MARY KETTL

Perspective

I never took illegal drugs. I was born too late to be a hippie - the Summer of Love was, for me, the Summer of Still Wearing Rubber Pants - and even later, as a teenager and young adult, it never occurred to me to experiment with illegal drugs. This was due partly to an overdeveloped prudishness about just about everything - in high school, even Amish kids thought I was boring - and partly because I don't like anything that makes me feel dizzy or blurry, which precludes otherwise legal activities like riding on a merry-go-round or listening to someone explain the rules of bridge.

Which is why the last two days have been interesting. For about 36 hours I have been under the effects of Cyclobenzaphrine, which is a pharmaceutical word that means "Do not attempt to drive, operate heavy machinery, or unwrap gum, because you're not gonna make it."

These tiny orange pills, prescribed to me three years ago for back spasms, are "muscle relaxants," apparently the same brand used by wildlife biologists who have to convince rhinoceroses to hold still long enough to get fitted for radio collars and tuxedos. I don't know how many pills they have to give a rhino, but for me it only takes one. Within an hour, my muscles have relaxed to such a degree that my eyebrows are hanging somewhere down around my kneecaps and I have to push up on my face with both hands to hold any kind of expression, startled or otherwise.

I had taken this medication in response to a sudden pain in my back that I had experienced earlier Sunday afternoon. I have written before in these pages about my history of lower back pain, a condition I freely blamed on a mother who insisted that we go outside as children, thus exposing me to any number of bicycling, roller-skating, snow-shoveling, and leaf-raking injuries. But this pain was different. It came not as a result of stacking wood and doing yard work earlier in the week, but from leaning over to pick up a library book. It wasn't a heavy book - I wasn't trying to scoop up a Riverside Shakespeare - and I never actually touched it. I just leaned over. And gasped, as a sudden, soul-splitting pain shot through me and the muscles in my lower back and rear end began contracting. Had I been less mainline in my upbringing, I probably could have begun speaking in tongues, but I just let out a slight, "Oh."

"I have to go home now," I said to the friend I was with. "I have to take drugs now." I said these things mechanically, with sort of a frozen look on my face, as if I were the Terminator suddenly remembering to take his vitamins.

"Is there anything I can do?" Julie asked, watching as my body, slumped in an involuntary round of "Head, shoulders, knees, and toes," got stuck in a position somewhere between "knees and toes, knees and toes." She looked at me closely. "Hey, are you getting shorter?" she asked.

"Truck," I replied, and with my friend's assistance I got into my vehicle and headed for home, driving the whole way in third gear, but knowing that each mile carried me closer to my bathroom cabinet, where I had hoarded the remains of the Cyclobenzaphrine prescription from three years before. "I'll just take one," I whispered. "That's all I need."

At home I took a pill and then tried to shower and change clothes while I still could, mindful that it was impossible to hurry with this kind of pain; every time I dropped something, I had to sink down into an elaborate plie` and pat the floor around me, a move so awkward that I was reminded again why nobody ever goes to see 200-pound ballerinas.

It was even harder to make decisions. Drugs were not killing my brain cells, exactly, but drugs seemed to have given them a credit card and sent them away on a long weekend somewhere. Nancy Reagan was right, I thought, although I couldn't remember what she was right about. I was pretty sure Nancy had never spent 15 minutes stumped by socks. I'm never going to make it, I fretted, looking at the daybed in my living room where I had arranged a sleeping bag, TV remote, telephone, and a package of Milano cookies. If my convalescence was going to be a long one, I wanted to be prepared.

With a shudder, I stood up and made my way to the living room, trying to ignore the large parts of my personality that seemed to be dropping off right and left. Honestly, I don't know how people in comas get anything done, I muttered. I spent most of the next 20 hours in my sleeping bag, emerging briefly to use the bathroom, eat a cookie, and reflect on the miracle of a medicine that could, finally, uncramp my torso enough that I wouldn't have to go through life as a human question mark after all.

As often happens, the occurrence of sudden catastrophic pain helped me put other things into perspective. I was warm and safe and well-fed, I didn't have to go anywhere, and periodically people called to check on me, although sometimes it was hard to hear what they were saying as I held the TV remote up to my ear. But later, as I lay there trying to change channels by pushing the buttons on my cell phone, I knew I had much to be thankful for.

Mary Kettl is a former Gillette junior high teacher. She now lives in Minneapolis.