How does Joost and Motor Neurone Disease relate to my Sorrow?

I never cared for then white sport. I didn’t even care or even know how many rugby players were on the field until the team that won us the first world cup took to the field against All Blacks  from New Zealand in 1996. I could not understand why Mandela was then trying to unite us on the sport field on the wrong side of the fence.

I am an old dog that has been through apartheid wars. Gerry Coetzee fights against John Tate for example. The battle lines were always clear for any soldier to see. We knew we would be arrested for breathing open air after the South African white loses, but then who knows, it might get you closer to meeting your heroes in prison, or in heaven.

Thirty years of hate and slugging it out in the open and out of prison gates strolls an old man we have being singing hero praises for, and he tells me you screaming for the wrong team. We called him names behind closed doors but openly we had to hold hands with policemen (boxing and rugby was then populated by police by day whites). The very hairy blood dripping hand that arrested you earlier after handing you a few good kaffir klaps, you had to hug publicly under the beady eye of Mandela.

My hero of yesterday in rugby is dying and I am sobbing for a white guy. Jonah Lomu single handedly won the game against England and I thought no man born of woman could stop him. He had unfortunately never met Joost. I probably am crying more because these are some of the disease that I should have found the cure for as a doctor if we stayed in academic medicine for longer. I am as guilty as fate in this and letting him suffer with nothing to offer is to me a reminder of my failure. Muhamed Ali is another such hero we failed. We had to be heroes in academy to match them off the field to cover such minor disasters.

Motor neurone disease is as deadly today as it was when it was discovered. That says a lot about the professionals entrusted with lessening the impact it has on the community. The delay or conflict that surrounds the stem cell research doesn’t help either. To make our shame even more, Joost had to be send to America for the diagnosis. Our heroes on the field have no heroes to meet them on the hospital ward. 

Motor neurone disease is not caused by multiple trauma if evidence should be what we base decisions on. If you get motor impairment when your motor neurons are already diseased, then the effect should be compounded. Punch drunk syndrome, Parkinson of Ali type is caused by trauma though.

If biochemistry and physiology of beauty and health are the elements of every mix, then results are assured