All of the cares of the world seemed to rest on his chest, and I felt like they seemed to rest on mine as well.

            “How are you doing?” I asked, already knowing the answer.

            “I’m holdin’ up, you know. Just getting through it. How was school?”

            “The same. Just getting through it…” There was a pause in the conversation, two seconds where we each reflected on what was going on. Every moment seemed like ten years to me with this weight all around us, this suffocating weight threatening to crush us at any moment.

            “I don’t know if I can do it, Samora. I don’t know if I can go through this again, it’s just too much. The electricity…I don’t ever want to feel like that.”

            A hundred tons of emotion hit me with a blast when I heard this, and I was shaken up. I knew that the illness was incredibly hard on Papi, but he always seemed stronger than it, as if it could never catch up to him. I wasn’t used to this vulnerability. And then it really hit me: this was strength – strength through courage, strength through openness and strength through family. And I decided to be strong as well, strong for him and strong for myself. I lay down next to him and grasped his arm tightly.

            “Don’t worry, we’ll get through this. I’ll be here for you, and Mami and Elena. It will work out, I know it.” And I did know it; I felt it as strongly as I felt Papi’s arm pressed against mine.

            The following days presented no change in the status of the illness. There were no ‘episodes,’ and life went on as it usually did. The only difference was that for some reason I felt more confident about what was to come.

And so finally, once again, I found myself at the dinner table. This time it was the whole family, and we had a guest as well. Mami’s friend was here visiting from Boston, and so we spent the evening talking together. I could tell that the mood of the family was much happier than I had seen it in a long time, probably since the first dinner incident, but I assumed that this was put on because we had company. Elena went to bed, but I stayed up with the rest of the family to talk about Harvard (Mami’s friend worked there) and college in general. Somehow the conversation turned to Papi’s condition, probably originating from how good dinner was or something boring like that.

“How are you doing?” The innocent and inevitable question from Mami’s friend was expected, and I braced for the answer, unsure whether Mami and Papi wanted to tell people that the illness had come back yet.

 “Well, I was having some problems.” I was stunned to hear the calm in Papi’s voice, but my surprise only grew with what he said next. “But I went to the doctor today and he said that what I thought was the illness coming back was actually just problems with my foot.”

What? I felt a mix of disbelief and incredible happiness, and slight anger that my parents had not told me. All this was just because of his damn toe? Are you kidding me?

I jumped up and gave Papi a huge hug, the best hug of my life. I could feel not just his arms but those of my whole family around me, supporting me and lifting me up. It was so good to know that at least for now everything would be okay. I closed my eyes and smiled, secure in that warm embrace, and once again I felt strong.