Over the longer term I'd expected something similar, since my initial results up to a year in were positive. It was not to be, for many reasons I'm sure. In spite of that I continue to believe this was a good thing for me. I wouldn't have missed it for anything.
I have been remembering all the things I used to do. The last biggie was tiling a wall behind a wood-stove, with huge ceramic tiles. That was before I stopped going to work. Of course, I could still also drive, walk, and play guitar, none of which came back after my procedure, even in the short term.
I built a front porch for our old house. It will be there after the house is gone. Recently I watched workmen reassemble a seven by ten foot set of shelves I built out of three quarter inch oak veneered plywood. It housed a couple thousand 78 records my dad collected.
These are some.
They marveled at how straight and square it fit together, so I told them I had used a square and a long straight edge clamped to a ten foot Formica table. But I had only had a hand-held circular saw to make all those cuts. It was enough.
I have been in decline again, since last year. I am afraid it's soon back to the full-time wheelchair for me. I will continue to fight with anything I still have left until I die, because this procedure could be helping millions. Right now dollars and egos prevent it. But many are working to improve it, and maybe the next generation will fare better than I did.
There was a piece on the radio yesterday about a doctor's recent book which says the science of medicine is mired in commercial concerns. He says that people are not getting the best treatments because all it takes to go to market with a new drug is a comparison to placebo. Once a drug hits the market there is no incentive to spend more to compare treatments.
Billions are spent on research. Someone benefits, but the forward progress of common knowledge does not. Only the most successful trials are reported. Drugs are tested on the cheapest subjects available who often have very different genetic backgrounds than the target market, because ethics and money prevent the trials being run anywhere else. That is not science. It may be economics only.
Today I read a piece by Anne Kingston in Maclean's magazine. It's not CCSVI this time. It says children born after the
father reaches middle age have a much higher incidence of "de-novo" genetic problems (new to the family tree).
So, realistically, since my son was born when I was 40, he may get "MS"... Epigenetics might say, depending if he "lives right", he has a better chance of not having this problem. Nature or nurture? I hope he is healthy all his life. I hope he never needs a procedure.
This unit of entertainment not brought to you by FREMULON.
Not a doctor.
"I'm still here, how 'bout that? I may have lost my lunchbox, but I'm still here." John Cowan Hartford (December 30, 1937 – June 4, 2001)
