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.Kildare look.“Frankly, all your symptoms are pointing to it.You answered five of the standard questions in the affirmative.” I wouldn’t have thought it possible, but his look grew even more compassionate and firmer.“Are you sure there are no changes in your life right now? Something you can’t control?”It felt like I was back talking to Mallory.I thought of Gemma-Kate again.That was pretty close to uncontrollable.I didn’t like situations I couldn’t control.I was thinking about that when he said, “Depression doesn’t always manifest itself the way we expect it to.It makes some people manic.It can cause insomnia as often as it makes people crave sleep.It can even give you nausea.Arguably, we can run all kinds of tests, but if you want to see if I’m right I can give you a prescription.”My right hand, which had been resting on the plastic arm of the examination room chair, jumped and shot forward a little.Neilsen noted it.“How long has that been happening?” he asked.“It hasn’t,” I said.Neilsen looked a little more concerned than before.He took a piece of paper and a pen and asked me to write a sentence.I wrote My name is Brigid Quinn.Neilsen studied the sentence briefly.“Has your writing always been this small and cramped?”“No,” I confessed.I remembered signing the credit card bill at the restaurant.“I’ve noticed that, too.”“It’s called micrographia.Stand up a second.”I started to rise.“No,” he said, “don’t use your arms to boost yourself from the chair.”I tried to follow instructions, and frankly, it was a little hard.Neilsen frowned.“Tell you what, walk down the hall for me.”“What? What’s wrong?”“Humor me.”We left the examination room and he watched me walk down the hall toward the front desk.Then he watched me walk back.“Hm,” he said.“What, hm?” I asked again.“Your gait is off.Your right foot is slapping a bit.How long has it been like that?”I wondered if that was what Mallory meant when she said I was limping.I told him I didn’t know how long it had been that way.He said, “Hm.”We were standing in the hallway rather than in a private examination room, but I’d had enough hmmms.“What are you thinking?”“I’m not sure.I’d like you to see a specialist.”“What kind of specialist? Would you please just tell me what you’re thinking? I’m a big girl, I can take it.”Neilsen looked at an assistant passing us in the hallway who had glanced my way, and led me back into the examination room.He invited me to sit down.I did not, crossing my arms tightly in a way that, for the first time, I recognized had become a familiar stance.“So what’ll it be,” I said, prepared for the worst, thinking about my sister-in-law, about Owen, about anyone I’d known with wasting kinds of diseases.“Multiple sclerosis? Lou Gehrig’s disease?” That was all I could think of, so I stopped.“I’m not equipped to make a snap diagnosis.I don’t think anyone is.This sort of thing, you have to wait—”“Would you stop making me play Twenty Questions and just spit it out?”Neilsen said with studied calm, “This is nothing to be alarmed about yet, but along with some of your other symptoms I think we have to consider the possibility of Parkinson’s.”The universe tilted away from me.My body jolted despite my tough-gal assurance.Then, as when I’ve been in dangerous circumstances and have to turn into a machine or die, I became someone else.It’s the easiest way to put it.My voice felt cold and hard.“What’s the prognosis for that?” I asked.“I mean, I don’t know much about medicine, but…”Neilsen didn’t jump in quickly enough with assurances.He appeared to think that my coldness was me taking things well and just sat there looking sympathetic, as if I had stopped being an annoyance and turned into a patient.“What can I expect, loss of functioning? How long does it take?”He shook his head.“This is way premature to be talking this way.Perhaps I shouldn’t have said anything, but you insisted on knowing what I was thinking.Look, Brigid, this is all very unlikely.I just would like you to see someone who might be able to rule it out.”He explained that the other doctor might do some tests like a PET scan, which, while not ruling out Parkinson’s, would check to see if they could discover some other condition.If anything, Some Other Condition sounded even more ominous.Swell, I thought with a coldness in my gut, let’s definitely do some tests.Let’s find out if my body is going to fail me just as I was beginning to enjoy my life [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]