Ankle Crossing and a Trip Down Memory Lane

The way I sleep – curled on my right side in a little ball with my hands under my chin – is not good for the chronic pain under my left shoulder blade. It shortens the muscle rather than expanding it. I know this because I can feel it, and also because my chiropractor told me so. But I am so used to it that when I try to sleep any other way, I revert to my little chipmunk pose.

Yet when I am lying in bed in the morning, halfway between sleep and wakefulness, I lie on my back for some reason. When I do this, I often cross my ankles. And this pose evokes a good and a bad memory, or, I should say, a mixed memory.

Mixed memories

The good one is of my mother lying in the ocean on calm days at Atlantic Beach, Long Island, New York, where we were lucky to have a sweet little beach house. (We were there in the summer while in the rest of the year we lived in an apartment in Manhattan.) She would close her eyes, fold her arms behind her head, and cross her ankles. It was so easy to float that she was able to drift there for a while.

The other association is tied to getting chemotherapy before my first stem cell transplant. I had gotten a high fever which I assume was due to getting an infection. This was way back in 2003, so I don’t remember the exact cause. I do remember learning a new word, or rather, a new definition for an old word: rigors. It is pronounced with a hard I, not the same sound as the word rigorous. So, as though you were saying I, as in me, myself, and I. It meant that I was shaking so hard that I thought I was levitating. This happened repeatedly through all my chemotherapy over the years. The first few times it happened, my sister actually put her hand on me to hold me down. My teeth chattered furiously.

Hartford Healthcare explains: “Shaking chills (rigors) are the body's reaction to a severe infection or the release of organisms, such as viruses or bacteria, into the bloodstream. These chills often occur with a high fever and sometimes make teeth chatter or, when severe, can cause uncontrollable shaking that can make a bed vibrate.”

So what does this have to do with crossing my ankles?

Well, two things helped. One was the ministrations of a nurse practitioner who would come to my hospital room if I asked for her. She would do Reiki or a calming meditation. I don’t know if it was what she did that helped as much as it was simply her calm, radiant personality. In any case, even though it was all those years ago, I vividly remember lying on my back, with my ankles crossed, one day when I needed her. I was clenching everything, including my legs. She said to try to uncross my ankles. We hear a lot about the reasons why crossing your legs is bad for your circulation, so I assume the same might go for your ankles. I remember uncrossing them and starting to try to relax.

I don’t believe that the NP alone would have helped, though. What I needed, and got, was Demerol (meperidine). Anyone who has had it can see why this opioid can be addictive. Research has found it to have “a special antishivering efficacy” as compared to other opioids.

Once when I was in a support group meeting for blood cancer survivors, and we were discussing the problem of shivering and the medicine to stop it, we all had to agree that we really liked that Demerol. You could see how it could become addictive. It made a warm wave come over you, like the one my mother floated in. But mostly it stopped the shivering, and that was a relief in itself.