Four interminable months have passed since our visit to Dr. Neurologist, when he pricked and prodded, when he found severe neurological damage and no knee reflex, months of worsening ambulatory paralysis and increasing pain, months without answer or insight. Dad’s questions have burned in his brain: What is the diagnosis? Why the severe? What can I do to improve?  And finally, after those four months, he had the chance to ask the doctor these questions, again.  N had been 80% certain of the diagnosis of diabetic amyotrophy, and after the negative spinal MRI, presumably 100% certain, there being no other working hypothesis.  Before him again on his examination table, the condition worsening, his answer to Dad’s renewed questions was a simple, “I have no idea.”  When that is the state of things, of course you order more x-rays and blood work and tell the patient you will can him with the results.  Punt.  At least the lumbar puncture/spinal tap and the MRIs and CTs are done and need not be repeated.  At least no one quipped, “What do you expect? He’s almost 88 years old!”  Eighty-eight and still with a resting heart rate of 65 from decades of physical fitness.  Eighty-eight with a world heavy-weight champion fighting spirit.  Meanwhile, we waste away at home in our recliners, grateful for stair lifts and showers and power wheelchairs and books, and family.  Surely, there must be a team of experts out there that can decipher this mystery and say, “Do this.”

(Pictured above: the healing squiggly scar on Dad’s scalp after skin cancer surgery last month.)