After I was diagnosed with MS, shortly after my legs began to check out, I was taking my second series of IV Solumedrol steroids and first of chemotherapy to salvage my nervous system. While in the "White Hotel", TV was one of the only things I could do. I couldn't dance, and certainly lacked the control to walk the floor. The john was more challenge than the nurse's urinal on my nightstand offered, so oft as it occurred, I took the coward's way out ("Nussie, can you help me?" worked well).
During this exacerbation, the second outbreak of Mad Cow disease was hitting the news, and I was amazed at the similarity between the stumbling, sprawling bovine victims, and my own failing ambulatory attempts. Of course, this Mad Cow disorder is caused by cannibalism (not that any cow ever though of eating another until man intervened with waste minimization, and food-processing technology). Just a flash of coincidental curiosity, no deeper consideration occurred until recently.
Other relationships didn't become apparent until I recently saw a TV piece on cannibalism (not a TV dinner). The people of study were a tribe of headhunters in Papua, New Guinea. This people had for centuries revered a ceremonial culture of consuming their familial departed in a sort of a "last barbecue" tribute. They subsequently have come under study by additional scientists who have observed their herky-jerky, stumbling afflictions, and discovered a prion protein among the tightest genealogical sample group found in modern medical history besides the Minnesota beavers.
Now, other inspired scientists grasped this opportunity, and began to make a business of testing people around the globe for similar genetic and protein markers, and discovered a similarity among European people of the most extreme northern climates. This, incidentally, is similar to the demographic roots distribution of modern-day MS victims. It is interesting that there may be a revealing overlay of the maps of incidence of both disorders (if someone would look at the message, and not be overcome by the media).
My first deep thought on the on the subject was, I had been diagnosed with MS (a disease named by modern physicians), but this may be something that has been in my family history from the first time one of us got hungry in front of a dead guy. OK, I can't really afford to be a smart ass, because it only took me 24 years to get two science degrees (determination is one of my spiritual qualities). All the time modern medicine has been productively involved in imagery, diagnosis, identification, symptomology, pharmacology, medication, and all that "deep" stuff (jeeze, how much does a shingle weigh, how much does it cost, and how must one race to pay for it?), the message may have become less apparent than the media for the students and dear practitioners.
As a scientist, I can't deny the possibility. I know of the existence of the "Service Berry" tree transplanted to America by European émigrés, whose emerging berries signified that the ground was soft enough to dig the holes to lay the dead, who had been stacked up awaiting the retreat of the relentless winter (of course, Sister Suzie, Uncle George, Aunt Sally, and Grandma wouldn't even flinch as they added their contribution to the family pudding pot), and so it goes....
Also, I am aware of a common trait; I come from redheaded Scotch-Irish (reputed to be from vandals, barbaric, or Nordic roots). I know that the barbarians of Gaul repelled the "well-stocked" Romans in a season chosen by their aspiring seizers as strategically best to launch their attack (hard winter). The Romans wrote in their journals of these barbarians' amazing capability of sustenance with no evidence of stores. Some Romans even journalized recall of their fear upon facing un-wounded opponents displaying blood-covered jaws. My roots are among those bloodthirsty opponents that sent those Romans about their merry way. And even the Irish of my most recent familial repose may have had to turn alternatives when the potatoes failed, when poor Aunt Susie didn't appear to be too old for the pudding (these notions shouldn't make West-Coast folks shudder, as they may owe their existence to the Donner Party's supper parties).
My disorder might not be as complicated as MS makes it appear. I may just have "Mad Man Disease", suspected by those that know me. I'm inspired to engage my neurologist to lead my internist and endocrinologist to document my commonalities to the cannibalistic cultures of Northern Europe. We may find a fix to this disorder that sometimes causes my own herky-jerky, stumbling afflictions. These thoughts bring the phrase, "Eat me" to a higher level of scientific regard.
Once this relationship is proven, anyone that says, "You might kill me, but you won't eat me" may hear me reply, "Consider your peril, I might, and I may. One may be personal, and the other is not, it just depends on how hungry I am.
Will
WilRat and Frances, founders of the Goodwill chat
