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Show 66 My own body is a traitor. He is talking about his other stiff-man patients. I do arithmetic: he must be 70 years old, if not older, and he - a nationally recognized neurologist - is telling me that he has only seen 11 cases. Ever. Only ever treated five. He is saying something about then all becoming hermits because of the bad startle response. "Hermit" is an old word and for a moment I gratefully leave this sharing of detail of rare bad dis-ease and instead envision contented bearded men living in primitive cabins in the mountains, taking their water from the streams, spending cool autumn days putting up produce from their gardens against the harsh winters. A hermit enclave of people with stiff-man syndrome. A very quiet enclave. "It is hard to be a hermit with a husband and four young children," I think. He had poked needles attached to a machine into my legs all morning, drawing my attention to the massive scribbled lines my constantly contracting muscles were electronically making on the monitor next to the table. "That's a typical stiff-man pattern of muscle response," he had said. He had seemed pleased at the discovery. Now he is telling me those scribbles, deciphered, read "hermit." |
