Yeah, Don't Bother

Well, some of you out there are going to be getting sick of these continual MS entries. But hey, it intrudes, it speaks, it insists. And, after all, the original inception of this blog had to do with MS anyway.

So, what's the pleasant news for today. My arms and legs are extremely weak. My fingers don't work - a disastrous circumstance for a writer. I'm practically hunting and pecking these days. Takes me four hours to do two hours of work.

One tends to think that after he has surrendered and gone to the doctor, he will simply get some medicine and that will be that. All well again.

Not so.

I don't really remember how long it took me to recover from my attack back in 2007. I do remember, however, now that I think of it, that I was still having difficulties in February 2010. Not encouraging. I remember my old friend, Vick, giving me his arm to help me up and down stairs. So, yeah.

No magic meds.

Just a long road.

Can't Wait

Actually looking forward to returning to the doctor on Friday. Just like old times. Lots of questions. Seeking answers. I guess I had forgotten how long it takes to recover from these relapses. I mean, I'm ready right now. But the truth is, I feel lousy. I feel very weak now in my arms and legs. Just limp. Coordination is fucked. Takes me hours to type what used to take minutes. Every other letter is wrong. Fingers poking about the keyboard like mindless worms. And in the meantime, I have work to do.

Well, the good news is, though, that I'm enjoying my wife's 'sunshine regime' in the chaise lounge in our backyard. Just like sticking yourself into an oven. Lie there as long as I can bear it, then jump into a cold shower. If I didn't have things I was supposed to be doing, it wouldn't be so bad.

What Illness Reveals

I have always thought that what is most miraculous in the healthy human organism is most distinctly revealed in the aberrations of illness.

"I am fearfully and wonderfully made," David said;
"your works are wonderful,
I know that full well.
My frame was not hidden from you
when I was made in the secret place.
When I was woven together in the depths of the earth,
your eyes saw my unformed body.
All the days ordained for me
were written in your book
before one of them came to be."

Quiet Time

When you are ill and laid up, you see the things that are always there, those things that you have not seen before with precision or even interest. They are the passing things, of no account. Clouds in their courses, the eye of the sun, now blinded, now piercing. You see the leaves on the small tree that was no more than a stick 6 months ago, now blooming, stretching prayerful palms to the nearest... heaven, breathing and breathed. A dragon fly sits on your knee, not knowing any better, and for once he is right. He seems to mean something. Everything, the smallest thing, seems to mean something. The mind of the breeze crosses arms on your chest, and then surrenders again to the incomparable sun, as much a component of your skin as of the heavens.

The Latest Curative Measures

My sweet, well-intentioned wife has decided that the way to cure my MS symptoms is for me to get LOTS of sun. Bali sun, that is. A cut above every other kind of sun. To this end, she bought me a chaise lounge which she has positioned in the backyard, directly under the most intense rays, and I am to lie in this chaise lounge several times a day, as long as humanly able. I may occasionally evacuate the chair for a quick cold shower at reasonable intervals. The demyelinating processes of a defunct autoimmune system  are apparently blasted into submission by violent doses of searing tropical sunlight. Upon completing the regimen for the day, I am to drink spinach juice and aloe vera. Well, who knows? If it don't kill me, it may cure me.

Long Journey

Cabin fever. Climbing walls. Can't take it anymore - disorienting meds or no - I head out on the motorbike to Sanur, Problem is, the thing keeps going sideways. Don't know how many times I ended up driving in the ditch. Oh well, just a bule who don't know how to ride a bike properly. Finally made it to JCO. Never tasted a better coffee. Enjoyed it immensely while reading two newspapers. And then back home through the same roadside ditches. Made it! Don't think I'll try that again. Seven more days of methylprednisolone, five more of clonazepam.

Med Regimen

Wow, these meds are spacing me out. Long time since I've taken strong medications. Methylprednisolone and clonazepam seems to be the worst. Dizzy, disoriented, exhausted, feverish. Well, four more days of this, and then we'll see what happens.

It has been very kind of so many people here to wish me well and to show concern, some of whom I barely know. On the other hand, from my own step children from my second marriage: Nada. Not a solitary word. And I know they've seen this on Facebook. Ah well, as I've said, the best way to find out who your friends are, or who really cares in the least, is to have a sudden health problem. The silence is not only deafening, but, hopefully, instructive for the future.

One never wants to just face these things. One holds on to dear memories, of the years spent caring and enabling and sympathizing and teaching and, yes, paying their way through their young lives and beyond. And for what? One doesn't like the answer, and yet there it is - a slap in the face.

And so it makes me feel lonely -- and not only as if I have failed, but that they have failed as well.