Aragorn's question

Success yesterday and today, in the realm of "colossally boring but necessary." I did my portion of tax-return-preparation, and handed off the package to my wife to tend to her own chunk. Next step: send it to the Tax People, who will polish and submit it. I think we'll get it in just under the Tax People's wire for Last Minute return-submission.

Two things I've noticed about this year's tax effort; first, record keeping throughout the year makes things go a LOT faster. A lot less time is demanded by the "go through the pile of WTF-was-this-for" receipt spelunking.

Also... except for medical expenses, of which lemme tell you, there are plenty, when you're basically laid up and can't really do anything besides sleep, you incur significantly fewer expenses. Of any sort. Which, I suppose, is a good thing. Leaves you more cash free for, oh, I dunno, medical expenses?

Tragi-comic as always, the Neurological Highway is.

Joe Straczynski was known to frequently quote great artists who said "The devil is in the details. So is God." Well, it does take an inordinate amount of theological introspection to discover God lurking in the details of one's tax return... but there are certainly many, many details in my experience of traveling the Neurological Highway.

Getting a lot of focus, currently, are things that can be categorized under "My legs are different." One time, I walk across the room, and I feel like more data is moving between my legs and my perception of them. "Better," one might call this. A little later, I walk across the room, and the walking is significantly more difficult than usual. "Worse," one might call this. Why the differences? As Aragorn often asked in the Lord of the Rings, "Who can say?"

Last night, I got up in the middle of the night, having taken several hours earlier a specific formula that my herbalist was especially excited about, and the feeling in my legs was "Oh man, something very different is definitely going on." Neither specifically better nor worse, but clearly very very different. Was that good? Bad? Who can say?

Good thing that I've been getting so much experience with "hang on for the ride." I think I've put enough mindfulness into it that I can fairly call it "getting practice," rather than just "experience." But, as the saying goes, practice makes permanent; only perfect practice makes perfect. So, something else to work on: mindfulness; specifically, walking with mindfulness. Which, you gotta admit, beyond any Zen-esque benefits that might accrue simply by being more mindful in general, mindfulness in walking will (I hope) reduce the number of falls and pulling the TV off the shelf and onto myself and cracking a rib. Again.

But, my legs? Getting better? Worse?  Who can say?

Will that question ever really be answered? Well, as the 1960's Batman ended its episodes, "Tune in tomorrow—same Bat-time, same Bat-channel." And tomorrow: Will an answer present itself? Who can say?

Beautiful

A day of discovery.

Wife and I took some time to visit the local Arboretum. Lovely springtime flowers, lovely fresh air. A lovely cool breeze, full of the scents of the Arboretum's many flowers. And peacocks, many of which were strutting enthusiastically for peahens (who were uniformly unimpressed).

It was a wonderful afternoon trip; one which we haven't done enough, and need to do again. And again. And again.

I'm still negotiating the waters of "gotta sleep now now now," feeling especially energy-free. Which is too bad, since there's music that I at least think that I want to write... but doing so requires sitting in the studio and thinking and creating and doing all sorts of non-lying-down-and-sleeping activities.

Also something that I noticed within myself today... the very-large-air-quotes-"walking" is doing very poorly. Worse than ever; every day is worse than the day before. I nearly fell over taking the wheelchair out of the back of the truck, something I've done time and time again without almost-falling-over. My wife pushed me all around the Arboretum in the wheelchair; she did so in very good spirits, which certainly felt good, that she felt so good, even while she was being of such huge assistance to me...

But I'm so very, very, very low on energy, I started wondering today... does this what old age, end-of-life-old-age, feels like? The slow, dissipating every day, evaporation of ability to do anything... Now please be reassured, I'm not "contemplating" anything, but I must admit, I have been thinking about giving away precious possessions, making sure that the people that I care about that I know will enjoy these possessions for their own sake, get them... Such contemplations are hardly taking over or anything like that, but thinking about "Time to face up to 'time to say goodbye to activity X' " and "It's time to admit that I'm never going to use that again, why don't I give it to someone who will;" I don't know that I really want to come out and say "This part of my life is over" but given what I'm able to do, plus the feeling that M.S. or not it is time to say goodbye to said activity, and what few abilities I have are fading slowly, slowly, slowly, always fading...

My herbalist says that M.S. has often been called a "withering" disease, in the Chinese-medical circles... and that it is, oh yes, that it is.

Now, let me reassure you: Am I depressed? No! Am I sad? Well, don't know if it's denial raging to the fore as it does so very very easily, but at the moment at least, no... but I am getting very, very, very quiet.

A side effect of (admittedly overdue) meditative introspection, and emotional/spiritual housecleaning? Something I've been doing a lot lately... Well, perhaps, perhaps...

A side effect of needing to sleep all the time? Also "perhaps." I'm trying to approach the "Gotta sleep now now now" as simply "Body wants it, give the body what it wants, the sooner it gets enough of what it wants, the sooner it'll stop demanding more of it." The I-gotta-have-answers part of me probably won't be happy until said answers are positively delivered, but... even knowing what it was about, what's there to do about it?

And also... then again, what do we M.S.ers have to continually face, no matter what our symptoms are? And of what must we remind ourselves?

Hang on for the ride. Do the best you can. Enjoy what enjoyment is given you with as much enjoyment as you can. And laugh. Always, laugh.

As the anime series Kino's Journey said, "The world is not beautiful. And therefore, the world is beautiful.

But... Neurological nonsense notwithstanding, the world is beautiful.

Payback

Oh, the things that have happened, to very roughly paraphrase Dr. Seuss...

The TV adventure, an update: MD looked at my rib, said that yes, it's cracked, a little. Two choices: Bind it. Or don't. "Most people don't like the way it restricts their breathing," he says. Try not to drop another TV on it. Be gentle with it. Wait. It'll heal in its own time. And kudos to my chiropractor (who said basically the same thing, all the same things) for having enough sense not to try to adjust me at a time when ribcage-elasticity is a low (if not risky) point.

Monday evening, I was actually getting "dental-anesthesia-grade" numbness in one of my legs. "Oh great, something's gone wicked over the edge," I'm thinking. That didn't last more than one day, fortunately. My legs still don't work so good, I still can't feel things so good, but at least "roaring with numbness-as-numbness," they're not (at the moment) doing.

I'm still dealing with the "I've gotta sleep now now now" that has been plaguing me for... oh dear, I think we're well into "weeks" at this point. Last week, my MD/acupuncturist said "It's no wonder, you've got such-and-such an acupuncture-treatable condition" (not exactly what he said, but that's what it meant, basically), four needles and poof! That problem's gone. This week, I do not have said "acupuncture-able" condition, but I still have the gotta-sleeps, just like last week. "So, it's not the block that caused it last week, so what's causing it?" I ask him. 

"I don't know," he says.

Well, sometimes both Eastern and Western medicine have no answers. (Oh, sleep might simply be what your body needs right now, why not give your body what it's asking for? There's an interesting idea...)

Now, here's the big thing... Earlier this week, I talked about Deepak Chopra's "21-day Meditation" program, and about the day where he said we should direct love to the parts of our bodies that are in distress. Because, after all, don't we like receiving love, especially when we're in distress?

So last night, as I sat outside banging down my medicinal herbs and enjoying a wonderful full moon and the cool spring-night air, I felt like... it was time to be honest about, and with, my M.S. Yeah, I know, I've said time and again, M.S. doesn't "exist," but I felt like I needed to be honest, and extend gratitude and love.

So, I took some time to really look seriously at not what M.S. did to me, but what it did for me. To be honest about "I'm not sure I can say 'thank you' for causing me to hit the ground and pull the television off the shelf onto me and break a rib," but at least I was honest about it. But rib-cracking and ground-hiting notwithstanding, there were many things that I had to speak the truth of, and then say to the M.S., "I owe you for that one. Thank you."

They were hard, and painful, life-changing moments. Life-changing to the point of "The life that was... is over." Over as "over" gets. As "over" as death gets.  And yet, I had to be just as honest as to say... "I owe you for that one. Thank you."

Changes that needed to be made. Really really really needed to be made... that very well might never have been made were it not for The Disease; and the roads that I was on (that it removed me from) could very well have ended very, very, badly. Changes that I needed to face. To "cop to." To make.

I am not yet able to say "thank you" for everything that has come to me through The Disease; as Corrie Ten Boom quotes her sister Betsie in her book The Hiding Place, to "thank God even for fleas." Oh, there's quite the list of bodily mis/mal/odd-functions that have definitely not (yet) brought me any spiritual enlightenment, any spiritual... anything. But some of the biggest, nastiest, most difficult-to-face life-that-I-was-so-attached-to changes were indeed the most important to make... and for that, my tweaked nervous system and whatever else got tweaked by the M.S. Highway, I have to say...

I owe you. Thank you for bringing me to meet that change, to make that change.

And now... now, I can even extend love to my M.S. At least... a little.

Deepak is right. We feel better having love extended to us. What goes around, comes around, right?

Payback isn't always a bitch.