Chapter 9 Dangerously Healthy by Malcolm Birkenshaw

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Chapter 9.

`We've been worried.' The royal we. Lena still doubted my
judgement.

`I phoned,' I said, whilst prickling inwardly. I had been doing
my best to get better.

`That was ages ago,' she retaliated. Tea was ready. We were
both hungry, and food ameliorated where words would have been better
and their effect last longer.

I flopped onto the settee as soon as my meal was ingested. Had
oxygen been diverted whilst digestion took place?.. or perhaps
exacerbated by today's cycle ride?.. or the huge size of the meal?
This had never happened before my M.S. was diagnosed, even though I
now knew that my M.S. had been keeping itself invisible throughout
most of my life.

Sod it, I'm more bothered about my spine and that damned lumbar
puncture. Best lie on my front, ease the discomfort, sort of getting
to know the carpet from a dust mite's eye view. `B-o-r-i-n-g,' I
drew pictures with my finger in the pile, `A dust mite's lot is not
a nappy one,' and turned onto my back to see if gazing at the
ceiling was better, humming from Gilbert and Sullivan for want of
nothing better to do. `When will that be redecorated? I used to
emulsion it myself, will I ever again?' I mused, trying a cushion.

`Can't you remain still for one moment?' Lena complained, tired
of my shuffling, as she stood offshore from my island. `We're
popping through to Leeds this evening,' she sighed. `Do you want to
come?'

`Might as well,' I grudgingly accepted what sounded like a
reluctant invitation. Yet even the seat in her car had a crippling
effect until I got out at my parents'.

`Do you think you would like to see my physiotherapist,' Mother
laid down a recommendation which mere mortals dare not decline.
`He's very good,' she remained sitting, Czar of her kitchen table,
fingering the pepper pot lest anyone should doubt.

`All right, then,' I nodded, anything for peace, grasping at
chaff let alone straws. He used to ease her neck from time to time,
each easing session demanded when she and Father were not seeing eye

to eye - which they never did in any case on account of him being
small.

The physiotherapist was also a little fellow, officially
retired, yet with a full appointment book and an undeclared income
tax advantage. `I think we'll try you on here,' he shuffled me onto
a medical couch, his diddy legs diddling away out of sight beneath
his long white coat, jacking me down to a convenient height for his
hands. `Just here?' he placed two pads, one either side of my spine,
right on the spot, without the lumbar puncture having been
mentioned. I watched suspiciously as he wired me to a microwave
machine. Not the kitchen type, more a black box, switched to low
heat, to a sort of medical simmer. Then he disappeared, closing the
Edwardian panel door behind. Goodness knows how many more customers
he had cooking away in other rooms throughout his rambling home, a
rude stone house with a dispirited garden without a single rambling
rose. Truly a widower's refuge.

Even before he returned to massage my back there was a tingling
in my thighs. `It's as though blood is flowing more freely.'

`Of course it is. There's got to be a blood supply,' he slapped
me down for trespassing upon his expertise.

`I know that, I read physiology at university. I was just
trying to describe the sensation.'

`Oh?' he paused, taking stock, adjusting his persona, all the
time his hands manipulating my back. `Perhaps there's a restriction
in the flow to your legs,' he remembered our earlier conversation.
`Which was overcome by circulation when you climbed,... what did you
call it?'

`Simon's Seat.'

`Ah, yes, that's right, Simon's Seat. I remember the area
well.'

He was partially right, circulation being important, but he was
forgetting that it was my central nervous system which was under
attack.... I only went once more to see him, my improvement in
walking eroded upon the drive home. Probably the sitting.

`I wonder if an infra-red heat lamp would work?' I settled back
after cycling to Tom and Ola's again.

`Would you like to borrow ours?' They once owned an early
model, if they searched through their loft, the creaking and
groaning of joists threatening that Tom's feet were about appear
through the ceiling any moment as he picked a way between junk and
the joists.

When I got it home it was almost as effective as the
physiotherapist's microwave. Better, because of not sitting down to
drive home I walked even further in a straight line. Ought to see
how the business is going, now that my recovery is well under way.

`How long before the business is sold, Vanessa?' I entered the
office.

`It's not... Although we've got a potential buyer, but the
audit's not ready.'

That's just what I wanted. Stress to upset my recovery.

`So, it's not ready?' Mother fed pepper into her blunderbuss
when she found out.

`Good afternoon, Mrs. Mytholmroyd. I'm terribly sorry to hear
about your son,' the accountant fawned down the telephone. `Except
for the grace of God, there go I,' he poured syrup over spice before
she had time to attack. `You can rely upon us, it's our intention to
do everything within our ability to help.'

He was going to help, all right - help himself in case I should
die by locking my papers away as soon as she put down the phone,
demanding to be paid in full for audit work before they'd consider
even releasing a paper-clip. Stress, stress, stress. But there was
more to come. `Another problem's cropped up,' Vanessa looked up
when I got back from his office. `I've kept everybody in the
picture. They've all very been understanding, except for Yorkshire
Factoring, they immediately issued a writ.'

`Can't wait? That probably means they're going broke,' I said,
my spirits sinking, stress, stress, stress, playing havoc with my
cure.

Outside the birds had stopped chirping as a grey air seeped
from the east - that blandness borne off the North Sea you can feel
without feeling. The stone wall from which I made my first proper
cycle ride was sunless and dead.

On hearing of these Mother dipped into their savings, just in
time to stub the sheriff officer's fingers before he distrained on
goods and chattels to clear the amount due. `I'm only doing my
job,' he dismissed the effect on my health, his sterile face hiding
behind words, its sallow complexion a dead parchment within which he
now lived.

Was this man once a child? No, it was cloned within a bleak
mortuary or upon a lifeless steppe. `Sieg Heil! That's what
Hitler's Gestapo said,' I saluted. `Wanted, dead or alive, cash..
and here it is,' I pushed our petty cash tin towards him, especially
filled to the brim, making him count it pound by pound. But it
troubled him not. He'd probably been thumped many a time when not
having a bailiff to hide behind.

Apart from Yorkshire Factoring all the main problems were
created by the slippery pen brigade - tax men, the solicitor and the
accountant who, like renegade vultures, were not prepared to wait
for their prey to be dead.

Thank goodness much of the rest of the world remained filled
with silent compassion, showing patience until the business was
sold. Without their kindness and understanding I might never have
recovered, yet my back still caused pain. `Why don't you try a
sun bed?' Lena looked up from the clothes she was mending, making
our income stretch now it was one.

`Good idea,' I smiled, bringing one in from the garage where it
hung from a nail between seasons. `That's better,' I relaxed,
having brushed off the cobwebs - good news for the flies, bad news
for the spider, angling it towards the television so as to watch the
programme in comfort. Trouble is, it provided an assault course for
everyone else. Lena said nothing, merely looked. From then on I
used it only when they were out, after exercising - though that was
infrequent for spring had withdrawn beyond the far far-icy currents
from the Bering Sea... and the trees said nothing.

What else can I do, my mind churned, remaining restive,
impatient for progress? `If you think a new mattress will help, why
not?' Lena yielded to us swapping our expensive model for an
orthopaedic type. Hard, solid, no chance of one's back or anything
else sagging. It brought further improvement, though she could have
complained at this loss of luxury, `It's all right,' she accepted,

`So long as it does you good.'

But cures do not grow in the dark like forced rhubarb and my
ideas began to run thin, with boredom returning. `Don't forget
Egypt, and don't forget Easter,' I reminded myself when my eyelids
grew closer together, mindful of that week in hospital when
inactivity limped hand in foot with this creeping condition.
`Occupy your mind, find other activities whilst the weather is bad,'
I chuntered, pacing round the house, determined to prevent my nerves
and muscles from degenerating again.

`Must find something to do in lieu of that daily bloody bike
ride whilst it's so blustery,' I grumbled at Gardeners' Question
Time‘ on the radio whilst watching the sky racing past, grey, a
hundred miles thick, leaving me cautious after that fiasco when I
trailed behind John's bike all the way back from Ouseby Hoff like a
legless prune. But today, unlike then, the trees were no longer
silent but tussling, hanging onto their leaves in the slipstream of
a gusting wind. `Sod it, to hell with being tied down, barred from
town just because of the traffic. I'll drive there, then work out
how best to cope.'

How faint were my memories, less than ripples in the sand after
only a couple of months, two months when ideas had stormed through
my brain leaving normality obscured beneath a foaming of flotsam and
jetsam. `So this is what roads are like,' I had forgotten, standing
back from the curb, judging its width like a river flowing by,
having spent too many weeks cycling along quiet lanes. What to do
now, step into the traffic to tread water with lame feet.

`Bugger off, you stupid sod,' poetry elbowed from a taxi's
window as its driver tried to hasten by in a hurry.

Perhaps I looked too fit, because of the vitamins. Did he
really think I was drunk? To hell with him - but watch it, cast
your mustard seed amongst that lot and it will wither faster than
his wheels can burn their tyres into the asphalt. Best wait for a
climatic change - like now, whilst the lights are red and against
them, before the next bore of vehicles bears down.

I developed..... not quite a hop, skip and a jump..... more a
kind of hop, hop and hope. Bloody stupid, but it got the adrenaline
flowing, that kind of adrenaline which was not good news for a
stress-related disease.
`I've done the shopping.'

`Have you?... Wonderful,' Lena was amazed with my progress.
`There's a village buffet dance this weekend,' she had brightened up
no end. `Would you like to go?'

`Magic. Of course I would. I'm already proficient at dancing
across roads,' I grinned, reading the fine print on the ticket.
`And the food won't present much of a problem, it's a buffet, I'll
be able to pick out what suits.'

Dim lights, low ceiling, urging band, uninhibited music. `The
turkey and salad will be fine. But what do you think's in those
bowls, Lena.. Any flour?'

`There's no flour in any of these,' a callow youth from the
catering agency butted in, his chef's hat for the evening wilting
over his eyes. `They're just as they were when we took them out of
their tins.'

`But what did it say on the tins?'

`You what?' he hesitated, his hat wilting further.

`What are their precise contents?'

He remained, bemused. `Russian salad, potato salad, and ....'

`It's all right,' I stopped him, before the hungry line
threatened to grow longer, and withdrew to the start of the queue.
This time I settled for Turkey breast, green salad, and a bottle of
sparkling red burgundy.

The band started again, its rhythm and bubbling wine driving
zest through my veins. `Like to dance?' I asked Lena, pushing the
lettuce to one side so we could edge past our table.

She hung on, at first helping to lead, as I avoided the more
adventurous steps. But soon the past began to return - my health was
making progress together.

`There's not much wrong with him,' sniped a member of the
Women's Friendship Circle, still waiting for someone to ask her to
dance.

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

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