"Jackpot!"

This brings us back to the Assessment Unit of the hospital, with cold, tired-looking food on my lap.

After letting the news, "and 75% of the time this goes on to be diagnosed as Multiple Sclerosis," sink in for around two minutes, I found it was getting difficult to breathe. I tried to think about where I'd heard about MS before and then remembered that I was sure the comedian Richard Pryor had MS, but that he was also now dead. Shit. Was it MS that killed him? I had absolutely no idea about this condition other than the fact that I now had a 75% chance of having it. I asked the doctor, "Am I going to die from this?" She told me that a small number of people that have MS can actually die from it, and what she said after this was inaudible to me. I turned off from what she was saying because, as far as I was concerned, people had died from it, and now there was a very good chance that I had it. Shit.

Up until this moment, I had never really thought about my own mortality. I returned to active listening when I was told that I would need a lumbar puncture, which they were now going to arrange. Where had I heard about this procedure before? Ah yes, scenes from ER, and whenever it was talked about, they were never said in a "Good news! It's LP time" type of way. The trio then left my bed and closed the curtains behind them. I was upset, and don’t know whether the tears I cried as the curtains still swayed were born of fear of the unknown or relief that I finally had at least some idea of what was going on with me. Probably a bit of both. I had spent what felt like such a long time trying to get answers to help me make sense of what my body was trying to tell me, and now I knew. I thought about my family and friends. Would I be able to do the things in life that I wanted to do? I had no answers, and the next step toward getting some was going to be whenever the doctors came back to my bed.

Around 30 minutes after being left on my own, the curtains shivered again, and a new doctor appeared with the three members of staff who had previously been to see me. They asked how I was and explained what a lumbar puncture was and what I needed to do. In my experience, the whole thing was bizarre, and I went through what seemed like several different comedy sketches.

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Science bit

A lumbar puncture (LP) or spinal tap may be done to diagnose or treat a condition. For this procedure, your healthcare provider inserts a hollow needle into the space surrounding the spinal column (subarachnoid space) in the lower back to withdraw some cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) or inject medicine. - www.hopkinsmedicine.org

Sounds fun, eh?

First, I was asked to lie on my side and tuck my legs up so that I was in the foetal position, as this helped to open up space for the doctor to get what he needed. Let me tell you, when my body was operating on a work-to-rule basis, this was no mean feat, as my legs felt heavy and didn’t particularly want to do as I was telling them to.

Next, I was relying on the fact that I was in the foetal position and therefore the space was open as much as possible so that the doctor could start the process of taking full advantage of the fact that I was in the best position.

Bullshit.

It made no difference to my doctor whatsoever, as I could have pulled my knees to my ears and he'd still have missed the first time. When I flinched, he told me to "Lie still," in a rather gruff and unsympathetic tone. This immediately pissed me off as I thought: "Let’s see you be as still and quiet as Elmer Fudd when you've got a big-ass needle sticking into your back." I realise that his major concern was that if he slipped, slight problems like paralysis could occur, but in my defence, I feel it important to point out that I'd just overheard him telling one nurse that he'd only ever done this on “something dead before." Well, everybody has to start somewhere, I suppose, and anyway, my options were a tad limited at that exact moment.

After informing me that he would have to go again, I started to wonder what my back was going to look like by the time this was finished, a thought that was interrupted by him crying, "Jackpot!" He seemed so happy with himself that I didn't want to spoil his obvious buzz and, once he'd calmed down long enough to remove the needle, I was told that I must lie flat for at least two hours, or I would get a headache. After lying totally flat for just under an hour, I had a headache. A couple of hours later, I was moved out of the GPAU and onto another ward - Geriatric Medicine. Well, they had to put me somewhere, and with no specific neurology ward at the time, I guess this was as good a place as any.

On the way to my new temporary accommodation, I experienced the first instance of what would be a recurring theme. The porter who was assigned the task of chauffeuring me asked me about why I was in hospital, as he was somewhat intrigued as to why a 25-year-old man was being sent to a ward where I would be the youngest resident by at least three decades. When I regaled him with what the doctors had told me so far, he announced that he knew someone in his family with MS, and the tone of his voice was one that offered sympathy to my situation. "Huh," I thought. Perhaps I was in the minority in not knowing anything about this condition. He went on to tell me about how the person he knew was in a wheelchair and had been for some time. So now I had increased my knowledge of this condition from a dead comedian to a random member of the public being in a wheelchair. This sounded fun.