Why not us

Had a truly wonderful acupuncturing yesterday. Not nasty painful or anything, and when these five-element folks really connect with you, you feel great. I'm getting to the point where I start to feel great before the needle comes out. Not always, but often... More each time.

Had wonderful talks about the sorts of things that are, to my perception, actually getting in my way. All she did was listen, she offered a couple of suggestions, but mostly it was listen. No judgement, no here's how-to-fix-it (even though I don't really understand what it's about), just listening. Very reassuring, very supportive, and who knows? Her next idea may be the thing that really gets things changing. We'll see.

Dropped a note to a college friend of mine, his wife has The Disease, but she's doing good work in, his words: "Engaging the world." This is very hard for me... engaging even the world of my home and studio is too often beyond me. That was very much the topic of my chat with my acupuncture-caregiver yesterday. I try to do X, and here's how it fails... here's how I fail, let's be fair and accurate.

I blame little to nothing. MS isn't something to blame; depending on whom you ask, it doesn't exist--the Chinese say it's just the name us westerners give our symptoms, but there is nothing extant behind those symptoms. Naming it and blaming it gives it power, and who among us needs to give power to things that don't exist?

My dear wife is having to deal with our beloved cat who's clearly coming to the end of this part of the adventure. She's 19 and a few months, which web-friendly cat-age calculators says she's starting to edge up to the high 90's in human years. Things stop working (well, I certainly know how that feels), and I feel so bad for my poor wife who not only has to be caregiver to failing husband but now has to run around with Cat to radiologist, oncologist, the list keeps expanding. And we both have to deal with the Usual Question about how much cash to sink into the aging cat, and the inevitable confrontation of "Yes it's expensive, but not trying is something that will have too high a cost, too."

We MSers deal with this ourselves. New MS drug, they say. Costs a million dollars, they say, for the rest of your life. At least we get to see that other people try it, it doesn't work, so there's no point in coughing up the million bucks.

Doesn't that make us feel better?

Actually... no. But it does save us money. Which we'll then spend on the Cat, it would seem. Or not. We'll see. But we can definitely do whatever it takes to keep her happy and comfortable, so that whatever time she has with us will be enjoyable.

And if that's good enough for a cat...

Why not US?!?!?!?