Accommodation (another)

Another "should" to remember... I should go directly to bed when I get home from work, and take a nap, and recover from the depletion of the day, before I talk about anything with anyone.

Because, I think, I'm so tired at the end of the day that I don't think well, and I don't relate well; and MS being full of "againstness" on the internal side, I don't need to add to that on the external side.

We spend a lot of time seeking and working with accommodative devices--canes and walkers for pedestrian locomotion, hand controls for automotive--we (read as "I") forget that we need to accommodate our emotional/communication "locomotion" through the world.

Another completely correct and necessary, but not always welcome when it arrives, gift of MS.

Not as poetic a realization as some have been, but just as true.

Closer

Second hand-control driving lesson today; I thought I did good, and (fortunately) so did my teacher. An hour and a half of incident-free driving, including a few freeway jaunts. Very, very tiring, mostly in mental paying-attention-to-the-world effort; but even accounting for that, very successful.

He thinks I should do at least one more lesson, but that even before that, I'm ready to call Control Installer Guy and start lining him up to finish The Great Conversion.

And then... freedom. Small freedom, but still freedom. I'll be able to drive myself to, and then home from work... which is, at the bottom line, more effort than I'm expending now (a colleague is driving me, right now); but at least I'll be able to do things like deposit checks and buy frozen pizza on the way home.

And y'know, in the MS biz, you take what you can get.

Change without progress

An interesting combination of symptoms (I guess you can call them that).

Things are better. The "numbness"/data corruption, that was the tip-off that something might be neurologically Not Right in my legs, seems like its fading away. I'm feeling parts of my legs that I haven't felt in years.

Other things are worse. I also have raging coldness in one of my feet, my motor control is degenerating, and I wonder if I'm knocking on the door of "too weak to walk."

Things are better. I actually have the feeling that I might be able to write music again.

Things are worse. I feel too tired to sit at the computer and write music; I'd rather be in bed, under the comforter, listening to Babylon 5 or Mighty Boosh or something else comforting. (I don't want to watch them, my eyes are changing prescriptions or something so much that I can still see things but focussing on screens is unpleasant, and/or not always productive.)

I often find solace in the tale of the Taoist farmer. It's hard to look at what's going on and shrug philosophically, "Who can say what's good or bad?"

This one's easy. It's both, at the same time.

One step forward, one step backwards. I am not "going nowhere," I'm progressing and retreating, simultaneously; very clearly improving, very clearly degrading. Hard to find a suitable metaphor; my wheels are spinning, but the road moves underneath me in the opposite direction. Lots of motion, but zero change in position.

Great. I'm on a treadmill; lots of effort, no forward motion. But, at least the theory goes, it makes your heart stronger. And after all, Nietzsche said that what does not destroy you makes you stronger.

Mother Theresa is credited with saying, "God never asks me to do anything I can't do. Sometimes I wish He did not have so much faith in me."

Amen.