I am sick with something dire
But nobody can tell me what.
My eyesight is down, degraded.
But why?
Months go by without a certain answer.

I am tested for diabetes, high blood pressure, tuberculosis, AIDS,
Giardia, iodine deficiency, cat parasites
And raw chicken inflictions.
I have, at least, something which the wise astronomer's microscope can see:
Keratic precipitates,
Little bits of garbage in the eyes.
But KPs have a washing list agenda,
A world of ifs, perhaps and maybes.
The comfort of their presence is that they demonstrate
That I am not hallucinating:
That this
Is more than just hypochondria.
That said, I am a world and a half away from a solution.

I am a question mark which cannot solve itself.
The Internet does not help at all.
This is a disease but it lacks a name.
The possibilities go crazyquilt.

I am a jigsaw.
My crossword puzzle
Has a million possible answers.
Having whatever it is that I have
Is certainly a vocabulary power-up.
Dictionaries of arcana
Inflict themselves upon me.

For this spaghetti junction,
There is no reliable
One-click computer solution.
In the world of diagnosis
There are no straight lines.
If you already know the answer then you can ask
The appropriate question.
If not, you're stuck.

Online, I read of sane Americans
With the best of doctors in the best of American hospitals
Who endure a full two years of diagnosis,
Only to learn that the One Great Answering Machine
Does not have an answer for their question.

Sarcoidosis, which I had never heard of,
Is, for a while,
A highly active candidate.
Beethoven possibly suffered from it.
I am not enough of a fan
To want to share his fate.

It might all turn out, in the end,
To be idiopathic:
Of no known cause.
Alone at the computer,
I wargame outcomes.
Multiple sclerosis,
At a guess,
Is not impossible.
My genes
Have a Scottish component,
Which skews you in that direction.

Finally,
Many, many leagues down the yellow brick road,
The eminent neurologist
Concurs with my ophthalmologist's speculation:
The brain cancer which it could be
Is what it is.