Darkness

It's been a bad couple of weeks. The last week has been especially bad.

Something about energy malfunctions--not "lack of perkiness" or "oh, I'm just a little tired," but energy from the acupuncture perspective--makes the MS go nuts. Another contributing factor on the Western medical side is that since I don't feel hunger so much any more, I tend to not eat when I'm supposed to, which means low blood sugar, and since the nervous system runs on glucose...well, you get the idea. Not eating enough makes the MS go nuts too.

As I've mentioned often before, my sensitivity is way up. Which means I'm feeling crappy with remarkable presence and clarity.

Something I've been appreciating very much this week has been the smiles of my students. Now, you may find it unusual that someone can take such joy in the company of fourteen- and fifteen-year-olds, but they really are very sweet, and good jokes and nice smiles have been some of the only things that've kept me on my feet for the last couple of days.

Sensitivity also has an upside.

Dreams

One thing that's definitely changed since the MS has been my dreaming.

I don't have prophetic dreams, or anything like that. No prophesies yet, at least... certainly nothing that involves the lottery.

Some people have said that dreams are the way of the brain "working things out." My dreams feature corporeal things being worked out.

A few days ago, I had a very interesting treatment from the Qi Gong master/doctor. It felt the usual sort of "interesting" that it often feels, but not nearly as lysergic as some of the treatments have been.

A few nights later, I dream that my left leg just completely gave out. Even in the dream, I thought, "Oh well. There it goes. I was expecting something like that to happen, eventually."

That morning I awoke with my left leg better. It's certainly still far away from "right," but there's definitely more life in it than the right one. Something happened.

Last night when I went to bed, I was seriously considering calling in sick today. And for the rest of the week, as well.

In the middle of the night, in a dream, my acupuncturist gave me a slightly off-standard treatment for a serious energy block, but I got the usual needles in the usual places. Including one point that's usually extremely nasty, CV1 for those of you keeping score at home. I felt the needles, especially that nasty one; it wasn't as bad as it sometimes can be, but I definitely felt it. I felt the physio/energetic changes that always follow that point.

I woke up this morning feeling like I didn't need to call in anything. I made it to school, no problems at all.

Now, I'm getting needled tomorrow, I'll probably have to have that point again, this time with a real needle, but still. My "dream" treatment got me through the day.

Now if I can get the real needles to not hurt the way the dream one did. Didn't? (The language isn't really suited for this kind of thing...)

And this is far from the first time I've gotten acupuncture treatments in dreams. At least my doctor doesn't charge me for them. You take what you can get, in these troubled times.

Sensitivity, revisited

Being sensitive to everything.

Really, really sensitive. To everything. Temperature. Noise. Especially to my internal mechanism and state. To other's psychic states.

To live in a very wide and rich world can be really, really tiring.

Just had a "blammo" treatment at the acupuncturists, following on the heels of a similarly "blammo" treatment at the Qi Gong office. They change the mechanics of the way I perceive the world, and they especially change the way I relate to the world.

It's always an ... interesting ... ride.

A rocky week, as you may have guessed. At the moment, I feel like I turned a corner, but whether there's a pit up ahead waiting to swallow me remains to be seen.

Hidden costs

The MS experience is, absent the neurological nonsense, really no different than the basic human experience... only writ so large that you can't pretend it isn't happening.

It takes energy to walk around your workplace, or around the house. To go to the store. To get dressed up and go to dinner. It's just that with MS, you're acutely aware of exactly how much energy and effort those activities take, and that just the doing of those simple activities burns away at your not-always-that-extensive-to-begin-with reserves. I've had many trips to a restaurant where just getting there and being there took way too much energy, and I ran out of juice about two thirds of the way through the meal.

Of course, sometimes you "just gotta keep going." I don't begrudge the universe for requiring that of me, but I am painfully aware about just how much "just keep going" can cost me.

And this is something I'm struggling a lot with. When to push through and when to sit back. Of course, when you're at work and you gotta go from point A to point B, "pushing through" is your only option... but it always costs, and sometimes it costs a lot.

So, one of the gifts of MS is that I'm more acutely aware of every passing moment. Unfortunately, right now, what I'm most aware of within those moments is depletion, and how that depletion is increasing through each of those passing moments; and I'm currently watching that depletion rob me of activities I'd rather be undertaking than recovery, inasmuch as said recovery never quite seems to happen. Which is itself taxing.

There is a way through this desert. I just don't know what it is, yet. Yet—and that's important. There is an answer... I just haven't seen it yet.

But as Kino said in Kino's Journey, sometimes a traveler's most important tool is luck. And fortune favors those who pay attention.