May you and yours have the gift of good health and spirits. 

During the pandemics of the last two+ years my sister, Marlene, had LITTLE-zero human contact. 

About 4 hours of her mornings are spent putting on her leg, cleaning her commode, and dressing; another 3- 4 hours of her evenings are spent reversing the procedure.  She was going pandemic stir crazy and choose to leave the San Francisco condo where she had been blindly managing on her own.  Thanks to childhood friend Mickey Larosa and former Saint Ignatius community service volunteer Darin Michalski, she found Vista Springs in Independence, Ohio.  (https://www.vistaspringsliving.com/vista-springs-ravinia).

 I wish I could praise Vista Springs. 

If you are one of her friends, she would love to hear from you between noon and 5:00 PM. 

In 2019 my friend John Walsh convinced me to return to Denver with him to deal with a number of maladies (worn out left shoulder cartilage, rotator cuff tear, numb and cold fingers and toes, trembling right hand, balance problems, Parkinsonian symptoms, etc.)

This move has forced me to learn a new vocabulary that moves around the terms “levodopa and carbidopa,” which our bodies need to produce the dopamine that powers the millions of neurons that synchronically has our movements gel with our thoughts.  Understanding this new vocabulary has forced me to try to understand why the blessings of body, mind, and will that God gave me are not now working.  Phrases I wrestle with for understanding now include:

• Bradykinesia-frozen movements, a lack of motivation, which has seldom been a problem for those raised and trained like me.
• Neuroplasticity-the ability of the brain’s neurons to adapt and change.
• Right hand tremors that throw off one’s balance, confidence, and ability get food to one’s mouth.
• Low level or cold lasers that strengthen and regenerate damaged body parts, which other nations like Canada, Israel, Russia, etc. are ahead of us on.
• Non-invasive, portable neurological stimulators (PONS), which can revive and fire up one’s neurons to work properly. 

If you or friends are interested, two excellent award winning books are: The Brain That Changes Itself and The Brain’s Way of Healing (2015) both by Norman Doidge, MD, Psychiatrist.  (https://www.ifm.org/about/profile/norman-doidge/) They are great New Year’s gifts.  Over the next year, I am placing a lot of hope in the non-invasive laser, neuronal electrical spikes, etc., covered in these books. These are among the therapies of the future.

DWAYNE

“What is Christmas? It is tenderness for the past, courage for the present, hope for the future.”

Agnes M. Pahro