Maybe the problem is with Tuesdays.
I can go back and check easily enough, look through my records, do some research of my own. The doctor's have their theories, I can have mine as well.
What if my confusion comes mainly on Tuesdays? What would this mean? Would it mean, perhaps, that there is nothing wrong with me, but something wrong with Tuesday.
What about Tuesday would cause pseudoneurological symptoms of clumsiness and confusion? Could it be somehow astrological, the positions of the planets, the attitude of the moon? Surely there is something to this, for they have been talking about it since the beginning of time. Is it really just witchery and superstition, or is it the foundation of science itself?
Am I grasping at straws here, or are the straws grasping at me?
I suppose the critical test would be to somehow find whether everyone is affected in a like manner by Tuesday--in which case, were this to be a positive finding, we would have not only a scientific curiosity on our hands, but an actual conspiracy--though the identity of the conspirator will remain an enigma.
But I guess nothing is ever this simple. A more likely scenario would be that different people are affected by different days--depending upon the shape of the cosmos and ones particular relation to it that is. For instance, a person born in August may be more sensitive to Thursday, May to Sunday, and so on.
My day is Tuesday, or rather I am its. Every Tuesday I am stricken with cognitive disorder, memory loss, general confusion and clumsiness--all very easily mistaken, admittedly, for symptoms of multiple sclerosis. But that's how it goes with medical disorders. You give something a name, and so it is known. My dog, for example, used to be just another Labrador before we bought him, now he is Smoky, a family member.
Tuesday-itis, that's what I call it. Cut the day from the week, and I'd be just fine.
Visits
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Monday, March 9, 2009
Global Warming
Well I swear, if we get any more of this global warming here in Oregon, we're all going to freeze to death. Or did I miss a month? Has my mentation gotten that bad? I was thinking it was March, but here it is snowing like January outside.
This sort of event, more evocative of global freezing, seems a stroke of particularly bad luck for Al Gore's theory of melting ice caps, parched dust bowls, the earth turning upside down, and such-like. Frankly, I'm so tired of snow and sleet, bone chilling winds and frigid nights, that I say bring it on, Al, and get a move on! Even though we might end up extinct, at least we'd be warm along the way.
What's better--a short life in the tropics, or a long life in an igloo?
It so happens in life that we often appreciate the face of the moment and miss the aspect of the eon. Catastrophe wears the mask of illusion right up to the moment of revelation. Poor Al finds himself in the place of Noah, a modern day visionary turned laughingstock by the overwhelming illusion of the moment.
For when they say, "Peace and safety!" then sudden destruction comes upon them, as labor pains upon a pregnant woman.
In this same manner, I sometimes decide that I do not have multiple sclerosis at all. For I feel just fine, you see--especially since going off Avonex, the treatment having been worse than the disease. I mean, sure, something happened a couple of times over the last couple of years. The evidence resides in my legs, in my stumbling gait, in a permanent confusion of thought and a stubborn companionship of baseline fatigue. But maybe that's it, that's all she wrote. Why go back on medication, why bear the burden of those excessive costs, why presume the worst case scenario for the future rather than the best?
And yet the apostle Paul, as quoted above, spoke of the persuasiveness of illusion in the face of the inevitable reality. Shall I believe in what seems most convenient. Is the man of faith wise, or merely callow?
(more)
This sort of event, more evocative of global freezing, seems a stroke of particularly bad luck for Al Gore's theory of melting ice caps, parched dust bowls, the earth turning upside down, and such-like. Frankly, I'm so tired of snow and sleet, bone chilling winds and frigid nights, that I say bring it on, Al, and get a move on! Even though we might end up extinct, at least we'd be warm along the way.
What's better--a short life in the tropics, or a long life in an igloo?
It so happens in life that we often appreciate the face of the moment and miss the aspect of the eon. Catastrophe wears the mask of illusion right up to the moment of revelation. Poor Al finds himself in the place of Noah, a modern day visionary turned laughingstock by the overwhelming illusion of the moment.
For when they say, "Peace and safety!" then sudden destruction comes upon them, as labor pains upon a pregnant woman.
In this same manner, I sometimes decide that I do not have multiple sclerosis at all. For I feel just fine, you see--especially since going off Avonex, the treatment having been worse than the disease. I mean, sure, something happened a couple of times over the last couple of years. The evidence resides in my legs, in my stumbling gait, in a permanent confusion of thought and a stubborn companionship of baseline fatigue. But maybe that's it, that's all she wrote. Why go back on medication, why bear the burden of those excessive costs, why presume the worst case scenario for the future rather than the best?
And yet the apostle Paul, as quoted above, spoke of the persuasiveness of illusion in the face of the inevitable reality. Shall I believe in what seems most convenient. Is the man of faith wise, or merely callow?
(more)
Thursday, March 5, 2009
Pasteboard Masks, III
In Auschwitz during World War II certain Nazi "doctors" performed an experiment on an unwilling subject supposedly designed to measure the effects of progressive brain damage. Ultimately what was revealed, as in all such Nazi efforts, was the experimenters' own identity as members of an inferior race.
In any case, their study involved banging a young man over the head with a hammer two or three times, and then standing back to watch what he would do. Having cataloged the effects, they would then repeat the sequence, taking aim, bringing down the hammer, stepping back to observe.
Soon the young man began to go blind. He continued to struggle at his tormenter's command, trying to walk, turn to the left, turn to the right, pick up an object. He had, after all, no other choice than to be as cooperative a patient as possible.
This horror was actually filmed, for the future glory of science no doubt. I myself have seen the film, and it has haunted me ever since.
Now did the young man's personality change as well? Did the doctor's take aim at the personality chamber in the brain? Then again, this was not likely a goal of the exercise. What was the goal? No more than a perverse amusement, I would guess. A pastime of evil.
We have all seen cartoons wherein a character will be knocked silly by a blow on the head, then smacked again so as to return him to normal. But we know now beyond a doubt, thanks to those Nazi doctors, that this is not the way it works.
Damage to the brain, to the spinal cord as a result of MS becomes manifest quite clearly in the physical realm. It may affect sensation, it may affect gait, it may affect muscle tone, it may affect cognition, and all of this is perfectly observable.
But what about the personality, that which cannot be objectively observed.
What we can say with assurance is that personality change is a product of experience, a response to a change in personal reality. Because our circumstances have changed, our viewpoint changes also in order to comprehend what is new. We describe ourselves according to who we seem to be at any given time. Jupiter is suddenly more like Mercury.
And yet, is our response really the same as personality, or is it personality that determines the nature of our response?
I have seen the gamut of reaction to MS in the past few years--ranging, person to person, from anger to insult, from malaise and depression to inspiration and enlivenment. I have seen growth toward faith and bitterness toward death.
Far from being damaged, it would almost seem that personality becomes activated, charged. It stands at attention, opens its eyes, searches both self and heavens. It becomes, in short, as overactive as the hay wired autoimmune system.
I think that it does not change, so much as it invites us to truly become. Here is the perfect moment to grow. Adversity is playing its catalyst role. Therefore, seize the day, and reap the riches disease has unveiled.
In any case, their study involved banging a young man over the head with a hammer two or three times, and then standing back to watch what he would do. Having cataloged the effects, they would then repeat the sequence, taking aim, bringing down the hammer, stepping back to observe.
Soon the young man began to go blind. He continued to struggle at his tormenter's command, trying to walk, turn to the left, turn to the right, pick up an object. He had, after all, no other choice than to be as cooperative a patient as possible.
This horror was actually filmed, for the future glory of science no doubt. I myself have seen the film, and it has haunted me ever since.
Now did the young man's personality change as well? Did the doctor's take aim at the personality chamber in the brain? Then again, this was not likely a goal of the exercise. What was the goal? No more than a perverse amusement, I would guess. A pastime of evil.
We have all seen cartoons wherein a character will be knocked silly by a blow on the head, then smacked again so as to return him to normal. But we know now beyond a doubt, thanks to those Nazi doctors, that this is not the way it works.
Damage to the brain, to the spinal cord as a result of MS becomes manifest quite clearly in the physical realm. It may affect sensation, it may affect gait, it may affect muscle tone, it may affect cognition, and all of this is perfectly observable.
But what about the personality, that which cannot be objectively observed.
What we can say with assurance is that personality change is a product of experience, a response to a change in personal reality. Because our circumstances have changed, our viewpoint changes also in order to comprehend what is new. We describe ourselves according to who we seem to be at any given time. Jupiter is suddenly more like Mercury.
And yet, is our response really the same as personality, or is it personality that determines the nature of our response?
I have seen the gamut of reaction to MS in the past few years--ranging, person to person, from anger to insult, from malaise and depression to inspiration and enlivenment. I have seen growth toward faith and bitterness toward death.
Far from being damaged, it would almost seem that personality becomes activated, charged. It stands at attention, opens its eyes, searches both self and heavens. It becomes, in short, as overactive as the hay wired autoimmune system.
I think that it does not change, so much as it invites us to truly become. Here is the perfect moment to grow. Adversity is playing its catalyst role. Therefore, seize the day, and reap the riches disease has unveiled.
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
Pasteboard Masks, II
Assuming there is such a thing as a baseline personality for each individual, can the very existence of nerve damage, in and of itself, with no qualifying factors added, cause a change in the same?
I suppose that any compromise to the integrity of a thing is likely enough to alter in some way the essential nature of what it is, how it works--a loose spark plug in a car engine, a lamp cord that has a short, a book from which a page is missing. It would be, of course, a matter of degree, and the deficit may fall anywhere between insignificant and catastrophic.
Consider, for instance, the case of a missing tile on the space shuttle. Consider a rocket engine part that malfunctions at 10,000 feet in the air.
Then again, consider the missing page. Lets say that it is missing from ones copy of War And Peace. Such a thing might be a frustrating discovery, and yet not something likely to cause a complete collapse, a critical error in the integrity of a 2000 page plot and theme.
Where has MS happened to strike? Where has the damage occurred? In a hunk of gray matter that wasn't doing much of anything anyway, or in that other hunk that just happens to move your legs, wiggle your fingers, maintain your left eye?
Is there a place in the brain that maintains and monitors personality, some sort of neuro-electrical gaggle and gear-work of tissue and nerve, synapse and conduction that conveys who we are, not only to ourselves, but to the world at large?
Is this where the soul is too? Shall we say that the soul is nothing more than a conspiracy of anatomical tissue and blood, molecules and neurons, the trickery of electronic activity? People mistake lights in the sky for UFOs all the time, and yet these are found, again and again, to be nothing other than weather balloons or flocks of birds.
In short then, is personality a matter of spirit, or of flesh?
(more to come in part III)
I suppose that any compromise to the integrity of a thing is likely enough to alter in some way the essential nature of what it is, how it works--a loose spark plug in a car engine, a lamp cord that has a short, a book from which a page is missing. It would be, of course, a matter of degree, and the deficit may fall anywhere between insignificant and catastrophic.
Consider, for instance, the case of a missing tile on the space shuttle. Consider a rocket engine part that malfunctions at 10,000 feet in the air.
Then again, consider the missing page. Lets say that it is missing from ones copy of War And Peace. Such a thing might be a frustrating discovery, and yet not something likely to cause a complete collapse, a critical error in the integrity of a 2000 page plot and theme.
Where has MS happened to strike? Where has the damage occurred? In a hunk of gray matter that wasn't doing much of anything anyway, or in that other hunk that just happens to move your legs, wiggle your fingers, maintain your left eye?
Is there a place in the brain that maintains and monitors personality, some sort of neuro-electrical gaggle and gear-work of tissue and nerve, synapse and conduction that conveys who we are, not only to ourselves, but to the world at large?
Is this where the soul is too? Shall we say that the soul is nothing more than a conspiracy of anatomical tissue and blood, molecules and neurons, the trickery of electronic activity? People mistake lights in the sky for UFOs all the time, and yet these are found, again and again, to be nothing other than weather balloons or flocks of birds.
In short then, is personality a matter of spirit, or of flesh?
(more to come in part III)
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
Pasteboard Masks, I
What is man that You are mindful of him
Psalms 8:4
I've been reading lately, in communities here as well as in other media (remember 'books'?) about the so called personality changes which may or may not take place in a person with multiple sclerosis. It is certainly a subject which, if nothing else, resists unambiguous conclusions.
I guess the most effective way to approach the question would be through the evaluation of another person, well known to the examiner on a long term basis, both before and after MS.
Unfortunately, no such person is available to me.
I turn therefore to myself--an interrogation more likely to cast shadows than light.
Walker Percy once wrote an essay about self knowledge in which he posited a scenario wherein a certain man is reading through his horoscope, and the more he reads, the more he thinks Yeah, that really is just like me. Of course, the punchline is that he ultimately discovers he is reading the wrong zodiac sign. He is reading Capricorn, not Leo. The man turns, therefore, to the proper sign and, well, how about that, this one is just like him as well!
So who are we to begin with? That's the first problem. What are we like, how can we accurately describe personality?
Percy went on to describe all the things an observer may be able to objectively state about the planet Jupiter by looking through a telescope, observing the atmosphere, counting moons, appreciating the chemical composition, the data of astronomy. And yet faced with himself, the man may as well be like Virgo or Taurus, Aquarius or Sagittarius. In short, he knows more of a certainty about a planet over 500 million miles from earth than he can confidently say about himself.
If MS has changed us, therefore, what exactly has it changed us from, and what to?
It occurs to me also that those of us who appear most stable on the outside may actually be the least stable on the inside. Jupiter, for instance, would appear to be a big, solid, mass in orbit, and yet we are really not seeing Jupiter at all, but merely its atmosphere. It is a sort of physical facade.
Hark ye yet again--the little lower layer. All visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks.
Or so said Captain Ahab in Melville's Moby Dick.
How many white whales out there? One alone, or one for each member of the crew, one for each episode in the voyage of life?
I am Hyde, and Jekyll too. But how do I parse out the interplay?
I guess my point is this (yes, I have to guess my own point!): It is difficult enough to lay a finger upon personality to begin with, much less say whether a medical condition can change it.
(more to come in part 2)
Psalms 8:4
I've been reading lately, in communities here as well as in other media (remember 'books'?) about the so called personality changes which may or may not take place in a person with multiple sclerosis. It is certainly a subject which, if nothing else, resists unambiguous conclusions.
I guess the most effective way to approach the question would be through the evaluation of another person, well known to the examiner on a long term basis, both before and after MS.
Unfortunately, no such person is available to me.
I turn therefore to myself--an interrogation more likely to cast shadows than light.
Walker Percy once wrote an essay about self knowledge in which he posited a scenario wherein a certain man is reading through his horoscope, and the more he reads, the more he thinks Yeah, that really is just like me. Of course, the punchline is that he ultimately discovers he is reading the wrong zodiac sign. He is reading Capricorn, not Leo. The man turns, therefore, to the proper sign and, well, how about that, this one is just like him as well!
So who are we to begin with? That's the first problem. What are we like, how can we accurately describe personality?
Percy went on to describe all the things an observer may be able to objectively state about the planet Jupiter by looking through a telescope, observing the atmosphere, counting moons, appreciating the chemical composition, the data of astronomy. And yet faced with himself, the man may as well be like Virgo or Taurus, Aquarius or Sagittarius. In short, he knows more of a certainty about a planet over 500 million miles from earth than he can confidently say about himself.
If MS has changed us, therefore, what exactly has it changed us from, and what to?
It occurs to me also that those of us who appear most stable on the outside may actually be the least stable on the inside. Jupiter, for instance, would appear to be a big, solid, mass in orbit, and yet we are really not seeing Jupiter at all, but merely its atmosphere. It is a sort of physical facade.
Hark ye yet again--the little lower layer. All visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks.
Or so said Captain Ahab in Melville's Moby Dick.
How many white whales out there? One alone, or one for each member of the crew, one for each episode in the voyage of life?
I am Hyde, and Jekyll too. But how do I parse out the interplay?
I guess my point is this (yes, I have to guess my own point!): It is difficult enough to lay a finger upon personality to begin with, much less say whether a medical condition can change it.
(more to come in part 2)
Confused and Disoriented--Status Quo
I am once again experiencing a day of confusion and disorientation--a step above the usual, that is. I always find myself thinking that something must have triggered this. What did I do, or fail to do? No enough freshly squeezed fish oil lately? Did I forget my vitamin D? Did I sleep too long? Not long enough? Is this going to be permanent, or will my brain return tomorrow?
But I suppose it's just MS. I suppose I'm just feeling the lesions today, falling into the holes.
I become aware that I need to watch myself from here on out for the day. I have already driven around in circles, passed the places I was supposed to go, forgotten the errands I was supposed to do. Just five minutes ago I left my wallet sitting on the table at Starbucks while I went outside for a cigarette. Good thing the world is so full of honest people. Or blind people. Whichever is the case.
The frustrating thing is that the day itself becomes a waste of time. I had big plans this morning, but it has now become apparent that accomplishing the simplest of things is going to be a significant challenge in itself. And it's going to take two or three times as long as it should, given the time my brain insists of devoting to staring into space.
There seems no other option than to surrender this one to the abyss, reserve my energy for tomorrow, go home, take a nap.
But I suppose it's just MS. I suppose I'm just feeling the lesions today, falling into the holes.
I become aware that I need to watch myself from here on out for the day. I have already driven around in circles, passed the places I was supposed to go, forgotten the errands I was supposed to do. Just five minutes ago I left my wallet sitting on the table at Starbucks while I went outside for a cigarette. Good thing the world is so full of honest people. Or blind people. Whichever is the case.
The frustrating thing is that the day itself becomes a waste of time. I had big plans this morning, but it has now become apparent that accomplishing the simplest of things is going to be a significant challenge in itself. And it's going to take two or three times as long as it should, given the time my brain insists of devoting to staring into space.
There seems no other option than to surrender this one to the abyss, reserve my energy for tomorrow, go home, take a nap.
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