Wing Finger

What was once the only thing
Has transformed into everything
Even you...
Even you...

I sat in the dimly lit room without windows. I stared at the milk colored walls, the paper covered table, the plainly labeled boxes of medical supplies. The young resident neurologist sniffed and sighed and asked me another question. I stuttered my thoughts through tired lips, twisting words, reasoning, reciting...this is what happens. Every two seconds I thought of something else to tell him. Half of those things never got told. They didn't really matter. What mattered was the image on his computer screen. My spine, discs angular and beautiful, a column of uneven lines, a white and dark pattern. The spinal cord itself was stained, small splotches, patches, dark little places in the midst of gleaming bright white. The resident flipped through images, the successive MRI's of my spine and then of my brain. The brain was completely clear, but for a few older lesions. I have a very pretty brain.

Walking
We are growing at the speed of light
Every single piece is synchronised
Even you...
Even you...

I've been waiting for the results of a certain test. Dr. Melanson ordered the test after putting together all of my symptoms at our first appointment a few weeks ago. She thought that there was a possibility that I could have Devic's Syndrome. With the myelitis and optical neuritis, it's understandable.

I started researching Devic's in the meantime, reading everything I could, throwing my energy into this new idea. The trouble is that it's not an easier disease....it's actually much worse than MS, with fewer treatments and no preventative therapies at all. I think that I just became so enveloped by the thought of it because it was something different. Something other than what I've been living with for so long. The results of the test came back negative. This is a wonderful thing, that I just have plain old MS. Plain old MS. I should be joyous that I do not have some degenerative disease that most definitely ends in blindness... But that evening after I found out the results, as I stood in the kitchen making supper, I became completely paralyzed with disappointment and frustration. It seems so silly now. It seems ridiculous. But I just wanted a different answer. I wanted there to be a fluke, Dr. Melanson walking in and saying, "You really don't have any of this. You're just a beautifully dramatic hypochondriac."

Teradactyls, abandoned pianos, your stepdad's bongo drums, the snails that live inside aquariums

Doo-doo-doo-doo...

What was once the only thing
Has transformed into everything
Even you...

- lyrics from Wing Finger by Chad Vangaalen from the album Skelliconnection