So as you know I have been an inconsistent blogger recently, I took a break on my recent vacation as I entered into an inquiry with myself regarding my identity…my concern being that I have now been indentified so closely as ” having ALS” that it may be interfering in any opportunity I may have to heal. As I spent my vacation delving into research and reading about “healing beyond the realm of reason”( see Caroline Myss, Defying Gravity) and other alternative ways of looking at my condition; including writings from people who say they have stopped the progression of ALS in their own bodies: I was confronted by the extent to which I have been profoundly resigned about my condition/ALS/diagnosis.

I, who keep saying, “I’m not buying what they are selling…” had indeed bought much more of the farm than I thought I had! My resistance to engage in the thinking required of someone out to alter their cellular environment was shocking to me. The depths of my resignation was undistinguished until I began to shine a light on it with this inquiry. The meditations were difficult as I bumped up against the diagnosis and the label of ALS and wha.t it had come to mean to me. When I was young I used joke and say “Labels!” with a snort of disgust… as if one could capture the essence of someone or someone’s work with a label. PALS or person with ALS, had become a label for me that I found restrictive as I am SOOOO much more than that. Folk singer is to Bob Dylan as PALS is to me; and I found that it interfered with my ability to HOLD A VISION of healing and being complete with this challenge in my life.

I have chosen to look at my situation from a new point of view, as if I had never heard the words incurable/terminal etc and see the possibility of healing newly, with new eyes. Not some woo-woo “Magical Thinking” sort of realm of possibility but in a real live palpable restorative nuitritional spiritual focus of “This shall be!” type of possibility. I am willing to entertain and put my faith in the fact that science doesn’t know everything here, indeed it may be blinded to what’s possible by a limited paradigm. I keep having a vision of a treatment center that combines the latest technological advances like the pacemaker for the diaphram with the alternative treatments of biofeedback assessment, homeopathy, diet, cleanses and removal of mercury/amalgam filings in the mouth etc…as a pathway for treatment for people labeled with ALS. Personally I’d like to try HGH or human growth hormone to see if I can restore some balance and muscle function in my legs and hands. I want to remain independent for as long as possible and infact work to regain what I’ve lost!

While in California, I exercised more than I have in a year, in the pool, doing tricep dips on the stairs of the pool, walking laps around the resort watching porpoises play daily off the coast not more than 25 yards away at times. My whole relationship to my body and what it can and cannot handle altered on this trip. During my 1st week back I can feel myself slipping back into habits that reinforce weakness versus bolster my stregnth…This inquiry has been a good one. I am redefining myself and how I am “acting”. I am unwilling to play the role of “suffers from”, I want to play the game of “recovers from”.