msb-0162 Momentary Lapses

msb-0162 Momentary Lapses

intro

----"Wind Song" by: "Trespass" http://www.trespassband.net/

Feedback comes first, so...

Miss Chris wrote a comment on "msb-0164 Self-diagnosis and other difficulties", (I know that were not there yet on the podcasts, but she was responding to my blog [ http://multiplesclerosisblog.blogspot.com/ ] which has about a week's worth of my scribblings done before I do my 'casts,) in which she was lamenting the general level of ignorance about MS in the "medical profession and even among neurologists".

I think I'll do the casts and let you reach your own conclusions. :-(

---- "Wind" by: "Second Story" http://www.second-story.net/

Feed Forward comes next, so...

This is "your" segment.

Say "your" piece on this segment.

Share with other MSers whatever "you" want to share.

We'll see if that silence remains the same after my ad for MSBPodcast.com appears in "MS Insider" :-)

---- "Vientos del Norte / Northern Winds" by: "Los Dorados" http://www.losdorados.info/

Feed Me comes third, so...

Do you have a therapy, product, good or service that is of interest to MSers?

Consider advertising on this podcast.

Reminders on this segment only cost $0.03 per reminder per download of an episode. (A $30CPM targeted at MSers.)

It can/should lead to a full ad, in text, audio or video, which costs $3.00 per download.

That sounds expensive until you do the math and realize that if nobody downloads it it costs you nothing, unlike print, where you often can't even get an ad in to the specialized journals, or radio or TV where you'd just be wasting your money with the 0.0833% MSers rate of return. (That's about six times "below" the level of "statistical noise".)

But MSBPodcast is 100% in your market, and you only pay per download of your material.

No play, no pay.

Reach the MSers who would buy your therapy, product, good or service, with-out having to waste your advertising money on anyone who is "not" interested...

Send me an email at: charles (at) MSBPodcast.com

---- "Broken Windbreak" by: "Kwyjibo" http://www.acmerecords.com/kwyjibo.php

Main Topic: "Momentary Lapses"

One of the most annoying, and worrisome, and irritating and sometime traumatic aspects of MS is its seemingly mysterious appearance and disappearance from the lives of MSers.

Its a differential calculus where the symptoms are a derivative function in our otherwise algebraic lives.

Its phantom pain and spasticity, (cross-talk and modulation distortion,) caused by the frayed cabling we call our nervous system and by the lesions in our brains.

I was out for dinner yesterday, (Saturday June 9th, 2007) celebrating the graduation of a friend who just received her master's degree. ("'Mazletov' Lizzie!")

When walking back, slowly, from the restaurant to the subway station, I had plenty of time to think about what effect this was having on my mobility.

I mean ... everything worked, my legs are fit, my balance was fine, my muscles are healthy, my bones are all unbroken and unbowed0

So what seems to be the problem? (Why couldn't I just walk at my old pace? [What is it with this slow, plodding, walk? {Its not like there was anything physically wrong... (Yet here I was, staggering under an imaginary weight.)}])

The answer to this dilemma is of course that its a "derivative problem".

I have some lesions in my brain, "in my brain", that interfere with my ability to send the thought ("move me [from here to] there") and turning them into volitional signals ("move the legs in this manner") from my brain to my nervous system.

It also turns out that the brain structure, the, for want of a better term, nerves, affected by scarring ("sclera") also have some incoming effects.

Somewhere between my feet and my consciousness, some nerve signals are now now always reporting that my feet are cold and, uh, ill defined.

Driving now requires me to check the position of my feet every so often to get visual confirmation of their position on the pedals and reinforce my sense of "soma" or body image. They are always where I left them, on the pedals, but I now avoid routes like the "Pulaski Skyway" which require more neural finesse that I feel comfortable mustering up.

---- "Wind Cries the Blues" by: "Teresa James and The Rhythm Tramps" http://www.black-and-tan.com/

Main Topic, part deux:

The severity of the effects, the spasticity and the phantom noise, aren't constant. They depend on the amount of "thermal noise" the nervous system is experiencing.

That's is why we "need" air conditioning. Being in a cold room is a necessity if we're going to have to move around with any speed and/or grace.

And it doesn't stop there.

I remember one MSer I met in Ottawa who was in a real bind. He was forever feeling that he had to go to the bathroom. Even right after going, he felt that he had to go again, or still.

The configuration of his "sclera" was such that he was getting "neural reports" to his consciousness that his bladder was full, even when it couldn't possibly be because he'd just emptied it.

Man ... That must have been "annoying." (I have occasionally experienced the same symptom, but it was usually after a couple of beers or a couple of glasses of wine, so I usually was relaxed enough not to let it get to me as I used the conversation with friends to focus my attention away from my bodily functions.)

---- "When the Winds Die Down" by: "Teresa James and The Rhythm Tramps" http://www.black-and-tan.com/

Outro