Maggie, my sister, made me go to the Dispensary.
“You’ve lost your appetite,” she said.
“Yerra girl, I’m grand. You fuss too much.”
“Sure, you used to ate fat mate the height of a bicycle,” she said.
“Amn’t I still taking the garlic and lemon peel? Look behind me ears; sure, the eczema is almost gone.”
“But you are complaining these last five weeks of a pain in your noggin,” she said.
I had to admit she was right. I should never have told her. She was always stubborn. Like a dog with a bone I often thought. I was glad I had not mentioned the dreams I had been getting lately. In these, I saw women’s breasts full of egg yolks and me, who had never had a woman in my life.
I wondered if that old spalpeen, Mick Rafferty, had told her of the turn I had when I got dizzy and fell at Boss Murphy’s funeral. I don’t think he had spotted that I lost control of the waterworks as well, due to the greatcoat I was wearing. It had begun to worry me that this might be the start of the dropsy, even though I had drunk several whiskeys and it was a cold day.
When I was ten, I stayed one summer with Auntie Mary and Uncle Dan, on the farm in Dripsey. Uncle Dan was not himself. That summer, it was Timmy the farm hand and I did most of the work about the yard, while Auntie looked after the hens and geese. I could see Uncle Dan was, as he put it, “Getting all swoll up.”
“It’s the dropsy,” Timmy had confided in me.
Wasn’t he dead before the next Christmas. What worried me was, I heard the problem started in his waterworks.
I wouldn’t have minded so much if it was Dr. Ned, but he was gone and it was the new man now, Dr. Golden.
“I don’t fancy heading in to the new fella, Maggie,” I said.
“Ah sure, he’s brilliant – top of his class in Uni in Cork. They do say he already found Michael Pat Buckley has a goitre that Ned missed,” said Maggie.
That was hard to believe but I knew better than to contradict her.
Waiting my turn to see Dr. Golden, I was sat next to Lily McGuire. She kept getting up and going outside for a quick fag, coming back in coughing like a donkey.
‘People who smoked got what they deserved,’ Maggie always said. ‘Mind you, most of the men I pulled salmon nets with on the river smoked but …’ She would say they knew no better.
Thinking of nets reminded me of my last visit to Ned, before he got the heart attack. I had noticed for some time, the ring and little finger of my right hand, curling in towards the palm. As I came in that day, he had said, “I know exactly what is wrong with you; I see the limp. Here is a prescription,” he said.
“Arrah Ned, you’re a great man entirely. I’m sure that will sort out me back but what is happening to me hand.”
“It’s a long French name – here let me write it down for you,” he said adding, “You’re in good company. Didn’t St. Peter himself have the same thing: sure, that’s why the Pope blesses with two fingers held in to his palm.”
I still have that scrap of paper in my Sunday waistcoat. You could never replace a man of Ned’s knowledge and experience, I thought. Mind you, it was the funny jumping sensation I was getting at the base of my thumb that was worrying me and not the pulling in of the fingers. But the waiting room was full and I didn’t want to delay him.
“John Joe you’re next,” said Norah, the nurse.
Golden was very young – even the moustache could not disguise that.
“What can I do for you,” he said.
“I have this pain since Easter Monday,” I said.
“Where did you get the pain?” he said.
“I was pulling nets in Blackrock at the time.”
“No, no, man; in what part of your body did you get it?”
“In me noggin.”
“Your what?”
“Me noggin – me head.”
Ned would have known what I meant straight away but I thought to myself, ‘Hold your whisht with the new man.’
He asked lots of questions. I began to explain that the change of bowel habit I had noticed was due to inferior salts supplied by O Tools, since Maggie had the bust up with our usual chemist, Mick Donovan, when he refused her credit.
“Unlikely,” he said adding, “Come here; I will weigh you.”
“No need for that; I am ten-and-a-half stone and by the way, I am five foot eleven though it says six foot on the passport I got all those years ago, when I went to America.”
He stopped me with a wave of his hand.
“Stand up on the scales,” he said.
Ned hadn’t weighed me for at least ten years. He knew me well enough to take my word for these things. Golden could never replace him – the Lord have mercy on his soul.
“Today, I make your weight to be 60kilograms: that’s nine and a half stone,” he said.
You could have knocked me down with a feather. I had thought the pants were a bit loose of late but wearing braces, I hadn’t taken too much notice. If I had been wearing a belt, I suppose it might have been more obvious.
“Lie up on the couch, sir,” said Golden.
“Call me John Joe, I said,” adding, “What way do you want me to lie?”
“The same way as always,” said Golden.
I laughed.
“It’s many a year since I did. Sure, Dr. Ned knew me so well, he could tell what was wrong the minute I came in the door,” I said.
To my amazement, Golden did not seem impressed. He took out a gadget I had never seen and shone a light into both my eyes in turn.
“Stick out your tongue.” He inspected it.
“Now walk across the room.”
He sat me on the couch and tapped below the knee caps. Then, got me to stick out the tongue again.
He sat behind the new mahogany desk and motioned me to sit down. He looked at a computer screen. ‘Ned would have had the prescription written well before all this palaver,’ I thought as I sat down.
“I need to refer you to a specialist in the city,” he said.
I felt a thump in my chest and was lightheaded. I had to ask him, “Is it the dropsy?”
“No nothing like that,” he said.
Maggie insisted on coming with me in the bus to the city. ‘A good thing we have the free travel,’ I thought.
My legs felt a bit wobbly that day, like they used to when I got a telling off as a small boy in confession. After the examination, as I was dressing behind the curtain, I heard the consultant call Maggie in. We faced him.
“What’s the verdict?” she asked.
“You have Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, just as Jim Golden suspected,” he said.
“And what in God’s name is that, in layman’s language?” she said.
“It’s a variant of Motor Neurone Disease, a progressive disorder of the nervous system.”
“Thank God! I was afraid it was the start of the dropsy,” I said.