Sumner's Virus

I had to laugh, when they named a virus after me. It was my senior year of high school, and in addition to the usual high school classes, I was deep into my new student job of stage manager for the stage crew that worked the school's brand-new theater. I wish I'd asked for some coaching, because as I remember it, I needed it, to do the respectable job I wanted to do. Mostly, I was still working with the rest of the crew on all the same theater jobs - curtains, lighting, running the carbon-arc spotlight and projector, and sound panel, in the elevated booth in back - but someone had to be the one in charge, and they designated me. We were working external shows performed by outside professionals who came in and needed technical support, as well as our internal shows performed by the Drama Club students. There were lots of late night activities - setting up for, operating, and taking down the various shows. I was late getting my driver's license, due to an earlier and really fun summer activity, but somewhere along the way, I finally got it, just in time to be pleading to borrow my mom's car, so I could drive home at 2am so many nights, after working on whatever show we were supporting at the time. We found ourselves having late-night coffee and pie at the local Stickney's all-night restaurant, more often than not. I remember munching pie and debating the benefits and disadvantages of drinking eight glasses of water a day.

One night, I found myself overshooting a very familiar turn, while driving home. I watched as the street sign slid by, knowing I was going to fast to make the turn. All I did at the time, was stop in a straight line, back up, and complete the turn safely, but the event itself was concerning to me, a seventeen year old with lightning-fast reflexes and amazingly perfect judgement (in my humble opinion at the time). About the same time, I noticed I wasn't able to stand on one foot and tie my shoelaces any more. I soon realized, I couldn't stand on one foot at all, any more, without falling over. This was something I'd been good at for years, so it was also concerning to me. I finally mentioned these concerns to my mom, and being a nurse, she quickly found a way to get me in for what turned out to be a full suite of testing, to identify the culprit. They suspected everything from a brain tumor, to a teenager sneaking out and smoking pot, to a virus in my spinal column, and who knows what other maladies. I think I must've been pretty offended by the pot question, as I'd never tried any controlled substances. Mom came to school several times, and dragged me out of whatever I was doing - one time we were starting a daytime theater performance - to go to a suddenly-available appointment time slot for a medical exam. I had a brain scan after drinking radioactive barium, a spinal tap, eye tests, ear tests, psychological profiles, and so many other tests I can't remember. After all the testing, they found nothing, except an elevated white cell count, which they couldn't attribute to any particular cause. So, they told me they were going to diagnose it as "Sumner's virus," and let it go at that. "Come on back, if it gets worse," they said. In the meantime, stop trying to operate on 3 hours of sleep a night.