Good Vibrations | Kaleidoscope
By Nancy J. Fagan
I wake at three in the morning, or thereabouts. I know the general time because my neck is vibrating. Every night, while I dream, my device fires during a randomized minute somewhere in those wee, predawn hours. If I sleep on my left side, the movement is startling and foreign, despite the many months the compact bullet of energy has rested deep against my vagal nerve, adjacent to my carotid artery. It does not wake me—that’s my busy mind instead. My device, a vagal nerve stimulator, has released me from the throes of pharmacology costing thousands of dollars in medication each month, millions over a lifetime. More importantly, it has relaxed the grip rheumatoid arthritis has held on my life for over thirty years.
Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) affects over one million people in the United States alone. RA is not the same as osteoarthritis which naturally occurs with age or after joint trauma. I get the confusion—they both cause joint pain and swelling. But RA brings a bonus: it is a disease that leaks from the joints through the body to the organs. It’s autoimmunity at its finest, a body attacking itself in a fit of rage, leaving erosion in its wake.
Previously published by Kaleidoscope: Exploring the Experience of Disability through Literature and the Fine Arts, Issue 88.