A small moment of clarity.

[Guest guest]

What Mike's first couple of posts did for me was something like being

whacked by a Zen master. Woke me up, in other words. What I discovered was....

...when I started seeking treatment for EDS, I promised myself I would

remain objective about professional medicine. I didn't.

...I had during these past few years crossed the line into thinking

medicine was the only answer, I think partly because they had remarkable success

with my brain chemistry (something I hadn't even been looking for). But that's

the only success. Unfortunately, every other medical field has repeatedly told

me there was nothing much they could do. I revisit them when something new

goes wrong, but hear the same thing over and over.

... " What I tell you three times is true. " So eventually I seem to have

decided there was nothing I could do, either. In adapting to disabled life, I

gave up looking for -- well, not cures, but even the possibility of

improvement.

Of course, it's possible I really don't have any chance of improving

things, and I'm simply on a fool's errand. Being a fool's not stopped me before,

though (sometimes there are advantages), and I don't like that I gave up hope.

What to do becomes the question. Before I was diagnosed, I had tried

several approaches including chiropractic and shiatsu, almost all aggressive

techniques I wouldn't try now. Since andropause, when the symptoms really hit

me,

the only things I've tried are meditative. These sometimes help me cope with

the pain, but don't seem to help the pain itself. Could be I'm not trying hard

enough (which seems oxymoronic when combined with meditation, but never mind,

so to speak), and I've resolved to do better.

So apart from avoiding treatments I know can cause added problems, I'm

kind of stuck with an educated trial-and-error approach, trying various fields

and practitioners until I find a combination that helps. I know that's stating

the obvious, but I can overlook the obvious far too easily. Besides, I write

to help figure these things out. I'm finding it curiously difficult to

actually try anything outside of normal medical fields. I've spent far too much

time

having to defend myself scientifically.

Right. So do something already...

Thanks for listening.