If You Cut Me

Wednesday, September 21st 2016 – 2:24 am

Nerve disease is almost ubiquitous in males on my father’s side of the family. For twenty years, my every waking and sleeping moment has been unforgiving, excruciating and crippling. Until this filthy chapter.

On this wrong world, it tickles or it itches or it burns or it freezes. It forgets. I feel nothing and something and everything. But I no longer feel right or wrong. I never truly have, but it is moreso now than ever. I’ve never been less right or wrong than now.

Now I stumble and lurch with my walker and look down at my shoes to check if my legs and feet and the floor or God’s black earth are still there. She’s still right there, where He didn’t put her. I keep checking. It’s not enough to believe I’m still standing upright simply because a foundation long ago used to be under me.

If I close my eyes, I am immediately floating in time and space and have no direction or horizon. No compass, moral or otherwise. I’ve rushed to turn light switches back on, only to find myself looking at the ceiling as I almost smash my head on the floor behind me. Again and again.

My recently appointed ex-neurologist has referred me to see his colleague in two days for a first opinion.

He called it going to her for a second opinion, but his “I don’t know” doesn’t count as a first wild guess, let alone a fucking diagnosis. I never went to medical school and already knew “I don’t know”. Maybe this new doctor has opinions. Or empathy. We meet her Friday to exam her closely for a heartbeat.

Oh well, it’s the first doctor’s loss. When we finally discover and name this new permutation of devil and disease, it will be after her and me. We can hope and pray. We’ll even have our own Wikipedia page, while he languishes in obscurity.

…

“Did you say that your… bones itch?”

“Yeah. I no longer feel pain, only weakness. My bones itch. It feels like the inside of my skin itches and I can never scratch it,” is what I told him.

His eyes got big and he started typing it in his useless notes, verbatim.

“Yeah, write that down, you soon to be ex-neurologist number one,” is what I meant to add.

…

For twenty years, I had prayed for respite from my never ending ocean and waves of pain.

Almost silence and then dead silence. I’ll never make that mistake again.

Or is that a lie that I convince myself I am able to believe?

We can never stop crying out for relief.

Or sometimes to just feel anything again,

we may pray for pain.