Shadows on the Brain

"A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is braver five minutes longer." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

My mother hates aging.  It's been a constant source of stress for her as long as I can remember.  Dreading every birthday, every milestone, never willing to raise her head up from what's passed to what's been achieved.  No amount of positive reinforcement or attempts at support have been able to change this.  It's not a condemnation, merely an observation of her tenacious hold on this perspective.

Now that I'm traveling the middle of my own road the latter half of the journey looms before me in a dark nebulous fog, obscuring the final destination.  I find my thoughts turning to subjects that a couple of decades ago were as foreign to me as calculus remains to this day.  I am at times frustrated and betrayed by my body, dislike the grey hair and everything I want to do requires extra effort or additional consideration now.  It's plain and true that I do not have the stamina I once did.  This isn't a lamentation of grief or regret, merely acceptance of where I am.

The truth is that I like my age, I prefer the "now" to the "then" and try not to worry about what the "might be."  Though admittedly, I wouldn't mind having this brain in my 20 year old self but then that's the price of wisdom I guess.  Obviously health is a concern, things I totally took for granted a lifetime ago now sit next to me on the couch and patiently wait their turn for my attention.

Several weeks ago I had numbness in my left arm that spread to my face.  I waited only slightly longer than the average person before quietly making my home arrangements and driving myself to the hospital.  I won't go into my overall opinions on the level of care I received except to say I had my boys on medevac on standby to come and get me if my CT scan showed anything on it at all.  Fortunately it was not heart or stroke - related.  The most likely culprit is a pinched nerve in my neck (the result of carrying a heart monitor over my left shoulder for the last 20 years) and I was sent home, to follow up with a MRI of the brain and neck.  Not the most fun experience in the world but certainly nothing horrendous.  Then we get the results ...

I have some mildly bulging discs in my neck, changes in my lifting habits and possibly a chiropractor should take care of that.  The brain MRI however, was not completely negative as expected.  There are "changes in the white matter that are normally associated with microvascular disease and are atypical in a patient of this age." 

And there ... just like that I went from feeling ok about where I am to utter terror.  One of my basest fears is that I will become trapped in my body or that what makes me who I am will erode, that a day will come where I do not recognize my children or remember all the wonderful things of my life any longer.

You know what changes white matter?  MS (multiple sclerosis), Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, a dozen different dementias that have pointless names and the same horrible end result.  I've spent a good portion of my career caring for the gibbering wraiths that are the defenseless victims of this eroding process.  The mere prospect of subjecting my family to the same thing is a horror that devastates me and brings fear where there was none.

Chances are good that it is artifact on the MRI and not indicative of anything of significance.  However while I am idealistic, blind optimism is not my forte and to be honest, there's no point in pretending I'm not scared.  I just need to go and hear what the neurologist has to say, do whatever other tests he may want and take it from there.  Hopefully it will be just artifact and life will go on as it is and I will be able to face the rest of my journey will my faculties intact.

There's a whole lot of other stuff happening around here but that what was on my mind.  Ha ha ha.