It was on a Tuesday night at a watering hole near my house that I first noticed it. The main course had been cleared, the coffee had arrived and I was contemplating a cognac or a grappa. The company was bright, interesting and warm. I wanted the evening to stretch out ahead, even though I had lots to do the next morning, early. I pushed my chair back, went to cross my legs and discovered that I could not lift my left leg off the floor. In retrospect, I had been having significant back pain. But I’ve had back pain almost constantly since being in the army 35 years ago, so I made nothing of it. Leg symptoms were another matter. I finished the coffee, passed up the after dinner drink and headed home as soon as it was polite.
The next morning I sought the counsel of a neurosurgeon who works at my university. He said there was no use in seeing me without an MRI or magnet scan. I don’t know if you’re familiar with the MRI, but I hope not. It is like being inserted into a sewer pipe with no room to move, nothing to see but the gray surface of the machine inches from your face, nothing to hear but a loud banging racket and nothing to do but worry about the disorder that has caused you to submit to this torture in the first place. I thought of fighter pilot training and the ability of those pilots to sustain themselves in very small spaces in preparation for capture, or at least in simulation of such a fate.
