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100facesof.me

Day 56 of 100

Black-and-white close-up of a bearded man in a fedora and thick-framed glasses, staring directly at the camera.
Day 56 / 100 Weight 352.0 Sydney accidentally killed some baby bunnies, so Im bummed Sony A7R5 24mm f/8 0.5s ISO100

“Will I ever feel it again?”

I was sitting on my couch working on my computer watching tv when it happened.

Standing up, I felt pins and needles down my right leg into my foot. “Damn it,” I thought to myself, “my leg is asleep.” I shook it and walked around, but nothing seemed to make it better.

My friend Matt’s birthday was that night, and I took a cab to the sushi restaurant where we all sat on the floor and ate sushi.

When I stood up, my leg was still asleep. “I must have sat wrong,” I muttered.

It wasn’t until five years passed until I could completely feel my foot again.

A few days later I started to freak out. I sobered up over a day or two and then decided to drive myself to the ER. I got in the car and started down the street. At the corner, I took my foot off the gas to slow down for the stop sign and when it was time to break I realized I couldn’t feel anything below my knee so I guessed and hit the brake pedal.

For some reason, in Denver, cops hung out at the hospital. And as I parked and got out of the car I was certain I was going to be arrested as I stumble walked to the ER. “Great, I’ve gone years without dealing with police, and here I am actually hurting and I am going to go down.”

I spent 4 hours in the ER waiting. When I finally spoke to the nurse she said to me, “Well, you either have a pinched nerve or multiple sclerosis.”

Great. I was certain that all the partying had given me multiple sclerosis.

“You’ll need to get an MRI.” She instructed.

A few days later when I finally got an MRI, I was so scared by the entire process that I was as far from sober as I could be and still function.

I now have a tattoo of the MRI of my brain on the inside of my arm. Yes, it is actually my brain on drugs.

Turns out that I was born with a narrow spinal column and the spinal cord is banging against the bones. I was told that I would be in a wheelchair by the time I was 50.

Turns out doctors aren’t always right.