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?!?!?!?

In a word...

The cool and wet seems to be getting replaced by the dry and hot. Again. Well, that's LA for you.

I'm getting an acupuncture treatment at home later today. You can't beat house calls! I miss my Olde Time Guy, with whom I still stay in contact, both as an MD and as a friend, but the new person is gentler and has a different spin on her treatments, which is working out well for me. And she has a young one who likes Adventure Time and Steven Universe, so we're in very good shape there!

Did some business that needs doing...first installment of California property tax, for example.

I'm finding that I'm still dealing with electronic business pretty well... property tax, mortgage, DWP stuff, car payments, those all go well. People ask for music, I send it--just sent something to Kansas! But I don't do at all well with the "put a piece of paper into a folder" businessy stuff... find the right folder is somehow very challenging. Thank God for automatic payment systems via the web! They make everything so much simpler.

Fights with the insurance company continue. The usual nonsense, I say I need this, doctor who prescribes it says I need it, insurance company says I don't, I call the doctor, he says dammit yes he needs it, insurance says no he doesn't. I suppose when all insurer really wants is to collect money, e.g., I pay the insurer, they pay out nothing & therefore get more money, it's a great gig, I guess. Cash-wise, at least.

Dropped a note to an old college friend of mine who recently got diagnosed with breast cancer, kinda bad but kinda not bad, at least not the almost-kill-you-with-chemotherapy kind; we've been chatting about the various kinds and benefits that cannabis can provide. We used to do a lot of it informally in college, so it's not a vast gulf to jump, but us MSers know this all too well. Will Thing X help me? Who can say? Well, try something, did it work? Can't really say...

In a word, it's very...

Frustrating.

Amazing symptoms

Keep your mind active, They say. It's important, They say.

Well, here's a way to start off the day, exercising the mind. Quite something to do so casually, knowing technological history a I do...

This morning, I ordered some extremely high quality Japanese matcha from a company in Munich. Website is entirely in German. So I had to figure that out, using what German I remember and some poking around a few dictionaries. It may arrive 10/15. It really is a great way to start the day, and the Germans have beat the Japanese at their own game. It's quite lovely stuff, gentler than what had been my standard in ceremonial tea.

It's interesting, and kinda sad, to see how some of my neurologically accessorized bloggers have been reporting their "adventures,"  and how they've been withering too... My herbalist said that the Chinese medical folks call MS a "withering disease," and man, have I been withering. And from what I read, so have they.

Neurological that goes bad doesn't get better. Except when it does. But as to how, when, or even whether that will happen... nobody knows. Time after time that I was in the hospital, visiting doctors said "Oh, that's neurological. We can't help you."

Not exactly promo materia medica, "We can't help you." It's a little more personalized than "Nobody can help you," but that's not saying much.

So what are we left with? Do the best you can with what you got.

Given what I used to do as a daily matter of course, just firehosing material with next to no effort, calling adding a couple of notes "a triumph" because it was what I could do today... I gotta admit, there a serious change-of-mind required.

But this is a very interesting thing that we are called upon, as the MS accessorized... Change your mind. 

Sounds easy, don't it? Well, it IS easy, if you're willing to work at it and to stop working against it, which is harder than walking out of your wheelchair.

Be here now, as Ram Dass is famous for writing. Well, for me, "here and now" doesn't seem to include a lot of sitting at the computer and creating. But here and now is here and now, so that's the challenge: Be here now.

Quite an amazing "symptom" of this disease...