Winter Warriors

In September of 2022, I had a very strange experience: I was teaching a class and I suddenly lost my balance and bounced off the white board at the front of the room like an insect ricocheting off of a windshield. I recovered my equilibrium, finished the lecture and made my way (rather unsteadily) to the Emergency Room. Given the fact that the pandemic was still in progress, I was not surprised to wait seven hours for some medical attention. I am Canadian, and therefore I am grateful that patience is the only cost of treatment. During my wait, a fellow human who was clearly suffering from an acute psychological malady of some kind made several attempts to disrobe in the waiting area. Each time, a security guard, who appeared to know him by name, gently admonished him to desist. For the purposes of this tale, I will call him Jake. After I was admitted, I was given a series of tests, in the course of which I asked a physician to contact the department for which I teach, to let my students know that I would not be released in time to teach classes the following morning. I also asked her about Jake. “Oh, Jake!” she replied, “He’s a regular here. Did he get his pants off this time?” Human beings can adapt to virtually any circumstances, no matter how strange; they can also become rooted in communities under the most unusual conditions.

The following afternoon I was released, with some medication designed to mitigate the effects of vertigo and a provisional diagnosis of Menier’s Disease, which is a chronic condition that causes episodes of vertigo and tinnitus. I carried on teaching and grading papers, trying to recover my balance and general health in the process. When I had leisure time, I followed the exploits of the Edmonton Oilers.

I have never had any athletic ability whatsoever. This made it particularly excruciating when, during the last conversation I had with my father—he passed away in 2019—he asked if I was enjoying coaching in Calgary. He was suffering from the effects of lewy body dementia (the second most common form of progressive dementia after Alzheimer’s, if Wikipedia is credible) at the time, and one of the results of this nasty affliction is the production of vivid hallucinations. I am a university lecturer in Edmonton, after all. I understood that my father was not in his right mind, but the fantasy his disease generated was painful to hear about, because it struck me that in some recess of his consciousness, he had always harbored the secret wish that I might become a hockey coach, which he had been himself. He was also a teacher, of course, and I have become the latter sort of person. But in my father’s disintegrating mind, the dream lingered that I might coach hockey.

So, in order to keep anxiety about my own illness at bay, and in order to try to understand my father’s lifelong passion for hockey, I began to pay more and more careful attention to the Oilers. I had enjoyed watching games and making sarcastic remarks with friends over pints for many years, but this most recent immersion was an essentially solitary pursuit, apart from chatting with fellow enthusiasts via social media. My favorite dive bar (I have read far too much of the work of Charles Bukowski) was slain by the pandemic; most of my friends had scattered or were understandably reluctant to socialize while the plague lurked in our midst, and most recently, I was apprehensive about an embarrassing episode of some kind spoiling the fun, so I began listening to games and interviews, reading sports journalism of rather dubious quality, and generally tried to remain an effective teacher while dealing with an odd illness and coming more thoroughly to understand and enjoy a game I had never played.

In December, after additional testing that was arranged by an especially clever and compassionate neurologist by whom I had been examined in the ER after the original episode, I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. The neurologist in question has a well-honed, rather dark and mischievous sense of humor. When he confirmed my diagnosis as we examined MRI images of my afflicted brain, I asked him if he thought years of exposure to abject, incorrigible undergraduate silliness might accelerate demyelination (the process whereby multiple sclerosis causes the immune system to damage one’s nervous system). He replied, with perfect seriousness and not a nanosecond of deliberative hesitation: “If that were so, every doctor in Alberta would have multiple sclerosis.” As I was leaving the office, I asked if he was following the Oilers. He smiled, and replied that neurologists find sports that routinely produce head injuries morbidly fascinating. I took that as an affirmative response.

In January, after undergoing a lumbar puncture (a sunny euphemism for a spinal tap), I was informed that multiple sclerosis had been confirmed and that there were some additional, “unusual findings” in the assessment of my cerebrospinal fluid. The procedure to extract that fluid was surprisingly painless and comfortable, I ought to add. The neurologist who performed the procedure was not the same person with whom I had discussed the demyelinating effects of human stupidity, but he has a splendid sense of humor too, and was remarkably candid under the circumstances.

After all, it is odd trying to make conversation with someone who is carefully extracting your spinal fluid. I did not want to say anything amusing, as I thought that, should he laugh and shift his hands about, I might be rendered paraplegic. So, I asked him why he had begun to study neurology as opposed to some other area of medicine. He replied by telling me a brief and fascinating story about his father, who had grown up in rural Punjab. As a lad, his father had ingested some uncured meat that harbored a dangerous parasite. That parasite made its way into his brain and caused all sorts of terrible results, including fluctuations of personality and memory. Observing the unpredictable lapses of his father’s mental acuity had moved the human being who was performing my lumbar puncture to study the brain and nervous system, the better to aid those suffering from afflictions like the one that had done irrevocable harm to his own father.

Having heard this extraordinary story, I asked the neurologist if he thought it was interesting that there is something undeniably arboreal about the configuration of the human nervous system. If you look at the patterns formed by roots and branches, and the patterns formed by the components of the human nervous system, some startling similarities emerge:

These are dendrites in the human nervous system. Couldn’t that just as easily be an image of the roots of your favorite house plant?

Anyway, once the needle was carefully removed from the base of my spine, I remarked that the rate at which my spinal fluid had dripped into the tube he had used to collect it had sounded like the steady drip of maple sap into a bucket—a painfully Canadian simile, I know. He laughed, and confirmed that the analogy is sound, though I think he was probably humoring the eccentric nerd to whom he had just told a touching and wonderfully distracting story. Roots are odd things.

On January 9th, the Oilers suffered a gruesome shellacking (6-3) at the hands of the Los Angeles Kings, whom they had defeated in seven games in the first round of the previous year’s Stanley Cup Playoffs. The two squads have, from what I can gather, long been at odds: Wayne Gretzky, who is something of a demigod in the local mythopoetic imagination, was traded to Los Angeles in 1988. The Oilers have won a total of 5 Stanley Cups: 1984, 1985, 1987, 1988 and 1990. In the final case, despite the absence of Gretzky and thanks to the heroism of Mark Messier, they managed one more, but have not claimed the championship since. Gretzky’s departure bruised the local psyche deeply, so the franchise that “stole” him from a community that loved him so fiercely is reviled in Edmonton. During the sixth playoff game against Los Angeles last year, Leon Draisaitl, the assistant captain of the Oilers and a preternaturally gifted player who is not as loudly acclaimed as he ought to be simply because he plays alongside an otherworldly being like Connor McDavid, suffered a high ankle sprain that would hobble him for the remainder of the playoffs. He battled on courageously following the injury, but has only recently returned to recognizably robust health.

Watching Draisaitl soldier on despite the anguish he was suffering was inspiring for an odd nerd like me. Despite my recent, grim prognosis, I maintain that if this human being could endure and prevail, I ought to be able to do so. I soon learned that the unusual results of my lumbar puncture indicated that I was suffering from MGUS, a benign abnormality of the bone marrow that turns up in 3-4% of those over 50, often when they undergo blood work for an unrelated reason. It can take sinister turns, but often remains annoying but harmless, like the Oilers’ opponents. The hematologist who gave me the "good news" via teleconference remarked that the patient with whom he had spoken in the previous session had insisted that he could treat his multiple myeloma with a tincture of baking soda. When the hematologist questioned the efficacy of such a strategy, the patient called him a "puppet of big pharma" and angrily hung up. Not all of the goons are on the ice.

I have a reasonable understanding of what MS entails, for my paternal uncle spent most of his adult life suffering from it. He had a wonderfully dark, mischievous sense of humor, too. I fondly recall an occasion when my uncle, who by that point in the progress of his disease was confined to a wheelchair and had only partial use of one hand, struggled to eat some peas served to him by a fastidious, overwrought hostess who was terribly concerned about the order and cleanliness of her dining room. For perfectly obvious reasons, my uncle scattered peas everywhere during that meal. He apologized eloquently to our hostess as the peas danced merrily across her precious, immaculate rug. Just before he finished doing so, he winked at me and grinned. He then backed his wheelchair over several peas, eliciting a horrified shriek from our hostess. While I cannot say for sure, I think he derived some visceral delight from the whole spectacle, and I did, too.

I have derived similar delight from the Oilers’ most recent games against the Los Angeles Kings, which they have won by dramatically altering their strategy and tactics, to say nothing of their personnel. Since that thrashing they suffered on January 9th, the Oilers have added some formidable defensemen, most notably Mattias Ekholm, whom Ken Holland--the team’s general manager--wooed away from the Nashville Predators just prior to the trade deadline in March. Edmonton has had the offensive pyrotechnics generated by Draisaitl and McDavid to rely upon for some time, but part of the reason for their humiliation on January 9th was defensive disarray. Ekholm is a giant, and a rather skillful and cunning giant at that.

In their most recent victories against Los Angeles, on March 30th and April 4th, the Oilers have scored a total of five goals, but in each case, low scoring has sufficed. Instead of relying upon an offensive blizzard to compensate for their unsteady defense, the Oilers have marshalled a methodical, robust corps and their wunderkind rookie goaltender, Stuart Skinner (an Edmonton lad born and bred and therefore a sentimental favorite from the moment he donned the copper and blue of the Oilers) has performed admirably. After a painful and embarrassing defeat, the Oilers have learned, adapted, and prevailed.

I have managed to get through an academic year of teaching despite MS and MGUS. I still have tinnitus and some hearing loss in my right ear thanks to that first MS “flare” in September, but I can lecture and hold discussions with my pupils, and I haven’t bounced off the white board since then. The Oilers are scheduled to face the LA Kings in the first round of the playoffs this very evening: 8 PM MST, just in case you are interested. I listen to the games on the radio, as my father and uncle enjoyed doing. Watching highlights on YouTube after the fact, they would have greeted with befuddled skepticism, I suspect.

I am grateful for the thrills generated by the Oilers’ efforts on the ice. I have always been as graceful and agile as a giraffe on roller skates, but as MS takes hold, I suspect that simply remaining ambulatory may become a challenge. Watching as human beings with exceptional strength, agility, dexterity and strategic cunning blend ballet and brutality on the ice imbues me with some courage and even, on occasion, a kind of vicarious delight. I appreciate that, and the feeling that I am rooted in a community of fellow devotees. Besieged as my nervous system may be, I can still enjoy the spectacle, the skill and bravery of those who create it, and the pleasure of backing my chair over the peas, as it were, of those who find it strange that an eccentric teacher of literature might join the throng of Oiler fanatics.