Gray

Now here's an interesting question… Right now, I'm going through exactly the same symptoms/situation that I did in college. In 1980, I believe… I nearly lost a semester. Spend the day in bed, on my back. I made it out of the room for food and to rehearse in the concert band, as simply playing music (especially that music, the stuff we were going to be performing) was just about the only thing that made me feel good.

Anyway, eventually the sick (or whatever it was that had flattened me) wandered off and I was somehow able to finish the semester. Well enough to graduate, at least.

But anyway, here I am, full-on diagnosed with MS, and having exactly the same experience as I had nearly thirty years before I got The Diagnosis.

So, am I having an "episode?" An "incident"?  A "relapse"? As far as I know, I've never had one, since I don't really know what one is… but if it is, it means I was having relapses of The Disease thirty years before I received The Diagnosis. Which comports with what somebody said about my most recent MRI  ("those marks are the signs of secondary progressive," they told me, which made no sense at the time since as far as I knew I'd never been anywhere but "primarily" progressive, since as far as I knew I hadn't been anything but "progressive" since the day I was diagnosed.

But having had "an incident" years ago comports with my Primary Guy's assessment that I may very well have had MS symptoms long before I was diagnosed… I just didn't see them for what they were.

So what does that all mean, then? As far as I can tell, nothing. I'm quite certain nobody would have given me The Diagnosis in the 80s, since even then I wasn't having any of the muscular-control data-corruption problems that set me on course to The Diagnosis until early 2000's.

And as Aslan said in the Dawn Treader book, "No one is ever told what might have been."

So then, in the meantime, drink tea, meditate, try to write music before I flee to the bed. Which happens much more quickly than I'd like nowadays… Maybe try to catch some sun outside. If there's any to catch; there was first thing this morning, but now it's just gray.

Which I'm sure I could use as a metaphor for my life, about now. 'Cause that's pretty much all I see, nowadays.

Gray.