Chapter 13 Dangerously Healthy by Malcolm Birkenshaw

13

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43

Chapter 13.

`A pound of spring cabbage, please,' I said - chest proud
because of yesterday's secret run, as I sprightly mounted the step
that was lowered at the back of the green grocer's van which, once a
week, stopped at the end of our drive. Everything was arranged just
high enough for a clear view, its shelves, screwed to battered and
repainted sides, were stacked high with apples, oranges, tomatoes,
onions - as high as the bends in lanes and driving conditions would
allow, and also with things less likely to roll, plus extra boxes of
last-minute produce crammed in at tempted-fate tilts.

`Spring cabbage? Wrong time of the year,' he lent against an
upended crate which acted as a counter which balanced a brass set of
scales, its weights in an old Oxo tin, and a wooden till with a
drawer that went `ting each time it opened. `I thought you were ill.
How about a firm white cabbage instead?' he said, opening a brown
paper bag.

`It's greens that I want,' I shook my head.

`Well, then, a nice healthy cauliflower, fresh in today,
they're classed as greens.' Whilst waiting for a yes he cleaned his
spectacles upon one corner of the brown apron which was tied round
his waist.

`No thanks. Must be dark green, as dark as possible.'

`You needs spinach, to gets up yer strength,' he shut his left
eye, confusing Long John Silver with Popeye.

I squeezed a reluctant smile. Spinach? It tastes like seaweed,
but at least it's green, I suppose. `All right, a pound of spinach.'

`That's out of season as well.... Anyone brought up in the
country knows that,' he chopped me down with an expression reserved
for townies. `What about beetroot?'

`Beetroot?' I winced,.... mind you, its dark red might be an
anti-oxidant. `OK, and some carrots, and some....,' I looked over
his shelves, having read about roughage being important for health.
Trouble is, that's an additional problem, what with me not eating
bread, although whole grain rice should be a help.

`Don't sell rice,' he tediously wiped his spectacles again,
convinced that M.S. had addled my brain.

`Sorry, I was going through the range of foods I can eat,' I
mumbled, ordering apples and potatoes. `And the rest of the things
on this....,' I passed a used envelope upon which Lena had scribbled
a list before leaving for school.

`Why didn't you give me that in the first place?' he suppressed
the customer-non-friendly expletives which had sprung to his mind.
`I could have had the whole lot done whilst you were
pontificating...... Here,' he stuffed the whole order into my arms
and pointed me in the right direction. `Tha won't get lost, will
tha?'

`Umm,' I sidled along, unable to reply since he had wedged the
shopping as high as my chin, leaving me to navigate by blind
reckoning. As long as our dike’s to my left I'll be shuffling in the
right direction, I thought. Better make sure, though, I peeped
sideways, leaning over, couldn't see it, and an apple rolled out of
a bag. At least it hasn't gone splash, I comforted myself, assuming
that the drive must be well-sited under my feet. I'll come back for
it later, after having something to eat, my routine being thrown out
by the greengrocer calling early in amongst everyone departing for
school.

The shopping spilled across our kitchen table as I let go,
looking up at our clock. Crumbs!... I've never been this late
before, better have a dose of sunflower oil before even starting on
breakfast.

One quick gulp, before M.S. could strike and undo all my
progress, then I opened a packet of cornflakes. `What's happening?'
goose-pimples were beginning to erupt along the full length of my
arms. `Hell!' I panicked, an unfamiliar sensation sweeping all over
me. `What's in this stuff?' perspiration poring from my forehead,
dripped off the end of my nose..... even my shirt was soaked to my
back. I gasped for air, staggered from the room, slumping to my
knees, insides tied up in knots. `Am I about to die?'

Once in the bathroom, having crawled there, I gave up fighting
the nausea, too drained to resist, the rumblings of my stomach
increasing. Within minutes..... ten minutes, twenty minutes, five
minutes - I don't know, my darkness began to lift, like the
remorseless passing of a storm, leaving me gasping for air - and even more air. Exhausted, I sank back against the white tiles, spent
from the physical effort. `What the hell had that been?' in the wake
of disappearing nausea feeling was gradually beginning to return to
those areas which had been numb for so many months. `It must have
been that sunflower oil on an empty stomach,' stunning my system
with neat linoleic acid. `Sod that for a lark, even if it is a
cure, I hope I never go through that again.' - Mind you, it really
did show that sunflower oil worked. `Wait 'til I tell them,'....
but I would drink it more slowly in future, and not before having
some food in my stomach.

`It's not scientifically valid,' snapped the local society's
secretary. `Any improvements you experienced were just ordinary
remissions.'

Damn him, the man's obsessed. He knows very little about the
disease, except that he's determined to stamp out any threat to his
fiefdom.

`You must leave it to us.....,' his sermon continued as I put
down the phone.

`I wonder what he'd do if a cure was found?... No more first
class rail travel or trips to conventions in America!' his
obstructions had strengthened my determination. `Call them
remissions, or whatever he wants, but I'll find some employment.
I'll show him,' and I drove to the station, bound for London to see
the outfit which had arranged my last job - the job which was
scuppered by me going into hospital.

As usual, I was late into Doncaster. With hot tyres I sped up
the ramp which serpented against the outside of their multi-storey
car park. `What the hell is she doing?' I swore at the car which
had stalled immediately in front. My hands were clenched, squeezing
the steering wheel, frustrated at being unable to overtake, the
train due any minute.

`What's wrong with your car?' I signalled, got out of my car,
and stumbled up the ramp. `What's wrong with your car?' I tapped on
her window.

`It won't go up,' she panicked, lowering it half an inch, her
index finger pointing to a barrier in front.

Red and white striped, the pole was painted, like a billion
others. What a moment for its mechanism to refuse to take coins.
`No, not this, not another bar to my progress.' I looked back,
intending to effect an escape, but a line of cars had built up
behind me. Bugger it, with no chance of reversing, and my future at
stake, I grabbed hold of the pole, took a deep breath, and snatched
upwards. It moved, sufficient for me to get underneath and push
further with every sinew of strength until its clamp yielded.

Knackered, surprised that I still had some strength, a bit like
the old days, I assumed a nonchalant air and limped back to my car.
Onlookers might suppose I had a pulled muscle, if they wished, but I
didn't care, provided they didn't guess there was something actually
wrong with me.

Stupid pride, stupid pride. I didn't even know them, yet was
conscious of their eyes as I left in haste for the station,
staggering down the steps, my limping echoes in the underpass before
hauling myself up onto platform one, exhausted. `The train for Kings
Cross is running twenty minutes late,' a Martian voice announced
over the tannoy.

`Bloody marvellous,' I swore, backing like Quasimodo into a
corner of the refreshment room.

Three announcements and two plastic cups of coffee slopping at
one hundred miles an hour later King's Cross arrived, all too soon.
I should have prepared for the interview. London seemed different.
After only nine months its station platforms were longer, its
escalators steeper although, whilst strap-hanging on the Underground
- its carriages tussled and swaying, my stiffness from the journey
soon disappeared. Almost, that is, as long as I concentrated on
thinking about walking once I emerged from the tube station.

`You're looking remarkably fit,' welcomed one of the
interviewers, expecting me to have passed through a regressive
metamorphosis. `I can't see any employer recognising your illness.'

That was all I was wanting to hear. After seeing the
industrial psychologist - who confessed to knowing little about the
disease, I caught the train home, sure my regime was on the right
tracks, certain I had been right after all, this M.S. was merely an
interlude.... I overlooked the fact that no-one had suggested
offering me a job.

`Job interviews here I come,' and next morning re-emerged my
writing pad, and upon the next day, and the next day, and the next
day, the first application being for work in the Gilbert and Ellice
Islands, then Turkey, then Portugal, then..... - no sooner had that
letter gone when a revolution shortened my horizons, perhaps to the
railway museum in York. `No? All right then, how about a laboratory
assistant for a Professor at Leeds University?'

`You're just the person I've been looking for,' his reply
opened. `But you're not in a union.'

`Damn the unions, damn them all,' I cursed.

But Lena was becoming impatient, not feeling it right that a
woman should be the one to bring in the money. `Pension?' she
complained. `Your pension doesn't count, it's a matter of
principle."

`All right, then, I'll take this job with the ministry of food,
something to do with fish. It only requires 'O' levels."

`Sorry, you're overqualified,' came their reply.

To cap it all, by coincidence, next morning's newspaper carried
a full page article. ’Minister for the Disabled claims he is doing
wonderful job“.

`Who does he think he is fooling,' I wrote to the newspaper.
`He should first put his own house in order, since the civil service
fails to employ their quota of disabled.'

A local radio station took up my story, the broadcast
coinciding with me becoming involved with a group agitating for
research into multiple sclerosis. This was a new self-help
organisation, so this connection with radio coincided just right.
`We'll do a major programme to precede your first meeting outside
London,' offered the station manager.

They first produced a half hour programme. `No, no, no,'
contradicted a neurologist. He preferred to remain telling people
they had an inflammation of the spine rather than let them know the
real truth.

`But we want to know what's wrong with us. It helps, otherwise
we think we're going mad, maybe,.. or perhaps even got cancer, or
goodness knows what,' bolshied another sufferer who had been invited
into the studio.

`We're the people to let you know when there is something worth
researching,' recited that damned local secretary, perhaps worried
we might have a flag day and take some of the froth off his
monopoly. `Besides, the worth of sunflower oil is yet to be proven,'
he leant back on his gusset.

`You've already been overtaken, there's something even better
than that,' cut in Henry, an M.S. sufferer from London. `Oil of
evening primrose, it contains gamma-linoleic acid, one stage better
than the essential fatty acid in sunflower oil.'

The neanderthal neurologist, unable to smother our microphone,
shook his head and opened his mouth, but the producer was winding up
the programme. When the tape recorder had stopped the arguments
became heated. A retired nurse was caught in the crossfire. She was
trying to sell copies of her booklet of poems called "Laughing with
M.S."

`Ha bloody ha,' someone angrily pushed them aside, being more
interested in finding someone who was peddling a cure.

`People get all the vitamins they require from normal diets,'
the consultant retaliated, digging in his clichés. But we were
fighting a guerrilla war not of our choosing

`Cups of coffee are waiting upstairs,' the producer's secretary
interrupted, hurrying to defend their none-of-plenty microphone,
increasingly at risk of becoming a casualty in no-man's-land.

`Multivitamin mineral capsules are prescribed by the National
Health Service,' Henry made certain he was overheard before the
armistice.

`What are they called?' I asked, before giving him a lift to
the train.

Concrete tubs remained dead, amongst the swirling dust, line in
line upon cracked concrete slabs where one-time flagstone pavements
had been laid with verges sprouting early daffodils - though in
today's easterly wind their green spikes would have shivered,
flower-less.

`And don't forget oil of evening primrose capsules,' Henry
reminded me on the platform. `But we have to buy those,' he called,
dropping the carriage window, leaning out, as his train pulled away.

Next day my doctor stopped me in the village. `I never before
realised how patients felt about M.S.' he said, intending in future
to let them all know, except in cases where that knowledge would do
more harm than good. `Here,' he handed me a prescription for
multivitamin mineral capsules.

That's one expense saved, I thought, whilst sauntering past the
Brick Pond. `Morning,' even the postwoman gave me a knowing wave.

`No wonder she waved,' I muttered to myself upon reaching home.
She had been pedalling light, after unloaded masses of mail through
our kitchen door letter box - mail from as far as Scotland, Bristol,
Liverpool and Hull, people wanting to know when our first meeting
was being held. `Crumbs, it was only a local broadcast,' I verbally
mused, thinking of how desperate they must be for news to have
travelled that fast. Although one letter was different:-

"I am congratulating you on your bravery, and hope you are
going to achieve success. I am fighting a losing battle against the
same disease. But as I live alone, and have already outlived my
friends I just wonder. A Home is frequently suggested, but the idea
is unpleasant. The complaint has only recently been diagnosed, but I
look back over the years and see myself tackling mysterious
unpleasantness such as coming home alone, feeling drunk, not
understanding any reason for my indisposition; and now I don't know
how one should tackle life.

You have one advantage however - a family to keep you
interested.

As I said before, I hope you are going to be successful in your
tussle with M.S. I shall keep remembering you.
Yours sincerely,
...............
(P.S. I am an octogenarian.)"

Each day our postwoman continued to cycle shotgun behind an
overfilled post-bag as people got in touch, their hearts set upon
hope, anxious to know more of the meeting. My regime, my regime, in
danger of being swamped..... but how could I abandon them and not
answer our telephone? `Yet I must do something to keep myself
exercised.'

Lena shrugged her shoulders. `Getting a proper job would have
been more to the point than messing around with broadcasting.'

She must be joking, anyone would think I didn't like work. `How
about if I design an extension for the house?'

She became mildly interested, seeing this as a start. `At
least that's a positive idea.'

Thus, with a point to prove, I drew my plans in a day and sent
them for council approval. `What else is there to do, whilst
answering these calls? I know, I'll make a start upon the
foundations.'

`Don't you think you should wait for planning approval?' Lena
hedged, remaining thorny and cautious. `I don't want landing with
even more debts.'

`Debts?' I growled, dismissing the stubbornness of her
imagination. `Anyway, you've no need to worry, they'll pass it, I've
already had a word with them,' despairing at her gloom. `And if they
don't I'll fill in the hole and turn it into a vegetable patch.....
so that'll cut down on our greengrocery bill.'

`Cabbages? I don't see how cabbages will help when I find us
landed with debts,' she prickled, not finding any good reason for
smiling.

She's still on about bloody debts. `I'll do the work myself, if
that's what bothers you,' I retaliated, though never said that I
only intended to make a start the easy part, like digging some of
the foundations, carefully taking things easy, seeing how I managed,
still remaining cautious after last year's cycling fiasco.

Next morning, when Lena left for school, she had expected the
worst to be waiting upon her return. But I had paced each spadeful,
being determined to avoid making a fool of myself, taking frequent
breaks, so when she got home my legs were holding up and my health
appeared to be glowing.

A vacant eye cast over my work. I'm not sure what she was
thinking but she did not complain, so each day I continued the
digging. A blackbird, keen on fat worms, kept me company until the
afternoon arrived when the foundations were ready for concrete.
Somehow it seemed to sense they had been dug as deep as they need
be, and its meals would no longer be served up by the spadeful, or
was it because it recognised that the clay had been reached? Either
way, what should I do now, and would my planning application be
approved?

`I don't see why not,' a clerk at the Council gave me a sniff
and a wink when we were alone in his office.

`Right,' I muttered to the steering wheel on the way home, my
legs feeling ready for even more work, `Why not try laying the
concrete yourself?'

`What!' Lena recoiled when I told her. `You'll never do it,'
yet again overflowing with the milk of human pessimism. `The
concrete will set before you can lay the full load. Then I'll be the
one stuck with a solid block jamming the drive.... Not to mention
the prospect of having a cripple left on my hands.'

`A full load! Ready-mix?' I derided. Did she really think I
was that stupid? `I'll do a trial mix in the first place, by hand,
just a few shovelfuls, so you've no need to panic, your car can't be
concreted in.'

`That's what you say,' she attempted to sink my enthusiasm
under the weight of her negative optimism but, just in case, next
morning took her car to school to make sure.

Left on my own, unharried, with all the time needed to think, I
worked out the most I could handle,.... not too much lest things
went wrong. By good fortune and serendipity I started doing the
right thing, knocking off frequently, taking a short rest from
mixing every time the bucket needed filling with water.

By the time my application was returned, stamped “Planning
Approved”, all five tons of concrete had been laid..... AND MY LIMP
HAD GONE! Good, just in time for the meeting in Leeds and yet
another BBC interview.

After hearing this broadcast a local farmer, on his way to the
market to see what was going free, stopped, released the binder
twine which held shut his window, and leant out on his elbow to
apologise. `When tha refused them lifts in me van I never realised
it were because thee preferred exercise. I thought it were on
account of tha not liking the smell of me pigs.'

From all seven quarters of the British Isles came sufferers to
the Leeds meeting.... this week's fogs having lifted just in time,
like the parting of the Red Sea, the mustard seed again having borne
fruit. Everything being ready, Lena had treated the catering
arrangements like a cottage industry, helpers and salads arriving
from Adderton in shifts.

Within the hall a professor described his discoveries, as well
as the benefits of sunflower oil and his suspicion that there might
be some kind of hereditary link. But these were yet early days.

During question time an angular man leapt from his seat. `I
have evolved my own diet,' he preached to the packed hall, ignoring
the professor. `My own diet,' he emphasised, `Is free from gluten,
sugar and all refined foods. My cure is so effective that, despite
being over sixty, I can now run up and down stairs, as though I was
sixteen years old.'

`I found something better to do than that when I was sixteen,'
rued a man in a wheelchair.

The angular man scanned the audience, cranking his neck to see
who had said that. I glanced at my watch, it was lunch time, thank
goodness, and slid open the hatches, the noise distracting attention
before fundamentalist could monopolise the meeting.

Walking wounded, relatives, and helpers crocodiled between the
seats and wheelchairs, chattering, wending their appetites over
trestle tables weighted with food, before sitting down with heaped
plates balanced upon knees. `It's been a real revelation, teaching
me more about the disease than I've learned during the last twenty
years helping sufferers,' enthused a man from Lancashire.

And after lunch there was more to come, the eager hum of
conversation settling when a university doctor took the stage. Much
of his work related to diet, including the needs of the nervous
system and general health. In layman's terms, fresh fish for brains,
fresh vegetables, lots of greens lightly cooked or raw.

`That's what my granny used to say.'

`Hush.'

In contrast, dairy products were suspect, because of the need
to avoid animal fats. Thus any meat should be lean, and offal was
good. In fact it was important to eat plenty of offal.

`Aye, granny liked offal. She always liked offal.'

`Will you shut up, Arthur, he might give us the names of the
books he has written.'

I raised a hand, signalling, the London train was leaving in
forty minutes' time. I'd been lucky, I realised, much of my diet had
been almost right, though I must remember that polyunsaturated oils
were ruined by heat when cooking. No more chips! `Perhaps that part
of his diet, if eaten in small quantities, might not apply to me,' I
searched for excuses, as though cyanide in small amounts was not
poisonous!

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

13

Click here to access Home page

Presented by CureZone.com