What else is there?

I seem to be running into a common ... OK, I still say "running" which I haven't done in years and as things seem to be going nowadays, I may never again. As to that, who can say? But for now... probably not.

Spent some time talking with my primary-care MD about my bladder issues... or, as I have said here many times, Alan, whom I have named after a character in The Amazing World of Gumball.

Who, as you might imagine from this picture, isn't always radiantly happy.

Anyway, I said that Alan is doing XYZ, is there anything that can be done about it? The answer came back very clearly: "No." Oh well. Should I call the urologist? The answer again came back clearly: "Well, he'll prescribe things that you don't need and won't work, so... No."Oh well.

Saw my ophthalmologist (who is also an MD with some familiarity with MS people because many of her patients are MS-afflicted. Well, she has an idea about this other specialist who may ... may... have something to offer, but ... No. Nothing to be done. Oh well.

Hands aren't quite at the "palsied" point, but they do occasionally shake a bit, I've got wicked temperature issues, I'm stuck in a wheelchair and being able to "transfer" as they call it, to move ones's self from one chair to another, such as from the wheelchair to the commode, is shaky at best. On good days. Which are always different, in the amount of "good" that may be there on a "good" day. And now, all together.... Anything to be done to make the "good" into "better"?

All together now...

No.

Oh  well.

But the big thing is... that's the way things are. There are many things that can be said about this world, but "impermanence" is definitely one of them. We hope things will last. Sometimes they do... for a while... but eventually... they don't. Beautiful leaves grow; them they fall. Rain falls; then the ground dries up. Children grow; they may make children of their own, whom they do their best to help grow. But at some point, they die. And so do we. Things work; then they fail.

So how, exactly, is MS different?

Well... it's not. We may have a better idea about the ways things fail, but we have no idea why the Failing Things choose those particular ways to fail. Or, something that so many of us hope for, to stop them from failing---that way, at least. As Rick said in one episode of Rick and Morty, "I can't cure death."

So, what is the lesson that we (I) need to learn from the MS experience?

The only permanence is impermanence; don't get attached to things that are constantly in flux because, among many reasons, you'll spend all your time trying to stay attached to something that doesn't, well, stay. Or as Ram Dass would tell us, if you're putting all your attention into the way things are "supposed to be," you'll be paying no attention to how things are.

So what do I have, at the end of the day? As Ram Dass's guru told him, tell the truth and love God.

What else is there to do?