The Perfect Girl

SAM

The consultant says, ‘I believe you’ve had a conversation with your GP about what to expect today?’

‘I have.’

‘As we suspected there might be, there are lesions visible in your scan. They’re in both the brain, and the spine.’

He swings the computer monitor around towards me, and I see an image of my skull.

‘This shows you a slice of your brain,’ he says, ‘as if we were looking at it from the top of your head down towards your feet,’ and with my pen he points at several different areas on the screen. ‘There are lesions visible there, there, and there’s one more, which you can probably see here.’ He’s pointing out small smudges, which are pale grey and look distinct from the rest of the scan, as if somebody had left several small, dirty fingerprints on the inside of my head.

‘For me,’ he continues, ‘taken in conjunction with the rest of your symptoms, this goes significantly further to suggest a diagnosis of multiple sclerosis, but I would like to do a lumbar puncture to confirm it. Do you know what that is?’

I struggle for a second to find words because my throat has gone dry. ‘Taking fluid from your spine,’ I say.

‘And we do that because we’re looking for things called myelin proteins. If we find them, then your diagnosis will be confirmed. If we don’t, it won’t unfortunately mean that you don’t have the condition, just that there were no proteins in the sample, so we might need to repeat the test. But based on this scan, I think it would be sensible to prepare yourself for an MS diagnosis.’

He starts tapping on his computer again.

‘I think the best thing to do now might be to discuss how we can alleviate the symptoms you’re having. Can you describe them for me?’

An hour and a half later, after a long wait at the hospital pharmacy, I leave the building holding a bag of medication and an appointment card for a lumbar puncture for the following week, as well as the contact details of the hospital’s specialist MS nurse who I’ve just met.

Out on the baking hot streets, I feel affronted by the bright glare of the sun, the way it glints off car bonnets and roofs and the windows of the surrounding buildings.

I’m told the medication should ease the symptoms of numbness and joint pain soon, and I’ll be grateful for that because it makes me feel vulnerable when I’m out, especially in crowded situations, and it’s becoming increasingly difficult to hide it from others.

I knew the diagnosis was likely, and, though it’s not confirmed, I don’t think the doctor would be advising me to prepare myself if he wasn’t certain.

Even standing in the shade, I feel overwhelmed by the heat, and by the momentous news I’ve just received. I take my phone out. Tess hasn’t called me back yet.

‘Sorry,’ I say to her even though she can’t hear me, and I turn the ringtone to silent.

I approach one of the taxis that are waiting outside the hospital and ask the driver to take me home. I don’t answer any of his chatty questions and, in the silence that I’ve imposed, I see him glancing in the rear-view mirror, wondering what’s just happened to me.

At home, in the empty flat, I wish more than anything that I had somebody who would come home to me tonight, somebody I could tell, somebody who would be with me through it, to the end.