Who Knew There Were So Many Shades of Blue?

 

24 November, 20204

I wrote some time ago that “hope is like the ocean.” It ebbs and flows according to way it’s driven, and when the tide goes out … boom. Mood crashes. Energy crashes. The mind dives into a zone where no one wants to be, and takes the body with it. In that place, all one wants to do is escape, but somehow, the traveler has lost the path, those tall gates are all locked, and who knows where the keys were hidden?

If I were talking about myself, it would be bad enough, but I’m not. After all we’ve been through, yesterday was the first time I’ve seen Dave spin into a place with which I’m all too familiar. And frankly, I have a bone to pick with “the system,” both medical and social services.

These last days have been ghastly: a blizzard of paperwork to be completed for the insurance company and also for Centrelink. There’s no way around this, if you need Disability, and if you want to claim the insurance settlement that will, frankly, save your life in the coming years. But I must wonder if insurance companies and government realize (or care) about the psychological beating all this deals to the victim of MND, and the family.

You come out of the process exhausted, depressed, strung out. Driven to the end of your rope and then whipped to go further, further, when you can’t. You have nothing more to give, but they keep demanding. Energy levels plummet. Mood zooms down and down. Suddenly, one is utterly convinced that it’s all over; the only thing left is to choose and box and dig the hole. Hope has fled.

Cruelty wears many faces, and some are disguised as help. There’s no doubt that doctors would regard the dark dimension as “Coming to grips with reality,” because in their knowledge, MND is a death sentence and that’s the end of it. I don’t dispute that. Rather, the questions I’m asking are these: “How *long* does the patient have? How do doctors and social services imagine horrible emotional experiences affect the brain and its ability to maintain or even heal itself? How much time, in days, weeks, months, does each of these awful experiences subtract from the patient’s remaining life?”

Because as I’ve said elsewhere, thoughts make molecules. Molecules make things. Motor neurons are things. Fact: the brain can manufacture its own opioids. True. Also fact: the brain can produce such toxic chemistry, we make ourselves sick. Trust me: I’m a master in this art after decades of practice.

The brain is a strange place that can destroy itself with chemistry gone haywire. But I have to wonder … if chemistry can (and does) turn to chaos, what happens when one decides to draw a line in the sand and say, “Enough!” No more chaos. No more dark dimension. Even plants are smart enough to turn to the light. Why can’t humans do such a simple thing?

Light, hope, rising energy levels, better mood ― all this affects brain chemistry. If fact, all of this actually *is* brain chemistry. And of course, at the root of MND is the “chemistry gone wrong” factor: a broken chemical pathway that began with adenosine and ended with inosine. In healthy people, the pathway is unbroken. In Dave’s brain, a couple of steps are missing with the end result that motor neurons perish.

I suppose what I’m wondering is this: if you take a brain where the chemistry has already gone wrong, then you harass it into the darkness, what does this do to life expectancy? I’d be shocked if there were any data, and it’d cost five million and take a decade to do a study. But I’m prepared to bet the agonized bedlam of emotional turmoil does real, physical damage that translates into time stolen from the patient.

Less than 24 hours after all this (we spent the morning at Centrelink … it was as dreadful as I’d expected), Dave is still “down.” The usual Kriya, Qigong and nutrition only lifted him 30% out of the doldrums. He should be feeling great now, but he’s not. Not even halfway. And I’m furious that the system has the right to do this to a man who’s already wrestling with the worst diagnosis in the world.

Not good enough. Time to make good molecules ― help the brain to help itself. It has the capacity to do this, if it’s allowed to, which is why we get good days and bad days. The body is the mind’s most loyal servant. It goes where the mind tells it to go. Tell the body to dive into hell, and it will. Now, what about if the mind tells the body to climb back into the light? How far can it climb? How long can it stay, basking in the light?

And to this end, Dave’s first acupuncture session is two hours away. In closing, let me add my profound thanks to Mike for supporting us through this. Honestly, we wouldn’t be holding it together if it weren’t for you!