White Ceilings

I wrote this memoir for a class I took and thought others may find comfort in it.

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White Ceilings

I have always found comfort in white ceilings with florescent lights that hurt your eyes. All doctor’s offices have this white tiled ceiling that will eventually turn yellow with these awful florescent lights that make every little mark on anything visible. I would find myself looking straight at the ceiling for many of the uncomfortable moments in doctor’s offices, so I found comfort in these awful ceilings all around me.

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When I was eight, I was diagnosed with Juvenile Rheumatoid Arthritis. But before I had the official name, I was in my childhood doctor’s office that had these ceiling; the walls had various themes. My favorite was the ocean room. There were murals of fish on the walls, the ceilings had mobiles that let fish dance over your head when you laid back on the exam table. But today, we found ourselves in the teddy bear room. There were stuffed animals in outfits all over the room and paintings of them were on the walls. I sat in a wheelchair across from my mom whose eyes were full of worry. 

The previous day I had woken up, gotten ready for school and came downstairs. It was just a normal day but as I was getting ready to leave, I went to tie my shoes. My knee gave out as I stood. I fell to the floor and pulled myself back onto the couch, “Mom?” I cried out. “My knee…it hurts. I can’t walk.” I felt myself feel scared for a moment and I looked at my mom as she helped me sit on the couch. I had a sick day from school. We gave it a day. 

So here we sat, in the exam room with teddy bears smiling down at us. My doctor walked in, “What’s going on today?” 

We explained what happened and my doctor pondered. “You’ve had some other pain in your ankles previously, right?”

I nodded. The first time I felt this similar pain was in my right ankle. 

My parents and I were in our backyard, playing with our dogs.  I stepped into a hole one of them dug and my ankle rolled out from under me. I cried out so loud my mom swore I had broken my ankle but, it just hurt so much. I felt a sharp sting and then it grew more into the pain as we waited for an afterhours doctor to examine me and order x-rays, but nothing was wrong. My ankle was fine, but it didn’t feel fine at all. I felt like my ankle had snapped and it would do it again if I stood up. This exact feeling happened that previous morning but in my knee. 

“This is similar to how my arthritis diagnosis began. I think you need to see a rheumatologist.” My doctor said. Earlier that year, my pediatrician was dealing with his own similar process of dealing with adult rheumatoid arthritis. But his started in his fingers which escalated to his knees. I had a similar case as my fifty-year-old doctor which did not sit well with me, even at seven years old.

I remember my mom’s face and I felt confused. “I didn’t know this was something I needed to be worried about.” A phrase my mom would say for the rest of my life. Anytime we met a family who was new to the game, she would say “I never knew I had to worry about my child getting arthritis. I thought there were so many other things to worry about.” She would half laugh about it, but she was very serious in her words. But her furrowed brows, concerned eyes and surprised mouth stuck in my memory for a long time.

The next thing I knew, my mom was dialing on the office phone to speak to Denver Children’s Hospital. She spoke to someone and we waited in the teddy bear room. I noticed all the bears that were supposed to be comforting but I wasn’t comforted at all. I found myself staring at my feet and then back at the ceiling. I began to count each speckle. This is when I first noticed that ceilings had these odd spots in the bright white. I got to fifteen when my mom dialed my dad. “Steve?” The tone of her voice made my ears ring and the hair on the back of my neck stick up. “I need you to drive us.” She had worry trying to hide in her voice. 

My mom explained we had to go to a special doctor and we stared at each other in the elevator on the way back to our car. We met up with my dad back at our house and he carried me into his car where we stayed for over an hour until we got to the hospital. 

Denver Children’s hospital wasn’t scary to me. But, I only had one other hospital experience that I remembered at the time and I had no reason to be afraid. I was rolled in by my dad in a children’s wheelchair. It was insignificant compared to the adult sized one I had been sitting in earlier. I held tight on the arm rests as we made our way down the hallway into a yellow waiting room. We sat there for what felt like hours. But was probably just one. Time felt like it was going so slow this day. 

The ceiling in my exam room had the same as my original doctors’ office but the lights had clouds pasted onto them. It was basically the same as in my other doctors’ office which was interesting to me. We sat quietly, unsure of what to say, until a light tap on the door happened. My doctor, Dr. Roger Hollister, appeared. He had to be older than my grandpa, I was sure of it. His hunched back, wrinkled hands, and large thick wire frames gave it away instantly. He spoke to my parents first, then me. Next, he inspected my joints carefully but with purpose in his actions. I had to have bloodwork done and I was given a medicine for pain and swelling. 

Instead of being scared or worried like my parents, I was lost. I stared at those ceiling lights with the yellowing tiles. I wondered how they got the lights to be covered in clouds and I wondered why they did that. I felt pain in my body, but my skill of distraction was already being applied into this interaction. I was in my head, wondering. 

After we left Dr. Hollister, we went to get my first blood draw. This was the scary part. This was when I felt my heart start to race, not just because I had to be poked with a sharp object and they had to take my blood but because I was realizing that there was something wrong. I couldn’t handle the thought and I found myself anxious. I held my mom’s hand as she spoke to the nurse. It was one of his first times ever when he stuck me. I didn’t look at any of the supplies, but I held my mom’s hand as tight as I could. I didn’t look at the ceiling this time. I squeezed my eyes shut and inhaled soap. Six tubes of blood later, we were gone. But, the smell of antibacterial soap was stuck in my nose for days afterward.

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A few months later, I officially had the diagnosis of Juvenile Rheumatoid Arthritis. Somewhere along the line, I was explained what this meant. My mom said to me: “Your body has a special army. An army to keep you from getting sick. It protects you but yours is so strong that it thinks your joints are trying to hurt you. So, it attacks you. When it attacks, it hurts.” 

This made a lot of sense to me. As I got older, I used a similar way of explaining my health to people if they did not know basic medical knowledge. But, I still had trouble with why I had this problem. I didn’t quiet understand why I was forced to feel such physical pain when all my friends could run around, play, without feeling any of the things I felt. I wished to be “normal.” 

But every time I saw Dr. Hollister I would stare at these ceilings. This became my new normal. Eventually, it became a comfort to see these icky ceilings that are plastered all over hospitals and basically every commercial building that was built in the nineties at the earliest. Each one had a unique speckle of brown spots that I’m confident use to be a shade of gray but turned this odd color. You could tell the age of the building, just by looking at these spots. I learned that you could tell the age of trees by looking at the rings and I thought, “ceilings do that, too.”

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Brown speckles were my favorite as I got older. I found myself staring at the ceilings with the worst splatters of this once modern design of white and gray that faded into this feature of many buildings I fell in love with. 

I felt myself noticing in my schools around age thirteen when I found myself back in public school after a handful of homeschool years. I looked to the ceiling for guidance before each quiz and took a long deep breath just like I would do before any needle came in contact with my skin. Long deep breaths in while I counted the specs on my favorite ugly object brought me a type of calm. Every so often, there would be an instance where I looked to the ceiling for guidance and it would not be the typical one. My friend’s houses or the mall had different tiles which I would notice right away. 

But since I was eight, I slowly taught this technique to myself without even realizing how much it helped. I can look back at many memories and think of exactly how those ceilings and walls looked but I cannot always remember other aspects. But, I notice the ceiling each time anything of importance happens to me. 

Not only did my diagnosis ceiling stick out, but I remember how the ceiling looked when I got my drivers permit, my first concert, my boyfriend’s bedroom when I lost my virginity, when I smoked my first cigarette, when I got drunk for the first time, and how my first apartment looked.

I have never told anyone about my thoughtfulness on hideous ceiling tiles that have been around. I don’t share my life stories beginning with what type of lighting or colors were used in the room I was in, but I notice. My memory hangs onto these details with a tight grip, almost too tight to hold anything else worthy. But these ceilings bring me to a place of comfort in times of need. I looked to them for guidance on accident the day I met Dr. Hollister – who was my doctor for nearly eleven years after that first meeting. I found myself feeling safe under brown spots above me and I knew that my uncomfortable feelings would soon pass. These ceilings were my constant in a time of variables that were thrown at me.