The TV adventure, an update: MD looked at my rib, said that yes, it's cracked, a little. Two choices: Bind it. Or don't. "Most people don't like the way it restricts their breathing," he says. Try not to drop another TV on it. Be gentle with it. Wait. It'll heal in its own time. And kudos to my chiropractor (who said basically the same thing, all the same things) for having enough sense not to try to adjust me at a time when ribcage-elasticity is a low (if not risky) point.
Monday evening, I was actually getting "dental-anesthesia-grade" numbness in one of my legs. "Oh great, something's gone wicked over the edge," I'm thinking. That didn't last more than one day, fortunately. My legs still don't work so good, I still can't feel things so good, but at least "roaring with numbness-as-numbness," they're not (at the moment) doing.
I'm still dealing with the "I've gotta sleep now now now" that has been plaguing me for... oh dear, I think we're well into "weeks" at this point. Last week, my MD/acupuncturist said "It's no wonder, you've got such-and-such an acupuncture-treatable condition" (not exactly what he said, but that's what it meant, basically), four needles and poof! That problem's gone. This week, I do not have said "acupuncture-able" condition, but I still have the gotta-sleeps, just like last week. "So, it's not the block that caused it last week, so what's causing it?" I ask him.
"I don't know," he says.
Well, sometimes both Eastern and Western medicine have no answers. (Oh, sleep might simply be what your body needs right now, why not give your body what it's asking for? There's an interesting idea...)
Now, here's the big thing... Earlier this week, I talked about Deepak Chopra's "21-day Meditation" program, and about the day where he said we should direct love to the parts of our bodies that are in distress. Because, after all, don't we like receiving love, especially when we're in distress?
So last night, as I sat outside banging down my medicinal herbs and enjoying a wonderful full moon and the cool spring-night air, I felt like... it was time to be honest about, and with, my M.S. Yeah, I know, I've said time and again, M.S. doesn't "exist," but I felt like I needed to be honest, and extend gratitude and love.
So, I took some time to really look seriously at not what M.S. did to me, but what it did for me. To be honest about "I'm not sure I can say 'thank you' for causing me to hit the ground and pull the television off the shelf onto me and break a rib," but at least I was honest about it. But rib-cracking and ground-hiting notwithstanding, there were many things that I had to speak the truth of, and then say to the M.S., "I owe you for that one. Thank you."
They were hard, and painful, life-changing moments. Life-changing to the point of "The life that was... is over." Over as "over" gets. As "over" as death gets. And yet, I had to be just as honest as to say... "I owe you for that one. Thank you."
Changes that needed to be made. Really really really needed to be made... that very well might never have been made were it not for The Disease; and the roads that I was on (that it removed me from) could very well have ended very, very, badly. Changes that I needed to face. To "cop to." To make.
I am not yet able to say "thank you" for everything that has come to me through The Disease; as Corrie Ten Boom quotes her sister Betsie in her book The Hiding Place, to "thank God even for fleas." Oh, there's quite the list of bodily mis/mal/odd-functions that have definitely not (yet) brought me any spiritual enlightenment, any spiritual... anything. But some of the biggest, nastiest, most difficult-to-face life-that-I-was-so-attached-to changes were indeed the most important to make... and for that, my tweaked nervous system and whatever else got tweaked by the M.S. Highway, I have to say...
I owe you. Thank you for bringing me to meet that change, to make that change.
And now... now, I can even extend love to my M.S. At least... a little.
Deepak is right. We feel better having love extended to us. What goes around, comes around, right?
Payback isn't always a bitch.
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