Diagnosis, Part One: In Which No Diagnosis Is Given)
Picture it: Washington, DC (or, more accurately, Arlington, VA), 2004. Neal and I are getting groceries at Shopper’s Food Warehouse for the Superbowl Party we’ll have that night. My stomach is acting funny, so I make repeated trips to their sad, stinky little bathroom. Sitting under the fluorescent light I noticed my feet were asleep. Both of them. Full pins and needles. Weird, right? But I stood up fine and walked okay, so I got on with buying avocados and chicken wings. Football snacks do not make themselves. In the weeks that followed, the pins and needles persisted, subsided some, and then moved to my thighs, torso, and eventually settled in my arms and hands. Neal was a little worried, but I shrugged it off. In high school I’d had a numb-ish forearm for months that was attributed to a pinched nerve in my elbow. In 2002 I had spasms that distorted the right side of my face and were alarming to see (sorry, Neal!), but they didn’t affect my life much and also disappeared ...