On Wednesday the 6th my brother called and complained about coughing, malaise. This has been his baseline for the last month, most noticeable following a medical procedure the week before. I didn't think any more about it.
Later that afternoon I noticed my left leg was tingling. It went away after I walked a few paces. Then it came back, and increased, and spread. Not constant though, sometimes it stopped for a few minutes.
On the next Monday my brother wound up in the hospital, and then Tuesday my neurologist replied to my email about my tingling with "It's probably stress making an old lesion flare up again." I realized Dave had started complaining about being ill last Wednesday, the day the tingling started.
"Duh," you say, "Why didn't you write off the tingling as stress?" Well, my tingly right hand has always been my stress-ometer. This is the first time my legs let me know I was stressed. But, now that I know that my whole body has psychic diagnostic abilities that can identify when situations are about to deteriorate, I will let Dave know. "Heads up!" I will say, "My legs / hand / uppper lip is sending subconscious electrical signals that you are about to land in the ICU."
Since then, President Clinton has stolen Dave's thunder by being put in an ICU with the same problem. My brother and I speculate a lot about if Dave is getting the same treatment Bill C. is getting. "I bet William Jefferson Clinton's doctor isn't telling him they don't know what kind of bacteria it is."
They found his bacteria and he got back home yesterday, and while I know he isn't completely out of the woods, today my leg stopped tingling. That's a good sign.
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