Menu
header photo

The Journal of Multimodal Rhetorics

ISSN: 2472-7318

Dwindling

Regan Levitte


Keywords: chronic illness, coming out, queerness, moving, starting a new career

 

Categories: Sick/Disabled Bodyminds during Sick/Disabling Times; Queer Responses to the Apocalypse

 


I pack up all my stuff from March 1st until March 25th, when the movers show up to haul my things from Nebraska to upstate New York. My girlfriend Allie holds my hand as we watch them haul bed, mirror, boxes of clothes, kitchenware–all to be packed into boxes which will be shipped to the shores of Lake Champlain. Only one mover wears a mask. Lincoln recorded its first case of COVID-19 on March 20th.

In my purse hangs a bottle with 67 doses of Synthroid, a hormonal supplement meant to boost my T4s, since my thyroid functions at the level of a centenarian on their deathbed–Hashimoto’s thyroiditis is a constant, niggling frustration in my life, dominating my energy levels, my food intake, and my joint function.

I’m to drive to Michigan in my decrepit Impala and pick up my mom after the moving van’s been packed. I’ve accepted my first post-grad school job: managing writing tutors in the Learning Center at SUNY Plattsburgh.

While we had initially thought we would cross the border at Sarnia and drive through Ontario to get to Plattsburgh, New York, the border closure changes our plans, and we take a long trip across almost the entirety of New York State.

A text to my new boss: Hi Karin! Thanks so much for the offer to stay at your sister’s in Rochester–I think Mom and I will stick to driving; we’ll probably be in Plattsburgh by eight this evening.

We drive through the Adirondack Park, and I know that Romantics would be fully in the sublime as we pass waterfalls, trees older than the state of Michigan, more trees than I have seen in my three years in the Great Plains. I’ve missed trees. Things seem normal until we pass little hamlets and villages with “TAKE OUT ONLY” signs. I enjoy the awe anyway. Mom takes photos through the passenger windows as I take my boat of a sedan around hairpin mountain turns.

With 60 doses of Synthroid left, the Impala is emptied, cleaning supplies are purchased, and then Mom is bundled off to the Burlington airport to return to Michigan. We’ve spent the past four days with each other, but I couldn’t bring myself to finally come out to her at 27, couldn’t find the right moment to talk about how the person she met at graduation is actually named “Allie” and uses she/her pronouns and has been on HRT for nearly a year. But I do tell her about my goals for the future, about how I am still salty about her trying to force me to join the tennis team in high school, about how graduate school shaped me to really disagree with her conservative politics, about my unhappiness with how I have been treated by her brothers. I feel that that, for now, is enough bravery and confrontation.

On April 2nd, I settle into working from home, holding Zoom meetings, sending a flurry of emails, and trying to get to know the writing tutors I’ve inherited. I send strategic emails to recruit for ENG 390, which I will teach in the fall, trying to recruit good tutors:

I like to train a certain kind of student-person to be a writing tutor: this is a person who is not necessarily a great writer (but by all means, send on your high-achieving writers, I value them too!), but a great communicator. They are a person who speaks up in class easily, who has no fear of office hours, who gets along with their classmates. They might get B+’s on papers, but they take the work seriously! As any administrator would, though, I do hope you send me the punctual ones, the responsible ones, the ones who turn in work on time, or at least communicate needing more time.

Maybe something here that anticipates the curriculum and, if only briefly, touches on the final project? Writing tutoring, in my mind, asks for the ultimate listener, and I want to hire that kind of person–this is why I ask for faculty recommendations. The teaching faculty, however, are overburdened with switching to teaching online, and probably don’t see my email to get their students to join the culture of tutoring I am so desperate to create. The director of first year composition is the only faculty member who replies with a list of students to recruit.

With 30 doses of Synthroid left and a syllabus to design, I start to get a little nervous.

I don’t know anyone aside from my work colleagues, so I get a few names of local doctors’ offices from them, and an urgent care I rush into when my mouth suddenly starts tasting like metal one day. The first-year composition director offers that he has always had good experiences with the local hospital, which is at least reassuring. I ask him about scholars that he admires in writing center studies, attempting to distract myself, and try to settle into writing my syllabus. I should have plenty of time to do this–I have no reason to leave my apartment aside from grocery pick-ups and the occasional walk.

This assignment idea comes to me as I grapple with a bad inflammation day, scarcely able to type it, so I use talk-to-text to put my thoughts into words, punctuated with brain fog-induced “umms” and “errrrs”:

Localized Research Project: –uhhh–For this project, I am asking that you investigate something relevant to writing in your life–erm–as a SUNY Plattsburgh student, –ahhh–or to a community, space, –ohhh, shoot, ugh–or standard on campus, and conduct your own research on this idea. We will approach this project in stages (a project proposal, an exploratory draft, and a final draft).

–uhhh–Some topics you might consider, or use as a guideline:

  • A look into writing spaces on campus–the library, a campus cafe, dorm rooms, –ohhh, what else? Anything–etc.
  • Tracking where students write –ermmm, hmm– on campus (or off, who knows?)
  • An –uhhh, what’s it called…–ethnography of different populations of student writers (think populations of international students, –uhhh, ugh! They call it…– the Creative Writers’ Guild, student-athletes, non-traditional age students, for starters)
  • Investigating department writing policies –ohhh, what am I…–-(but not just the English department!)

Life in higher education does ask us to be vagabonds of a kind, trailing from funded position to funded position, but I wonder about David Orr’s idea of to “dwell” rather than just “reside” for myself–and for this assignment I’m designing (Orr, 2013, p. 186-7). I know that I came to this evergreen, snowy valley town for the job, a job which is a too-perfect fit for my training, and those sweet, sweet New York State bennies to try to solve Hashimoto’s frustration-itis, but what brings students here? What makes them stay? I wonder what I will find out about the culture of this school from these projects, as a new dweller, through a better part of the day once I am able to get a second coffee in my system. The fog persists into the next day, even after going to bed at seven-o’clock.

Brain fog is pretty typical for me, so I don’t think I have COVID-19, but after soaking stiff and swollen hands in cold water, I drive out to the local airport for a test anyways. It’s negative, thank God.

I call a new healthcare provider every day, sometimes only getting an answering machine with a falsely cheerful message.

No, we’re not taking any new patients right now because of the pandemic.

Our office has made the decision to stop taking new patients because of COVID-19.”

Because of the pandemic, we’re not taking any new patients, I’m sorry. Try….

Finally, with five doses of Synthroid rattling around in the orange bottle, I get on the phone with the office manager of a small walk-in clinic/doctor’s office, a lady named Kelsey.

“Yes! I’d be happy to add you to Hannah’s roster of new patients. Yes, she’s pretty knowledgeable with thyroid things, but she’ll likely refer you to an endocrinologist after some blood work intake. You have five doses left? Sure, come on in, we’ll get some bloodwork done and analyzed, and then run a new prescription for you. No problem,” she says.

I cry on the phone from relief because it feels like someone has finally given a shit about the fact that I have Hashimoto’s and that I’ve moved halfway across the country during a pandemic and finally have some insurance and really need this prescription refilled.

“Oh, honey, don’t cry! We’ve got you!” she consoles as she takes my insurance information while we’re on the phone. Meanwhile, I text Allie, relieved, and then she also tries to call me while I’m still on the phone with Kelsey. In the scramble of switching between phone calls, all three of us get onto the same call for a few minutes, and Allie crows an excited “Hi!” to Kelsey. I explain, sniffling, that Kelsey’s the first person I’ve talked to who could get me an appointment with a provider in nearly thirty days.

I go to the doctor’s office the next morning, and Kelsey greets me with crinkling dark eyes showing a smile under her mask, and directs me to an examination room where a nurse waits with a phlebotomy kit. She asks how my girlfriend is. The nurse taking my blood asks me why I moved up here but says she would have loved having a writing tutor in college; my class sounds so cool to her. Maybe, just maybe, this move will be worth it.

 

References

Orr, D. (2013). Place and pedagogy. The NAMTA Journal, 38(1). ERIC. 


Bio

Regan Levitte is a bisexual, chronically-ill, Midwestern Aquarius who now works in the most upstate of Upstate New York one can get to, and is always tired but enthusiastic. She is the assistant director and writing specialist for The Claude J. Clark Learning Center at SUNY Plattsburgh, teaching and managing writing tutors while running constant Banner reports. She feels strongly about medical equity, thyroid health, and em dashes.