uncomfortably numb

My hands hurt again today. It’s strange to think that your hands can be in so much pain while being completely numb at the same time. Typing is even stranger. I kind of have to guess where my fingers are falling. Hopefully they end up on the right keys at least seventy or eighty percent of the time. Trust me, there’s a lot of re-typing going on here. I have a passionate love affair with the DELETE key! (Just don’t tell my wife.)

It feels like I am wearing a pair of prickly wool gloves. There is a coating over my skin that keeps me from really feeling most things I touch. But at the same time there are sharp needles poking every spot on my hands. The nearest thing I can compare it to is the feeling you might get when waking up after falling asleep on top of your hand. It feels bloated and throbbing, with a sort of negative sensation all over. Then the nerves begin to twitch and sting as the blood flows back throughout your fingers and palm. It’s close to that.

It’s kind of a cruel joke. When I hug my kids I can feel them, but not really. When I hold my wife’s hand I know her fingers have intertwined with mine from a sense of pressure. There is no tingle of electricity being exchanged by touching the skin of the woman that I love.

For the first time in a year I picked up my drumsticks yesterday. I could feel the weight of the wood, but the familiar sense of balance was invisible to me. The impact of hitting the ride cymbal came through like it was buried beneath the three feet of snow falling outside my studio window. My foot pushed down on the kick pedal and I heard the bass drum boom. I know that it did because it sent Sadie running across the house in a panic to hide under the kitchen table. I didn’t feel it though. I was drumming under water.

Paradiddle on the snare drum into a double stroke roll and finally a run around the toms. My left hand reached up high and came down in a crash cymbal tension release. Then I started on the floor tom and moved back upward to the rack toms. I could hear the familiar rumble of the wood growling and it sent a lovely vibration through my stomach. I was really playing drums again! I started to smile. My right hand came down to hit the crash cymbal on my right side, but there was no sound. Only the crack of wood against metal as the falling stick left my fingers, tumbled against the cymbal stand and bounced on the floor.

I leaned over and reached for the fallen timber. My fingers pinched for it and it rolled away next to the wall. Standing up I swayed around for a moment trying to catch my balance as the room spun. I rested my hand on the head of floor tom holding myself up. The stand didn’t seem to be up to the challenge of supporting the weight of two large drums, a crash cymbal, splash cymbal and my three hundred pound frame. As the metal tripod began to lean, I lifted my hand off of the drum and sat back down on the drum throne.

Not feeling so much like a king, I sat there for a few minutes and tried to calm the world down. When the drum kit finally resolved to hold itself in one spot, I decided to leave the stick where it was and take another one out of my stick bag. Taking in a deep breath, I held it for a moment and let it out slowly. One of my favorite grooves to play has always been the drum part on Paul Simon’s “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover” by the masterful Steve Gadd. I played the quick double stroke roll on the snare drum and alternated hits on my hi-hat with my left foot and right hand. Another soft roll on the snare leading into that resolving and powerful thud on the floor tom. Then the click of metal again and the stick falling to the floor.

No matter how hard I tried, I could not pick it up. My hands just stopped responding to my commands. My fingers were reaching into a bag full of squirming wet eels. I reached down with both hands clamping the edges of both palms together around the stick. It lifted off the ground about half an inch or so before slipping away and following gravity back to the floor.

I wanted to scream. I wanted to curse and cry. Instead I sat back on my drum throne and closed my eyes. When I opened them my beautiful drums were still in front of me. They weren’t spinning or vibrating. They weren’t blurry and out of focus. Like they had been for the better part of my life, they were there waiting for me.

As I sit here my son Gabriel is on the kit right behind me playing. Whether he chooses to continue playing as I did or not, I hope that they will be there for him when he needs them. I take comfort in the fact that they will be there as I drop my sticks over the course of how ever long this takes. They will be there until my feet can feel the pedals again. They will be there even if my feet don’t ever feel the pedals again. Whenever I needed comfort or love in my life, they have been there for me. They will always be here for me.

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Namesake

At the end of last year my parents moved out of the house that I grew up in. We came to Los Angeles from Chicago in 1975. For a little while we stayed with my Grandma Serelle, my Mom’s Mom, in Sherman Oaks and then in October we settled into the house in Granada Hills. It was a great house to grow up in. Lots of kids in the neighborhood and virtually every street were hills for us to ride bikes and skateboard on.

I have some mixed feelings about that house no longer being in our family. Even though I live three thousand miles away now, I know I can never go “home” again. But it’s good too. While unpacking in their new place and doing the inevitable search for things you know you packed but can’t remember where you put them, my Dad found some photographs of his Father, Alex Kimmell

I never got the chance to meet Grandpa Al. He died of a heart attack when my Dad was around eighteen or so. Everyone in the family who knew him always tells me what a vibrant person he was. How he was always ready with a joke or another creative way to make people smile when they were down. He was a wonderful cartoonist, a talent which landed squarely in my Dad’s hands, but skipped me altogether. He also sold plastic furniture coverings. For those too young to remember that stuff, it was clear plastic sheets that you draped over your couches and chairs so as to not get them dirty. One might say that they were tacky, yet functional and very sticky on your legs if you sat on them wearing shorts on a hot summer day.

The pictures have been fascinating me all night long. I have only seen a few shots of Grandpa Al, and most of them have been worn by time or unfocussed and blurry. These new ones are crystal clear and beautiful. For the first time I can tell that I actually kind of look like him. It’s a nice feeling. This is where I come from and where I got my name.

The first picture is from 1937. Al leans slightly to the left in an all white suit with one hand tucked in the pocket of his pants. His hair is short and flat very much in the style of the day. He has a relaxed and confident smile that is friendly without being put on and there is a very slight cleft in his chin which has not been passed down to any of his progeny. He looks quite a bit slimmer than I have been since high school too.

In another photo Grandpa Al is standing next to his best friend Sammy Kaye. I hear tell from my Dad that they were quite the pair. “These were the guys who would crash country clubs where Jews were not welcome, join a couple of foursomes and clean the members out! Then they would scamper without taking a shower. They were ‘scratch’ golfers, but it wouldn't do to be spotted without a foreskin in that situation!” I guess that’s where the genesis of the Kimmell rebellious streak comes from.

I used to break into the neighborhood country club with my friends back in High school, though we didn’t go to play golf. We went “ice blocking”. The liquor store at the bottom of the hill sold big blocks of ice that were about a foot or two square. We’d buy a couple of those and hop the fence at the top of the hill. Then we would cover the top of the block with a towel, one of us would sit on it and get a push off down the hill. It was a fun ride, but ended up painfully falling off into the bushes or on to the concrete drain more often than not. We tore the hell out of the grass too but they never even looked for us as far as I knew anyway.

I think the craziest thing we used to do was play car tag. You needed at least two guys per car, one driver and one lookout in the passenger seat with a bunch of water balloons. Headlights turned off cruising around the neighborhood looking for the other cars that were playing trying to “tag” each other with the balloons. It was stupid, but it sure was fun. Until one time when I was the lookout and we tagged a car that wasn’t in the game!

We pulled up to a stop sign, leaned out the windows and threw our balloons as hard as we could. It was beautiful actually. Both balloons hit dead center at the exact same time on the cars windshield. Then we noticed the headlights were on. The driver screamed out at us as we squealed away from the intersection as fast as the little hatchback could go. Smoke plumed up from the tires screeching around corners. It felt like he chased us for hours. But this was our neighborhood. We knew it like the backs of our hands.

Turn left here and a sharp right immediately after. The next street would lead us between two cul-de-sacs but if we timed it right, he might keep going straight. We made a quick slip to the right and pulled into the second driveway. Instantly we leaned our seats back as far as they could go and turned off the car. Hearts beating so loud we were sure he could hear us as he drove right past and kept going down to the main road down the way. We stayed there breathing heavily for a few minutes just to be safe, and then had the best laugh of my life. Grandpa Al might not have approved of that night’s events, but I guess it was kind of in the same spirit.

I unfortunately learned that I also share one bad tradition with my namesake that I would rather not. Back when my Dad was a kid, Al bought his very first car. He came home and took the entire family for a drive around the neighborhood. Everyone was gushing and fawning over how beautiful it was and how proud they were to have their very own automobile! It was almost unheard of in those days to be able to afford such a luxury. After dropping the family off, Grandpa Al decided to go for one more loop around the block. Apparently he lost control at the end of the street, knocked out a fire hydrant, slammed right through the wall of the local Abbey and crash landed on top of the Mother Superior’s birdbath.

When I turned sixteen I got my first car. It was a cream colored 1976 Chevrolet Camaro. It was beautifully cherry and in pristine condition. My friends called it a “chick” car because they were sure it would help us score some chicks! We all went out to celebrate and stopped off at the Vons to get some drinks. I decided to show off and tried to whip a donut around my friend’s car, pulling a little bit too close and ended up crashing my passenger door right into his front bumper.

So thanks for that one Gramps! I spent the rest of that summer in my Uncle’s garage learning how to hammer out dents and bondo to bodywork. Needless to say, I didn’t have too much fun for a while.

I have a few advertising cartoons that Al drew hanging on the wall of our living room. I look at them from time to time and they always make me smile. He even created his own signature logo with our initials AK. The right arm of the A extends down to become the backbone of the K and they are joined into one continuous symbol. I remember being a kid and attempting to design a logo for the front head of my bass drum. I could never get it just right. I really wanted it to be in the style of the old Ludwig and Slingerland logos. Like the BR for Buddy Rich or LB for Louie Bellson. If I had seen Al’s drawing back then, I would have definitely used it and I would probably still have it on my kick drum today.

I know there’s a lot of people out there named after their Fathers or their Grandfathers. Many of them have the pleasure of getting to know them and maybe find out why they share the name together. In the Jewish tradition, we don’t name children after anyone who is still living. I like my name and I am proud of where it comes from. But there are times when I would have been just as happy to be called anything else so that I could have shared a few moments in time with the first Alex.

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Just ask your doctor

I don’t know about you, but one of my very favorite things in the world to do is watch drug commercials. The pharmaceutical company gives you a fabulous thirty second pitch on how great this new medication is and how your quality of life will be so fantastically improved if you start taking it right away. Just look at all the healthy looking smiling folks running around outside on the beach or in the park beneath the happy summer sunshine! Holding hands and gazing at each other flirtatiously. Throwing the ball around with the grandkids and riding bikes along the lakeside. Ah…life would be so lovely if only you took these new pills we have for you!

Then comes the very best part, the five minutes of legally required listings of side effects! The shiny happy folks haven’t stopped playing Frisbee on the screen, and the music still makes you want to get up and dance of course. The announcer doesn’t even change the smile in his voice when he begins to tell you how one of the side effects of your new Gout medication is…wait for it…Gout flare ups! Want to get rid of your shingles? Here’s some cancer instead! What, you don’t like your COPD? Let’s see what’s in the grab bag for ya…take this heart attack! We’ll see your erectile dysfunction and raise you a low blood pressure attack followed by seizures and some death!

If you have followed this blog at all, you might remember that I am the side effect king. If there is a side effect listed in the warning packet for a medication, no matter how rare it may be, I get it. All of my doctors are of course baffled by this and swear that it won’t happen with this new drug they want to put me on. Inevitably of course, it does happen and I end up with a fun filled visit to the local E.R. again. I know most of the nurses on a first name basis these days. I’m such a frequent visitor that they even invited me to the staff holiday party last year. The bean dip was spectacular!

I made it through close to a year on my last meds before it happened. So that was pretty good I guess. We thought we were in the clear and I actually stopped worrying about it for a while there. Oh well, here we go again.

I received a lovely package in the mail yesterday from the manufacturers of the new stuff my neurologist wants me to start taking. It was a lovely bag and blanket set with bright yellow and orange colored flowers. The joyful faceless cartoon woman throughout the included booklet is holding her proud and defiant fist up to the sky in front of a vibrant and excited sun. She is wearing her workout tank top and sweatpants apparently out for her daily run. On page five she is stretching out the kinks in a relaxing yoga pose. A few pages later she has her arms folded in a cocky and defiant position of power. Finally on the last page of the pamphlet she is striding briskly along the shoreline of some wonderful Oceanside holding hands with her little boy. It’s just so damn inspirational! Let’s do some jumping jacks! Who’s with me?

Since more than twice the amount of women get M.S. than men I probably shouldn’t be offended that they didn’t send me the football and wrestling package. But what can I say? I really don’t think that a camouflage transfusion blanket and pictures of sports cars would make me feel too much better at this point anyway. Besides, I’m comfortable enough in my sexuality to wear a pink blankey.

Here’s what we have all been waiting for anyway, my three favorite pages in the booklet. I’m sure the lawyers had an awesome time trying to figure out ways to list this stuff without sounding too much like Bela Lugosi. Here is the list from page nine of the allergic reactions that can be associated with this new treatment:

• Hives
• Itching
• Trouble breathing
• Chest pain
• Dizziness
• Wheezing
• Chills
• Rash
• Nausea
• Flushing of skin
• Low blood pressure

Sound like fun to you? Sign me up!

Page eleven shows the most common side effects:

• Headache
• Urinary tract infection
• Lung infection
• Pain in arms and legs
• Vaginitis
• Nose and throat infections
• Feeling tired
• Joint pain
• Depression
• Diarrhea
• Rash
• Stomach area pain

I’m not really sure about you guys, but I’m personally really excited by the possibility of getting Vaginitis! That would just be awesome for me. Since one of my main problems with M.S. has been the pain in my arms and legs, I get to look forward to more of that? AWESOME! And if I haven’t been depressed already, please give me all this crap along with my degenerative disease. That shouldn’t cause more depression at all. Great part is that I’ll get to start taking anti-depressants which will bring even more side effects! Say it with me now…AWESOME!!!

The side effect listed on page four really takes the cake though.

• Treatment increases a patient’s chance of getting PML, a rare brain infection that usually causes death or severe disability. If PML happens, it usually happens in people with weakened immune systems.

Ok, so the drug manufacturers in all of their wisdom, to treat people with a degenerative disease that causes your immune system to weaken, create a medicine that can cause death or severe disability in people with weakened immune systems. Ummm… Hello? McFly!

Am I freaking out? Yup. Do I want to start this medication? Not really. But unfortunately it’s the best that modern medicine has to offer today. Apparently there are close to 70,000 people in the world taking this particular course of treatment today and there are only 70 recorded cases of PML attributed to it. I’ve done the research. I just don’t want to be #71.

I’ve been wracking my brain for hours now trying to find some light hearted and funny way to end this rant. Unfortunately nothing comes to mind that isn’t even more dark and cynical. I would love to make more light of this predicament I am in, but I just can’t right now. Truthfully I am terrified. The old saying that the cure is sometimes worse than the disease rolls through my head quite often these days. But that’s just the way medicine progresses.

A hundred years ago I would have been a condemned man with no treatment and no hope at all. Because of the scientists and doctors out there developing these new treatments those of us with M.S. at least have a shot. A fighting shot at that. Sure there a tons of unwanted side effects and there isn’t always a complete cure for everything. But it’s a process. And I for one am grateful that there are people out there trying to find ways to make healthy lives possible for all of us.

Cross your fingers, but don’t hold your breath!

(Stole the new photo from a friend. Works pretty good dontcha think? I wish they really made it! Wonder what the side effects would be though...)

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