Causes = reminders... ?

Oh, the neurological changes...

I'm getting increased--that's right, increased--touch sensitivity in my legs. While I'm walker-walking, I frequently have to confirm that my pants haven't dropped, because I can feel so much air against my skin. Most unusual, this is. I'm happy to report that my pants haven't dropped, I'm just feeling "the wind" moving about within my pants legs.

In the M.S. biz, becoming more touch sensitive, where one used to be less touch sensitive... a wonderful unusual reversal, that.

But oh, my legs are changing in other ways: specifically, becoming less steady. Every day, a little more teetering. Earlier today, just after having shed my walker (it lives in the bed of the truck while I drive), I nearly couldn't reposition myself to walk "all the way" to the driver's door. While holding on to the side of the truck, even. "Free walking," with no wall to steady myself on, is always shaky business at best, but right now, even with something to hold onto, it's becoming even shakier business.

Doesn't help that I can tell that I need acupuncturing (another one of those "four needles cures the problem" issues). Really doesn't help that I'm going through a "putting your affairs in order because your time is very, very, limited" in the work world...

One of my colleagues stopped by to visit the other day; he's currently under the care of the hospice division of the local hospital;  as he put it in his own words, "I don't have long."

In my own way, and pertinent to my own situation... I kinda know how he feels. Even he spoke of it as "the human condition"--temporariness, that is.

And Lord knows, M.S. is all about being reminded that this thing we're driving ourselves around in, it doesn't last. We are eternal, but our vehicle is temporary, prone to malfunction and failure--and nobody really likes being reminded of that.

But, I gotta tell you... getting "your time is coming to an end" in any way, right in your face, is NOT fun.

And here's the kicker... if I had really embraced what having M.S. can teach me, I think that coming to the end of a phase of life might not bother me so much. Because "temporariness," the unknowability of the future, those are with us M.Sers--really, with all us humans--every day.

The very condition that caused me to come to this rough spot in the road is going to be what enables me to make it over it.

And as you've heard me say, time and time again...

That's funny.