Not in My Stars

Progressing.

Not how I usually describe chronic disease. I don’t think I have used that adjective in any of my previous posts but memory is unreliable. Always, it plays to audience.

Over the last six months I have met with different specialists for different views and all have returned the same label: progressing. Yesterday, I met with my primary care physician to sort what will not be sorted.

Numbness/tingling flows through every finger and both thumbs, day and night. My arms are heavy with hands that will not wake. Spinal cord nerves once compressed still have no response three years later. Not all signals have a lifetime guarantee.

Autoimmune disease batters its way through my body, unstoppable in its march through my body’s moisture glands, currently my digestive system, and in ways yet to be specified, other organs.

This is not the way I usually write about chronic disease but sometimes, it stills me. First-hand experience with impermanence is its own kind of awe. Impermeable. And still I resist, knowing it’s like trying to touch the wind.

Over decades, it’s become more curiosity than resistance, this observing what will not be healed in me. It’s not easy for physicians, unable to fix or to dispense but that light is not in my stars and maybe never was.

As I told my primary care physician, I tend to the impossible–always have–usually in spectacular failure but even so, voila! I have learned not to label results but to let the story reveal itself.

Progressing, yes?

Aim for Even posts offer equanimity a dose at a time. No day or dose is ever the same, even if the aim is. You may read about the origins of Aim for Even here or on this site’s About page.