I hadn’t been sick in a long spell — not since I’d moved to Georgia, in fact, a long time ago — and why I went to see Dr. Bernstein is beyond me, but I was there, half naked on his table, without pants, and waiting on his examination. “The MRIs” he said, “I want to look them over first.”

Afterwards, I got dressed slowly. I had noticed lately I had had difficulty keeping my balance while putting on my loafers, and I lost it briefly that day while slipping them on — perhaps that’s why I went see Dr. Bernstein, a neurologist, in the first place. Dr. Gardner at Resurgence had recommended him. “I think it’s about time you saw a neurologist — he may want some other MRIs made (it was at his place, Gardner’s, I had the originals done — for less thousand bucks!), and I had a certainty Bernstein had a right to look at them.

Dr. Bernstein called me two days later and said he wanted to see me. “What’s the matter with me?” I insisted, panic setting in.

“We’ll talk about it when you get here,” he said, and immediately switched me to the front-desk attendant. My appointment was set for 3PM; I was there at 2:25.

“It’s called PLS — Primary Lateral Sclerosis,” he said, sagely, “and you can thank God it’s not ALS — Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis — usually fatal within a couple of years. And lots of misery in between! . . . It was on your MRIs; it’s when one area of your brain, or spinal column, shows the upper motor neurons are jumbled. The lower ones appear normal.”

“The ‘lower’ ones?” I asked, naively. “Like their brothers, are they likely to behave similarly?”

“Highly unlikely,” he said, after a moment of awkward silence, as if he were addressing an idiot.

So, I’d somehow contracted a mild form of PLS, and neither Dr. Bernstein, nor medical science, could tell me, how or why — or what, if anything, I should do about it. There were only about 1,000 cases in the entire country — there was no epidemic, certainly, and no one but about 999 other Americans had or ever had the disease — so why ME? — of all people?

Lucky for me, PLS was painless and would remain so; I was given no prescriptions nor medications, except some tiny pink pills that were to modify my attitude and make me more likeable. . . .In fact, I’d had headaches in the past (some more or less sever by my standards).

“You will remain ‘pain-free’, for the most part,” he told me, “but PLS is progressive — if it starts up, call me and I’ll give you something. See me in a couple weeks.”

I saw Dr. Bernstein just one other time; there was no sense seeing him on a regular basis. He was a neurologist, my diagnostician; he said that Botox would not work in my case, and he would not order any for me; I knew instinctively he could do nothing more for me.