Pains! My body's got me chock full of pains!

And it ain't the kind that you can see, woh.  So I borrow from the Beatles (OK, Carole King and Gerry Goffin wrote it) from Please Please Me 1963.  It's one of those "I'm not going to sleep tonight" nights so I might as well talk to you.  Busy Saturday as I did lawn work, which means mow the half the area of the yard where grass still exists, and then tomorrow go over the weeds, plants, and other things that have taken over the other half in the heat and drought. And dirt. Just plan dirt and sand.  I've tried to help out by building a small temple.  It takes a little time.

You may see both a Christian and Buddhist motif here.

I just sort of keep adding to it, and the more stones there are, the less mowing there is, which will eventually become a real boon as I'm slowing down enough that sometime soon, not for a few years yet, but its coming.. the day when I won't be able to work in the yard, even something as quietly enjoyable as weeding.  That's my prayer time.  I can move prayer time to anytime, I guess, but there's just something about being surrounded by plants and a gentle breeze is flitting by on a coolish summer morning that just brings one close to the [fill in your version, if any, here] Spirit.

But back to pain, which Buddha warned about (everyone suffers).  This coming Wednesday my doctor is going to work on the lower part of my back to assure that it might just be pulled muscles from overuse, and not the lesions spreading their army.  I've written about the invading pain army before, and it appears that tonight, as I was lying in bed, a new army arrived from Pain Headquarters and took up the right flank.  This new army then attacked.....

See where this dude has his right hand? Right through there and down the right leg, tingle all the way.  (Thank you, Stockphoto).  No matter how I moved, the army adjusted its plan and moved with me.  After two hours of trying to doze off in any form, here I am at 2:20 AM typing this.  The new army just jostled the other army awake and those guys had been pretty quiet since the afternoon. I admit I probably overdid it when, following ninety minutes of yard work, I headed down to Albany to help my niece move to her new apartment.  This meant lifting tables, chairs and packing them into my SUV along with boxes of books (Hey, is that my copy of Mein Kampf?), non used laptops and Macs, and golf clubs(?) some of which then needed to be stored at our house.  Lots of picking up and moving things from here to over there.

The table was my wife's grandmother's, and it was touching to see that Grammie had written her name on a piece of masking tape and stuck it on the bottom of one of the table leafs ("just in case someone tries to take it before they find my body, you know.").  No worries, Gram.  We've got it right here.

Grammie is Margaret Rider, and she's the lady on the left in this shot from 1998.  The other lady is Jackie's mom and we were attempting to have a happy holiday season right after Jackie's Dad died.  Everyone put up a good front, but the pain on each face is true.  Internal or external pain makes no never mind, it is suffering that we must face and deal with.

Personally, right now I'd sell my William Shatner music collection for some morphine so I could get some freakin' shuteye.

Thank you, Mr. T

One of my secret pleasures is the movie Rocky III.  Right in the middle of the Rocky series, it has Stallone in his greatest roll facing his greatest nemesis, Clubber Lang, played by the one, the only Mr. T:

This Rocky movie continues the pattern of killing off people from the first movie to keep the Champ motivated to pummel his opponents.  Clubber, not in the first two movies, does his part by killing off Apollo Creed (the Ali of this series) and then hitting on Mrs. Rocky (the amazing Talia Shire) before "clubbing" Rocky into submission and winning the championship.

And what was Clubber's prediction?  Pretty much what my doctor said:

Pain. It started down at the bottom of my spine and is moving like an insurgent army up my back and out into the nerve endings and muscles of the sacrum area (lower back).

 Terrible? No, fortunately.  But its like this.  Take the thumb and index finger of one hand and pinch some skin on your opposite arm.  Now keep your finger and thumb doing that all day long. Every day.  Not hard, don't squeeze (unless you're into that) but just imagine that annoyance every minute of your waking life.  You can't walk for more than ten minutes or do much of any activity before it comes on and stays on, fades only when you're asleep.

If it allows you to sleep.  See, the pain army has not only invaded, but its also infiltrating where it can, sending out its agents to new places, like my arms.  And as part of its program, the pain army doesn't just use its favorite tool, but also numbness and that general uncomfortable feeling, like when your foot falls asleep after the tingly feeling goes away.  There is no place to put my arms that they don't feel that way, making sleep an impossibility.  I am grateful for Hulu on those nights.

Again I know there are many people who have more severe pain problems than I can probably imagine.  My heart goes out to all of you.  But I also know that MS can do what it wants when it wants, especially in Primary Progressive MS where we really don't have much in the way of drugs aside from aspirin.  My primary doctor and I are going to look at some osteopathic possibilities.  Not that this is the be all and end all.  If the lesions in my brain are causing this, then that's that.  But maybe, maybe we can make it a little better.  In the world of fog that most MSers live in, a chance to focus outside of ourselves for a few more moments each day benefits everyone.

I'm not sure who the general of the army is that's invading my body, but I've got an idea its a very very teeny tiny version of ....

There's more pain to come!

Thanks for reading.  And thank you Mr. T. I pity the fool with MS!