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Thursday, May 2, 2013

Carnival of MS Bloggers #140


from Robert at The Gifts of MS

Well, "relapsing/remitting" is one thing, but "fluttering" is another.

There's This Day, just a day like any other, except... my air-quotes "walking" is better. I use the self-propelled wheelchair briefly as a walker (hint to others who might want to try this with their wheelchairs: be sure to lock the wheels. Then, it's just an oddly-shaped walker. With the locks off, it's a face-planter) and things work... not so bad! Not bad at all! I think, is my "walking" getting... better?

Cut to This Other Day, just a day like any other except... my air-quotes "walking" is worse. BANG, it's worse. No creeping-slow-gradual-is-this-maybe-better improvement, it's BANG worse. Fortunately, that's a metaphorical bang, although I've felt that almost any second I was going to hit the ground, it hasn't happened yet. "Yet" is precisely what I'm hoping won't happen, but you never know...

And these changes are day-to-day. Last night was bad, this morning isn't quite as bad, but it's also not quite as good as it has been, sometimes. And this isn't what I think is a relapse/remit pattern, and I'm only guessing because that's never been my experience of The Disease, it's not a multi-day or multi-week vastly better/vastly worse vacillation... It's "Dang, today's better!" followed by "Dang, today's worse!" No rhyme or reason, no "Gee, I did [x] and things worsened, I did [y] and things improved," no visible pattern of causation. Just ... fluttering.

Well, that's life. Some days better, some days worse. Us M.S.ers, we just notice it more than we used to; we think it's happening to us because of The Disease, but it's really just the noticing that's due to The Disease. "Noticing" more clearly is also a side effect of meditation, especially zazen meditation, which is a hard path but one that I'd recommend more enthusiastically than The Disease. Involves fewer M.R.I.s, for one thing.

And a cute pice of synchronicity: A friend of mine sent me a news clip, there's a study going on at the Mayo clinic involving just aspirin! Three groups, one gets placebo, one gets "baby aspirin" dosage, one gets the equivalent of four tablets a day. Well, I don't qualify (I don't have the right "kind" of M.S., I can't do a couple of other things they want someone to be able to do), but I seem already to be on the "some aspirin a day" path, thank you very much musculo-skeletal headaches, and thank you very much Excedrine for putting my favorite brand back on the market because those (for me) have always been better than pretty much anything else I've tried.

So, I'm not being "studied" (as such, at least by the Mayo Clinic), but I'm workin' the same study, kind of, by being between the "high" and "baby aspirin" dosages.

Doesn't really mean anything, statistically speaking, but it does cure my headaches. And really, what part of "makes me feel better" is a bad idea? Well, presuming it causes no "stealth" harm... feeling better is a good idea. Isn't it?

Well, I think so. Besides, thanks to sensitivity gifted us by The Disease, I'm sure I could tell whether I had an active or placebo dosage, which eats into the "blind" part of "double blind" studies. Which means I wouldn't help them, they wouldn't help me. So, I'm staying home and taking my aspirin and wacko Chinese herbs.

And for all of us who navigate the waters of The Disease... how often do we get to say "That's fine by me" and smile?

Well then, let's do it:
That's fine by me!

This concludes the 140th edition of the Carnival.  The next Carnival of MS Bloggers will be hosted here on May 16, 2013. Please remember to submit a post (via email) from your blog of which you are particularly proud, or which you simply want to share, by noon on Tuesday, May 14, 2013.