Conversation on the way to the MS Center

Every few years, one doctor or another decides that my latest neurological symptoms look enough like MS that they send me back to Dr K, the MS specialist. Then we go through a bunch of rigamarole involving reflex hammers and vibrations and testing sensation by poking me with something sharp. She orders a brain MRI, and then she decides that it doesn’t meet the criteria for MS and sets me loose for a few more years until the pattern repeats again. This time it’s my spine surgeon who, after deciding that the random tingling that keeps happening in half my face is not related to the hardware he put in my neck, has sent me to back to Dr K. So I was making my way up to the Mt Sinai MS Center on E 98th in a pretty grumpy mood because this feels like a waste of time and also I really really don’t want to add MS to my list of medical crap. Suddenly, my crabby thoughts about neurology were interrupted by a young man who said, “I was born in Lebanon but I came here when I was one year old.” If something preceded this, I hadn’t noticed. “I got my citizenship a long time ago but I lost my papers. I also lost my social security card and I never replaced it because it takes too long to go there and get it.” “You can get it online now,” I say. He looks dubious so I add, “I’m a case manager, I deal with this a lot. You have to make yourself a My Social Security Account and then you can order it online.” He looks excited to hear this. “I’m going to do that,” he says. “You can replace your citizenship paperwork, too,” I tell him “but it’s expensive. They raised the prices under Trump.” “I should do it anyway, you never know when you might need it. After all, they’re shooting American citizens.” “And they’re just going by what people look like,” I add. He nods in agreement. “I can’t protest,” he says, “I can’t handle being around a lot of people, but I can support in other ways. If a cop got in my face at a protest, I would fight back.” “Then you would be in trouble,” I say. “I know,” he says, “but I am respectful, and I expect to be treated that way. I have a cop in the family and a few friends, but some of them took the job because they were bullied and now they want to be the bullies.” He’s getting a little agitated, so I change the subject. “Have you ever gone to visit Lebanon?” I ask him. “When I was little, and then only once as an adult,” he says. “We went for six weeks. I had a blast. There were casinos, and bars, and strip clubs. I didn’t expect that but they’re different than a lot of the other countries because there are so many Christians there. My mother extended her ticket to stay longer, but I told her I couldn’t do it, I was homesick.” He pauses and then says “This war isn’t for us, we’re fighting for Israel.” “And for greed,” I say, “for the oil and the war profiteers who manufacture the weapons.” He nods in agreement. “At least people are starting to see what’s going on, what Israel is doing. I see a lot of Jewish people speaking up against it.” “People don’t want this done in our name,” I tell him. “I’m a muslim,” he says. “I don’t pray, but I wouldn’t kill or steal.” “A lot of religious people are hypocrites,” I say. “They say all these things, but then they are cheating on their wives and doing a lot of other things.” At this point, we have arrived, so I wish him a good day, sign in at the MS Center and get handed off to a young fellow. As she asks me question after question, I realize that I can no longer explain my medical history clearly, there is so much stuff that it all runs together and I can’t remember what happened when. Eventually she leaves to go present it all to Dr K and they come back in together. “Where have you been since 2022?” she asks. “Working my way through all the doctors in the Mt Sinai system,” I reply and the young fellow starts laughing. I remember Dr K as being pretty serious, but she says “I saw that,” gesturing at the computer with a bit more warmth than I remember. She offers me yet another med to try to address the tingling, but I tell her I’d rather just cope with it. She orders the brain MRI, and this time she writes “thin slices through the brain stem.” “The brain stem is where the facial nerves are,” she explains, handing me the order. At this point I have been there for two hours and I am very late for work and I know Misty is not going to be thrilled about scheduling another MRI. I already have another spine one next week, because they did the last one without contrast, and my wrist doc has told me to go do six weeks of hand therapy so that my insurance will approve the one she wants. Not for the first time, I think about how much better it would be to be an android with replaceable parts. But then it occurs to me that the android bodies will probably be manufactured by somebody like Musk, and I reconsider.