In the locker room, women’s voices discuss the temperature (too cold), the garden (weeds!), and sisters (impossible). I wore a dress and flip-flops and eavesdropped while picking up a bag of toys. I casually bypassed the lap pool. Never in my adult life have I desired more repetitive activities. Instead, I set up a shop next to a heated pool, selling foam weights, kickboards and noodles. And I felt a divine transition as I slipped into the 92 degree water. Others arrive via long ramps, ditch their canes and walkers, lift themselves out of their wheelchairs, and drag their fingers into the deep water. Even though it’s a runway, no one looks at it. The heated pool at Santa Fe Community College is not a place to be seen.
Like many of these women, I had to learn my new body while recovering from surgeries, injuries, and life’s ups and downs. In my early twenties, I was diagnosed with POTS (Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome), a chronic condition with symptoms such as extreme physical fatigue. I always passed out when I stood too long in 6th grade fish dissection, or when she ran a mile in gym class, but now I pass out while sitting in a chair and feel dizzy every time I stand up. The cardiologist gave me salt tablets and sent me home.
POTS, like many diseases that primarily affect women, was poorly studied at the time. But astronauts have long reported feeling dizzy upon returning from space, and NASA investigated the underlying cause: orthostatic intolerance, a form of POTS. Five years after he was diagnosed, I told her NASA-funded research student that he could not endure an eight-hour bookstore shift without leaning most of his weight on the counter. It looks like I fell asleep during my lunch break. She responded with my personal nightmare: exercise therapy.
At first it was barely 5 minutes on a rowing machine or recumbent bike. POTS felt very heavy. In the morning I moaned to my partner, “I’m in a well!” Unable to lift my head myself, I propped myself up on a series of pillows to get out of bed. Poorly and bravely, I tried everything from 15 minutes of recumbent exercise to 30 minutes of walking on the treadmill. I was reading all the time – thick post-structural theory, and it was excruciatingly boring by the foot-smelling college gym. Still, I was amazed that the Grinch’s mind could do so much. I graduated from taking walks outside in the sweltering Texas heat and swimming in the neighborhood pool. During my first dip in the water, treading water, and avoiding toddlers, something changed. I wasn’t weightless, but I was less dominated by gravity.
