Loose Leaf Notes

Since my mid-twenties I have struggled with something – for lack of a better explanation – in the Chronic Fatigue Syndrome family. My current Chinese Medicine Practitioner does not approve of the term. The emphasis on “chronic” might enable a self-fulfilling prophecy, he suggests. He might refer to my problem as “a yin deficiency”…or maybe cold kidneys?

 
I’ve spent years describing what it’s like and wishing others could get inside my body to see what I have to endure. My sister, Kathy, has tinnitus. Others I know have chronic back pain. With any of these disorders, the key to dealing with them is managing them; not being personally identified with the symptoms, respecting your limitations, and sometime over-riding your symptoms…pushing yourself a little to do the things you love that help you take your mind off it.

 
Sitting in the office of my Chinese Medicine Practitioner, whose practices include cranial sacrum energy work, acupuncture, bone setting, and herbal infusions, a newcomer and acquaintance inquired, “You’ve been coming for a while. So, do you feel better?”

 
I laughed. “You know,” I answered, “you might come here to cure fatigue and be cured of mistrust instead. I can’t be attached to what needs to happen first with healing.” I added, “For me the cure is not the goal – but progress is!” She understood, and I was used to her type of question.

 
For many years I called my condition “my low energy problem” because the term Chronic Fatigue (which is actually an immune dysfunction) hadn’t been coined yet, and after it had been named, I didn’t relate to the bedridden people who had it. “I’m not bedridden, but I surely know the bed,” I would explain to others.

 
One of the symptoms of Chronic Fatigue is something I used to call “mini-fevers.” This is when you don’t have an actual “fever” but your body temperature does rise slightly, and you feel achy-all-over like you could be getting the flu (but you never quite do). In the past couple of years I have learned that my mini-fevers have another name. For eons the Chinese have called them “tidal fevers” and they tend to come more in the spring (usually in the afternoon) and relate to heat rising in the body (but then getting stuck)…sort of the way sap rises in plants getting ready to bud at springtime.

 
I spent most of my life thinking the term “spring fever” referred to “restlessness” or maybe to being “twiterpaited” – a word from the movie, Bambi, which meant an interest in dating and mating (hardly). But now I know different. My spring fevers are back and that old song from the 60s, “You Give Me Fever,” is running around in my head. I guess I should be thankful that I don’t have the flu like other people I know.

 
First Thaw
Pale as spring grass
beneath un-raked leaves
my skin under clothes
is wilted and withered
My shivering flesh
is the first flower exposed
at the first sign of thaw
when green rumors come true