ALIENS ATE MY BODY

Wall-E: Upweirdly mobile

 Late in life, when the great Katharine Hepburn was   asked if she ever watched her old movies, she said no —explaining something along the lines of, "There is very little pleasure in watching oneself rot."

I get it.

At least Hepburn had decades-worth of glamour images through which to chart her oh-so-subtle decline — photographed by George Cukor, gowned by Edith Head. 

But with a persistent autoimmune disease like MS, you don't get to review the progress of your life as a gracefully unspooling montage. It's more like time-lapse photography where everything changes in seconds.

My body is becoming an alien life form, in an ongoing, unpredictable state of metamorphosis. Rising from a sitting position requires 15 minutes of standing in place to see if all pertinent body parts are on the same page before I dare a step. My shoulders and upper arms have grown taut and sinewy from clutching my roallator for dear life as I drag my clumsy body around behind me like a tail.

I don't do fast. I have only two ambulatory speeds: shuffle and lurch. Except when one or the other (or both) of my legs launches into an unprovoked series of random spasms, when I look like a refugee from the Ministry of Silly Walks. 

The Maze: Night and Frog

 In one of my Art Boy's favorite (justifiably) unsung '50s monster movies, The Maze, a young woman arrives at a stately country manor house whose reclusive lord is never seen. But late every night, from her sumptuous chamber (mysteriously locked from the outside), she hears a lubricious schlep-schlep-schlepping down the corridor outside her door. Turns out the lord of the manor is an overgrown amphibian (as in giant frog, not Jason Momoa in sexy scales) whose handlers drag him through the halls in a huge sheet and outside to rehydrate in a secret pool hidden within a maze on the grounds. I think of that movie every time I hear the sound of my slippered feet scraping along in the wake of my rollator.

Remember Wall-E, where technology has rendered future humans so sedentary they can only get around on individual little jet pods? That’s what I need!

I can still pass for normal from the waist up, as long as I'm sitting down. But I envision the day the only part of me still mobile will be my head, hooked up to banks of various communication devices like The Brain That Wouldn't Die, spitting out caustic remarks.

Meanwhile, navigating the world of visiting home health care, I find myself teetering at the edge of a new reality where "toilet" is not only a verb, but a team sport. After spending 40 years as somebody's sweetie, it's weird to think of a future as somebody's client.

How much me is too much?

Back when I was still relatively ambulatory, I figured the only way to keep things running around here was to get myself cloned. Clearly, I need a staff — Financial Advisor Me for bills and business; Chef Me for meal prep (and Sous Chef Me for back-up and clean-up); Secretary Me for emails and correspondence; Medical Me for doctor's appointments and health issues; Money Pit Me to deal with homeowner issues like peeling paint, disintegrating deck furniture, busted window shades, antique plumbing — well I could go on and on. 

 And while all these clones were running around, maybe — just maybe — Actual Me could carve a couple of hours out of the day to write.

The problem with the Clone Theory is that I've become such a crab, I don't want any more than one of me around.

If only I'd thought to have James cloned while he was still here. My body might be rotting just as fast, but at least he'd find a way to make me laugh about it!