Chapter 1 Dangerously Healthy by Malcolm Birkenshaw

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Chapter 1.

'And if Petch thinks I'm going to just lie down and die he's got another think coming,' I chuntered as I lurched across the village square, my stumbles hidden in tonight's dense darkness.

It had been a day to remember, and by hell a day to forget. Not one in which things had come in twos and threes but more like in galloping herds of wildebeests.

`Sod him,' I cursed Petch, and aimed for a lone light which also shone unevenly over part of the front of the pub. `First sort yourself out, Mytholmroyd,' I said to myself, knees wobbling. `Best take a rest, upon one of these window sills,' I felt for the solid support of the stone, and slumped back, glancing at my watch.

Above my head the sign of the 'Jolly Poacher" was swinging gently in the cool March air. It was only ten o'clock. A welcoming glow was escaping through the open door and my bottom was cold, numb, probably pimply and becoming shaped to the grit of the granite. `Might as well,' I convinced myself, `I look as though I'm drunk,' and limped into its warmth.

`Martin. Tha can't have multiple sclerosis,' Stan thrust a pint of beer in my direction before I reached the bar, a pint filled to overflowing. `Get this down thee. If tha hasn't got M.S. by the time tha's forty, then tha hasn't got M.S. at all.'

Where on earth had he picked up that idea from? I pondered. A ponder long enough for froth to spill over the side of my glass, run down my fingers, drip to the floor and spread out in the form of a puddle. `Surely my stumble had disappeared?' I wondered to myself. I had always disguised whatever it was that was wrong with me. How could he know? - especially since it was only today that I had found out myself.

`Cheers,' I found my voice, raised the glass, and gulped down a mouthful, hoping to swallow my surprise. Even I still did not know what the name M.S. really meant. `Who told you about the ......?'

`Tha Lena 'phoned us. She asked me to run thee to hospital, tomorrow morning.'

`I can manage,' I spluttered, again taken off guard. `I'll be all right, thanks,' coughing, propping myself against the bar, perching one cheek upon a stool, attempting to mask the state of my legs. `I can drive there myself.'

`Don't be so dateless,' he laughed. - At least I think it was dateless he said for by now my memory was racing backwards, heel over toe; recollections as far as this morning beginning to flood through the amber nectar I was drinking?........

`Come back in the summer,' the specialist had said, what by now was hours ago. He had been tilting back in his seat, almost tippling over backwards, when he told me, `And we'll fix you up with callipers until your wheelchair comes through.'

`Like hell you will,' I had sworn under my breath, whilst remaining respectful, looking straight ahead, eyes defiant refusing to blink, my imagination having longed to give his damned reclining chair an up-and-over.

It had not been the first time I had been sent to see him. For sixteen years I had "cured" myself each time my family doctor manipulated me into keeping an appointment. That was until today. This time I had not hoodwinked the consultant.

In fact Petch was like a bull to a red rag. He was a consultant on the outside looking in whilst I was the rag on the inside looking out: a rag whose next job was to side-step the disease, walk on water, a rag who last year had sprinted up and down an escalator before my limp returned yet again. Well, maybe walking on water might be a bit optimistic but there was no way in which I was going to succumb to his prognosis.

`Typical, it had to be me,' I had thought, half smiling inwardly, half lost for curses, half lost in the chill of a lost future. Was this the ultimate challenge? Yes, that's it; after a lifetime of successes, which had usually turned into failure, here was a chance to turn failure into success and to defy all the odds for the first time in my life.

`It could be something we call a slow virus, that's why I want you in hospital for a couple of days,' Petch had continued, though now he was talking towards Lena, my wife, instead of to me who was the one he wanted in his damned stupid hospital.

She had remained impassive, sitting, staring straight through his head at the wall whilst I wondered what she was thinking? Funny how consultants' studies are often short on the book side, and also of cobwebs. Attract dirt, they do, I supposed, but on such a dismal day there was not a speck of sunshine to light up any floating dust.

`Is there a cure?' she asked, her soul grey, yet in hopeful anticipation. At least I supposed that's what she was thinking. I could usually tell, that is I thought I could until now, but today she became as deep as a pond in which fish ceased to swim.

`I'm afraid not. It might only take a few months, whilst in other cases it can be many years before the patient loses use of their legs, then arms, and finally their sight,' he replied, still not bothering with me. So bloody hygienic he was, without even a bird to crap on his lawn. But there was a spider's web, I could see one, on the top corner, behind his head, and I sensed his spare eye waiting to see how I coped when dressing myself.

`Bloody guinea pig,' I swore under my breath, balancing upon one leg, inching the clean sock over my toes. For years I had known there was something wrong, despite playing games and looking fit. Yet whatever the fault I had always shaken it off. For example, every time I was sent to see him I had first made myself fit, before turning up. In fact, until today, he had never found anything wrong, so he could stick his prophecy of doom.

He's part of a conspiracy, I pulled on my other sock, still dwelling upon the times my G.P. had urged me to see him. Mind you, that was not very often, Doctor Dodd only trapping me when I was taking one of the kids to the surgery. I used to nod my head, say tomorrow, and keep out of her way until next time.

But country doctors have ways and means, Dodd biding her time, having enlisted the help of my wife to catch me during one of my downturns. This is why Lena must have insisted on driving the car, just to make sure I turned up, in the belief she was taking me to be cured. Little did she realise that it was an irreversible step. From now on I would never get another job. No, she did not want to know, I could tell by her face, she thought she could rub it out like a spelling mistake on her blackboard, preferring to think the specialist had made a wrong diagnosis.

As we left along his footpath I turned and looked back. `If there's no cure, why do you want me in hospital?' I challenged, facing him, full-frontal, exposing his emperor's robes, part of the cut and thrust of the engagement to come.

He paused, framed in his doorway, taken off guard, having intended to watch how I walked. `I require the extra tests to confirm if my preliminary diagnosis is correct,' he cleared his throat, and blinked, still caught in my stare.

I shook my head, knowing he was probably right, about me having multiple sclerosis, but bloody-well wrong about the course it would take. Nevertheless, I was prepared to play his game and be a guinea-pig before devoting all my time to a study of the disease. Besides, one day, when someone discovered a cure, at least I would be on the hospital short list.

`Now then, are you satisfied?' I snapped at Lena, as soon as we reached the end of his drive.

`What do you mean?' she faltered, stunned by my anger. She had only been doing her best.

`You've just made us bankrupt,' I continued to rant, Lena remaining in line for my wrath which should have been saved up for Petch. (Fortunately my prophecy never came true, though we were not to know that a buyer for my business would be found, just in time, a footstep ahead of the bailiffs. However, I was right in that our standard of living was destined to fall. Still, that was only money, what is the price of a pair of fit legs?)

We remained silent during the journey home, Lena hurt at my ingratitude, this lack of conversation suiting me for I needed to rummage through my thoughts since I was already resigned to sharing my life with a virus. Mind you, no virus had ever been found, they were only guessing, but whilst they were looking for it I would learn to run again, play tennis, play cricket, play hell and stride into his surgery walking proof of my discovery and of how bloody wrong he was.

We gazed through the windscreen, two lives apart. A grey April had fallen upon us; bird-less, slack fields upon which spring would never shine. `Damn it,' I swore silently.

`Pardon?'

`Nothing,' I countered, my eyes avoiding Lena and looking down at the floor. `Find the May in your heart,' I continued, this time without muttering a word. `Think of the past, search for clues, look upon this experience as a real opportunity to use your degree,' I smiled. All I had to do was to trawl through my life, recall every minnow, and build upon the important tides.

With eyes closed I remembered that some attacks of M.S. had disappeared after a change in my life style, or even simply when enjoying myself. Finding the cure was not going to be so difficult after all. Then my smile floated where darker waters lapped up different ebbs, different attacks. Better think again, and again, and again and again.

The car meandered along, obeying the tilt of the lanes where the age of gnarled trees buckled bent verges. I thought of those times when I placed both hands upon my daughter's tummy, when she was small, to "Magic Away" her stomach-ache. This treatment had also worked for other ailments, although I often remained apprehensive, rarely daring to use it. In any case, it was only for a special member of the family, or a friend, and even then it did not always work.

Lena continued to steer the car into and out of the sways, sometimes jerking, whilst I remained musing, thinking of the time at university when I once used this "magic" upon myself. Sixteen years had passed since then, but I could still remember those weeks of violent headaches, those knives in my brain, and that day when they forced me to steer my car into a lay-by and stop. How vivid remained the memory of me holding my palms heavenwards, willing "power" into them, whilst taking deep breaths, calling upon prayers learned by rote as a child and cried by the heart when upon the precipice of death - real or imagined. Yes, that flashback of my hands, full of energy, pressing down upon my head, still shone as forceful as ever for the pain had dissolved, never to return.

To hell with the specialist, I would use that "power" again. My eyes remained tightly screwed, concentrating all my energies. A daft thing to do, this time there was no headache to cure. Perhaps if I concentrated differently it might be possible to control all those white blood cells which were nibbling my nerves?

I concentrated differently all right when Lena swung the car over the bridge, lurching it onto the slope which dropped down to our drive. My eyes sprang open, expecting something different, a changed world, as though in those short hours several months had passed. Claire and John were not home from school. Claire twelve, John nine, yet they, like Lena, had never known of the illness which had been eating at me over the years. Well, you don't say, do you? - and by believing that I was well they had unwittingly helped me live a normal life. I owed much of my health to them.

Damn, I tottered out of the car, today's self-healing yet to show progress. `I think I'll go for a stroll,' I smiled after tea, first smile for hours, in a hurry to prove the specialist wrong for daylight would only be with us for a couple of hours more.

`Going far?'

`No, no,' I lied, having determined to take a long walk, smash myself back into health then, tomorrow morning, swagger into the hospital obviously cured.

An evening sun broke through, surprising the grass into revealing a promise of green. Things are looking up, it seems, the countryside not being so dead after all. I turned right along our lane, past the abandoned waters of an olde worlde quarry, full and still, jungled behind trees and shrubs and over which coots scurried to safety amongst its reeds. `Why is it called the Brick Pond when only limestone was quarried for Adderton's cottages?' I wondered with a slow gaze.

`Because,' chattered a blackbird as it hopped through the leaf mould. At least I imagined this is what it was chattering as I answered my own questions, `Because they needed the clay to make bricks to build the kilns to burn the lime to make the mortar to build their houses once they'd dug their way through to the limestone.'

Once outdoors, on my own, surrounded by nature, I could see that life was returning to the hunched trees, undergrowth was sprouting, and even dull birds were singing in preparation for spring. Of course I could walk, I struck out, and soon reached the level crossing. `What's half a mile to a pair of long legs?' I hummed and leant against the gates. They were closed for an approaching train. Time to rest and contemplate upon the hill beyond the tracks. Admittedly the lane climbed steeply once on the other side, but it was little more than a pimple overlooking the Vale of York. In the past I had climbed real hills, whenever I wished to throw off an illness. `If I walk up and down that incline, several times, surely it will simulate a mountain?'

The hint of a locomotive shimmered beyond the bridge beyond the incline, before the track began to sing before the rumble before the roar of a giant diesel shook all before it as it passed. I waved, to little faces pressed against the passing carriage windows, their tiny hands happy with excitement. Then the end of the last compartment, blank and bare, shrank into the distance. The gates swung open, in well-worn fits and starts, horizontally, just as gates always used to do. `Time to start the climb.'

It might only be a small hill, but I was left in no doubt that it was steep, every muscle aching as my legs thrust upwards to the top. Still, these were like the real pains which cured me when climbing in Wharfedale, my plan was obviously working. Then the lane levelled out to sleep its way over a hedge-less landscape before an even steeper drop on the other side. `Most peculiar,' I thought aloud, my legs suddenly balking at working correctly, their reflexes gone, refusing to cope down the incline.

I struggled and stuttered on the balls of my feet until, marooned half way down, incapable of climbing back, I slumped onto the verge for a rest. Bemused, befuddled, outwitted, I abandoned my thoughts. On a clear day you can see York Minster, they say, but many times in the past I had seen snow on the Wolds that were even further away. Hell! Yorkshire, the county of broad acres, thousands of fields and I had to end up sitting on a bloody great thistle. At least I think it was a thistle, I could not really tell, not with a numb bum and disorganised muscles leaving me unable to shift, not without driving the needles in deeper. This is ridiculous, there must be a way, what if I simply roll over?

An even dafter idea, for where dumb thistles ended live nettles took over, leaving me with no option but to crawl onto the lonely lane. Keep death off the road, and numb bottoms too, but all was not lost for at least it was traffic free. I banked on it staying that way whilst I hoped to recover, though after half an hour the light was beginning to fade. `Something will have to be done. Better make an effort to get home,' I confided with the macadam whilst rising shakily to my feet. `Try thinking your muscles to walk,' my next balmy idea. That was even worse, especially after the rest, leaving me lolloping more or less in a downhill direction. `Try walking backwards,' I refused to give up, shouting aloud to make my muscles obey. Well, at last, the odd reflex, albeit in reverse, and certainly odd, started to work.

But how tiring it was, I took another break, again upon the asphalt, my nettled behind still numb to the world. `What about walking in a zigzag?' I concentrated, in desperation, remembering Wharfedale, and of how sheep descended its fells. It would have to do, the temperature was dropping, dusk was advancing, no time to waste, any daft idea was better than none. `It works!' I cried out with laughter, ignoring what people might think, `It bloody-well works.' Besides, no-one could see and, in any case, what did it matter, nothing could look more daft than a man bum-bound waiting to be run over.

`Is that the last time I shall ever climb a hill?' I mused through the glass as I supped my last beer. `No, he who limps away limps to climb another day,' I smiled, still recalling how stupid I must have looked as I lunged from tree to tree during my tottering detour back to our village. Thank goodness it had been dark, nobody could have recognised me, even when I stumbled from tree to wall to fence, always catching something just in time.

`What's tha bloody grinning at?` Stan dug his elbow into my muse, bringing me back to the present, `Hurry up. Lofty's waiting. Tha's got another pint in.'

Read the following chapters that tell of how Martin “cured” his M.S. and climbed mountains by the following year.

Read the following chapters that tell of how Martin "cured" his M.S. and climbed mountains by the following year.

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