Happy Birthday To Me

Heard a snippet of medical news on NPR this morning. It seems that a stem cell treatment has been approved for phase 1 treatment of patients with spinal cord injuries, although there are only 10 in this first group.

The treatment has been shown, in animals, to permanently repair scar tissue on the nerve and restore lost function.

Naturally MS comes to mind, since fried nerve tissue is our issue too, but of course repairing the damage already done would not preclude subsequent attacks and new damage.

So I guess maybe this in combination with a way to stop the occurrence of new attacks would be the key.

It is, nonetheless, encouraging news. I do believe that by the time most of us are dead, MS will be a thing of the past. (Actually, given the logic of this last sentence, I can say it will be so with perfect accuracy).

Today is my birthday. For those of you who feel like celebrating, go out and have a whiskey or two on me. Send the bill to the National MS Society.

I am 55 years old. I love almost everything about being 55. I could do without the MS and the MS treatments, and the cognitive deficits, and the MRIs, and the excessive financial stress, and the overwhelming fatigue, and the spastic muscles, and such-like--but otherwise, everything is Jim Dandy.

For All That It Matters

Today is my brother's birthday. He would have been 57. He died 27 years ago of cancer. That's a long time ago. Yet almost like yesterday. So defined is he now by death, that I cannot imagine him being alive at 57. It just does not fit. It seems somehow not so sad as proper. And I think he's happy this way. What is a birthday in the aspect of eternity? Such things are for worldly amusement only, and do not translate beyond time's circumstantial kingdom.