Blue skies and bike seats

Dear Gentle Reader,

Blue skies are apparently ahead.

Which would be good, as storm clouds have raged, or, worse, droned for a while.

For anyone who actually ever checks over here, yet another mea culpa.

The past couple of years have been a bit trying, medically, as interesting diagnoses come and go.

Parkinson's disease one day.

Multiple sclerosis, another.

Fortunately, both of those were rejected after extensive testing.

Unfortunately, the underlying conditions were ultimately described as a syndrome; diagnostic shorthand for "we know what symptoms you present, and they are real, but we have no idea what the underlying cause is, or how, ultimately, to treat you".

Great.

Really.

I really didn't want Parkinson's, or MS, true.

And I really didn't want the underlying conditions, either.

Another set of conditions were ultimately resolved in a similar way--by calling them a syndrome, again.

Which was all sort of fine.

Ish.

Until, rather recently, there was another concern.

Doctors thought that I might have pancreatic cancer.

And pancreatic cancer is really not good.

Whilst life is terminal (we ride a sinking boat from birth, to paraphrase some Buddhists), pancreatic cancer tends to accelerate the submersion like a torpedo hitting amidship.

Pancreatic cancer led to an extensive pharmacological diet aimed at whacking me in the belly--amidship my ship.

Now, for your humble scribe, pharmacological diets can be rather interesting, and not just amidship. My upper decks and command centres take hits of their own.

Fermented sugar, alone, has interesting effects while stronger pharmawonders tend to bend the hues of the spectrum and provide organic whammy bars to your humble scribe's sensory interpretation systems...

(Your humble scribe hallucinates, visually and aurally (hypnogogic hallucinations), upon taking Tylenol 3s, which my Southern Cousins would call Tylenol with Codeine... ...most people take Tylenol 3s with much less ado simply for pain relief.)

...But, my big pharma anti-pancreatic cancer diet held new combinatorial side-effects for my pleasure and enjoyment...

...such as autodigestion of my cartilage and tendons...

(...mmm...)

...and total-body tendonitis...

(...woohoo).

And then, just before I took off to India, I was told that pancreatic cancer was not, in fact, a concern.

Presumably a new syndrome diagnosis will be offered to me to replace the diagnosis taken away from me but, again, I am rather fine with this.

I still have a pharma diet, which is a much reduced pharma diet from my 'peak', which is good (ish) though I've only managed two non-pharma meals in the last seven days...

(And yet those love handles still persist!)

(...Do you actually have to want to be an ascetic (rather than being forced into asceticism) to get those sveltish lines of Siddhartha Gautama, post his "Great Departure" (when he left his Father's kingdom, and luxury, to live life as an ascetic)?)

Anyway.

All this is by way of an explanation for my absence, as I had promised a few people that I would write, ages ago.

And then broke those promises.

Now you know why.

Anyway, enough whining.

I've been gone a rather long time; I am trying to get back onto the saddle.

I hope to write more soon, and maybe even read.

Till then...

Tschuess,

Chris

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