Spaz and Edss

There is something in the MS trial world called “expanded disability status scale”. Edss for short (as though you have a lisp and a friend called Ed). In the world of EDSS a zero is absolutely fine, A OK, top of the world. The scale gets progressively worse until ten . You don’t wanna be a ten. Ten is dead. When the missing blinded assesor reappeared after his absence we set about testing my EDSS. We walked on the walking machine, we stabbed sharp and blunt instruments into my limbs and we generally scraped soles and banged knees with hammers, tuning forks and the like until he had a score.

Now, growing up in the 70’s, a world away from the political correctness of now we had an all purpose insult in the playground....spas, spaccy, spazoid, spastic. It covered all the ground from “Hey, spas pass the ball” to “Spaccy, give us a lug on your fag” and of course “Carey is a total spastic”. Now I know that’s deeply unkind but it didn’t seem so to 13 year old boys in 1977. A spastic was just a plastic boy with a gammy leg outside a charity shop. Besides, you couldn’t catch spastic, you couldn’t become a spastic. Now I know different. Blinded assesor tells me i have “significant spacicity” in my right leg. Are you telling me my right leg is spastic? Well he tells me I’m going to have to put you down as a one. So there we have it. I’ve still got nine lives left and Carey may not be a total spastic. But his right leg’s giving it a good go.