Post on 15-Jul-2016
PSYCH OLOGI CAL EX PLO RATION
Most Neuropathies Are Idiopathic
James Howe
Published online: 30 March 2010� Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2010
Most neuropathies are idiopathic
is what the doctor tells you as if the words are
somehow reassuring, when they are the opposite,
or if not the opposite then still not the words
you want to hear.
Your condition has no known cause is what
he’s telling you. Your pain, your fear, the feeling
that something is taking over your body like
some creepy 1950s sci-fi double bill you watched
one Saturday matinee at the theater downtown,
dropped off by your big brother who’d shoved
fifty cents in your hand, half for the ticket, half
for the popcorn and Junior Mints and the Mary
Janes you saved for the second feature because
they lasted the longest.
You remember how the scientists always figured
it out in the end, where the Blob came from, why
everyone acted drunk and crazy after the attack of
the toaster-headed men from Mars. You left the dark
movie theater, staggered into the blinding late
afternoon sun, your tongue still worrying the piece
of Mary Jane cemented to your upper right molar,
your mind still worrying that such things
could happen. So what if the Martians looked
phony and the Blob like some overgrown version
of what they were selling at the concession stand,
so what if the scientists in their white lab coats
J. Howe (&)18 Belmont Terrace, Yonkers, NY 10703, USAe-mail: howewrite@gmail.com; howewrite@aol.com
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J Relig Health (2010) 49:393–394DOI 10.1007/s10943-010-9349-4
and black plastic-framed glasses, pencil tapping the
clipboard always in their hands, reassured you
in the voice of the man telling the 6:00 news
that everything would be all right now that they
understood what had happened and had gotten
it under control. Didn’t the man telling the 6:00
news sometimes talk about murders without
motive, tidal waves and hurricanes and horrendous
traffic accidents that no one could explain? Or
were they somehow, always, explained? Did
idiopathic not exist in the 1950s?
You wouldn’t
mind if the doctor standing before you now was
wearing a white lab coat and black plastic-framed
glasses, was tapping his pencil on a clipboard,
was explaining it all to you, assuring you that
everything will be all right, everything will be
under control now that everything is understood.
You wouldn’t mind leaving his office with the
only worry being your tongue’s as it presses
against a bit of Mary Jane clinging to your tooth
as if it were holding on for dear life, as if
it knew that it was only a matter of time until
it too would be worn away and gone.
394 J Relig Health (2010) 49:393–394
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