SURROUNDED ~
I decided I'd contracted MS last weekend. True confessions, I've decided this a few times before in my life. My poor mom used to have to take me to the doctor in my 10s, 11s and 12s so he/she could convince me I did not have whatever disease I had stumbled upon while leafing through the giant hardback family-medical dictionary. Also, I went through a fainting phase in my early teens, I'd just be minding my own business, then I'd hear a sibling say "there she goes again". That doctor explained that the veins that feed blood to my brain are a little on the small side. Um, yea. I've heard all the punchlines for that one. Anyhow, my "I-think-I-have-MS again" tale started about six weeks ago, I kept waking up in the middle of the night with an achy, buzzing, burning left arm. I know. Left arm, heart attack, but I've been working out and eating healthy, so I let that possibility go. I'd shake it off, get back to sleep just in time for the alarm to go off. It happened a few times a week. Last weekend, I couldn't shake it off, and I buzzed and burned and pinned-and needled all weekend long. Worked myself up into a bit of a state. Pictured needing to sell my house, quit my job, move in with mom and hire someone to tend to my "activities of daily living". You know, those ones. Yikes. I've heard I can get a little anxious. An evening conversation with my sister led to a call to the doctor on Monday. Something in her tone when she said "aren't those symptoms of something serious?"... Thank God for the kindly, older, gentle doctor who pulled my card from the "in-box". He listened to my anxious story, nodded as if he'd heard the likes of me before, and proceeded to poke my extremities with the sharpest objects he could find in the drawer behind him. I felt it all, reacted just right, and even beat him in the arm wrestling contest he challenged me to. He was gracious and patient, and assured me he saw no signs of anything neurological going on. So we played detective and tried to figure out what was causing the buzz and the burn. I suppose he's heard the wildest of confessions, my big breakthrough was to admit to him that I get a pillow and blanky and fall asleep on the loveseat every night (before I wake up around midnight and go to bed). He explained to me that, what with my age (thanks doc), my diminishing hormones (thanks again), and the tiny neck vein thing I've got going on, that putting my neck in such a lousy position each night was not good for the blood flow. He told me too that the round-the-clock symptoms that weekend were likely a result of letting myself get a little too overwrought. So unlike me :) I promised him I would sleep in my big girl bed from now on. I am going to treat myself to some real (non-K-mart) pillows to entice me to follow-through. God bless K-mart, I'm just saying. I've experienced a huge sense of relief in knowing that nothing more serious was going on. There's a bit of a buzz now and then, but, you know, my age, my hormones. The sketchy blood supply to my brain. I can live with that. Could I live with something worse? What if the look on the doc's face was more grim, what if the old guy beat me in that arm-wrestling contest because my muscles wouldn't, couldn't react right? Yes, I could live with it. A writer I love (Anne Lamott) writes that when difficult things happen, the idea isn't to pray for God to take the difficult thing away, but to invite Him into it with us. And last weekend, in between some anxious moments and being on hold to Kaiser and spending way to much time at http://www.ms.com/, I was able to stammer some prayers... some "helps me's", some "I'm scared's", some "I'm probably being ridiculous but I know you get me's". Thank God, for a kindly, gentle, gracious Father. Who has heard these prayers before, but has never tired of leaning in to hear them again.

I'm reading a small volume of Celtic devotions these days, every day there is a prayer, a bit of Gaelic poetry, a Psalm. And on the day I found out I do not have MS, St. Patrick's breastplate was part of the shield my Father had offered me. It reads, in part...
"Christ, be with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me
Christ in me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me
Christ on my right, Christ on my left
Christ when I lie down, Christ where I sit, Christ where I arise"
So, no MS. Not this time. It'll be something, someday. And it'll be okay. Surrounded, as St. Patrick prays, as I am.