One of the things about MS that makes treatment difficult is that no two people have the same disease. Sure, the basics are the same, but the way the disease moves and progresses and reveals itself in one person’s body is completely different for the next person and the next and the next. There are currently about 400,000 Americans living with MS and each week another 200 people are diagnosed. Worldwide there are about 2.5 million people living with MS.

No one knows what causes MS though there a many theories. The disease is thought to be immunological because the symptoms are a result of the person’s immune system attacking myelin, the protective insulation around nerve fibers. MS is not considered a fatal disease. Nor is a person with MS always going to end up in a wheelchair. In fact, 2/3 remain able to walk though they may need the aid of a cane or crutches to do so.

Some of the most common MS symptoms are – and these can occur continuously, daily, or only now and then – fatigue (often made worse by heat), numbness, balance and coordination problems, bladder dysfunction, vision problems (often one of the first symptoms), pain, cognitive impairment (like forgetting words for things, inability to concentrate or becoming easily confused), depression and spasticity issues such clonus.

There is no cure for MS, there are only a handful of disease modifying drugs that slow the progression of the disease. In 2009 there was huge news in the MS world when the FDA approved the very first oral MS medication. This medication is for people who are experiencing mobility problems, not an across the board treatment. The main treatments remain injectible only.

If you are interested in learning more about MS, visit the MS Society FAQs about MS page.

If you are interested in finding out more about William, the neurologist in the photo who has MS, or the stories of other people living with the disease, or various ways that you can help make a mark against MS, visit the MS Awareness Week website.

On an entirely different note, this is my last week of class for the semester and the professor has seen fit to only just now give us our final project assignment in addition to a week of regular schoolwork and a group presentation. Nice. Therefore, posting will likely be a bit sparse this week. Hopefully once I get a handle on things I can tell you all about Haroun and the Sea of Stories by Salman Rushdie. I just finished it last night and I absolutely loved it.

1. A cup of tea… is good but a cup of coffee is better.
2. Books, love and a purring cat …make a place feel like home.
3. Everything has its beauty… um, no, some things are unredeemably ugly like hatred, poverty and racism.
4. The taste of strawberries… is the essence of June (oh how I wish it were June!).
5. Art makes me… emotional.
6. LOL I just noticed I forgot… uh, I forgot.
7. And as for the weekend tonight I’m looking forward to… a ballroom dance lesson, tomorrow my plans include… grocery shopping, school homework, and reading for pleasure, and Sunday I want to… go for a walk and enjoy the forty-degree F sunshine and the drip, drip, drip of melting snow and ice.

It has also been a long time since I posted a cat photo. Here is a recent one of Dickens. He likes to squeeze himself between me and the chair back and just hang out.

Have a great weekend everyone!

Castle has an acerbic, self-deprecating humor that reaches throughout the whole book. Sometimes it gets a bit grating and I found myself wishing she be serious for a second or two, but for the most part I found her a very funny person even in the midst of describing situations that weren’t funny at all. But even with the near constant stream of humor she still manages to say interesting and thought-provoking things.

She is fascinated by World War I and one of the essays is a trip she took to find the grave of a great uncle who was killed in the war. Amidst the descriptions of bad roads, tourist traps and other disappointments, the essay turns into a sort of meditation on courage in which she reflects on and envies the sort of physical courage that men are often called on to display.

In several essays she writes about her severely dysfunctional upbringing. Her mother’s divorce and the poverty that followed, her step-father, a military man, who was never welcoming to her because she is a lesbian, and her mother who, despite being a conservative individual with plenty of problems still finds a way to accept her daughter. Castle wants to be nothing like her mother but she also realizes in one essay that she is more like her than she cares to admit and that even her now elderly mother (who gave up trying to become an artist for a family instead) can surprise her with ideas and opinions that Castle would never have given her credit for.

Then there is the essay on Susan Sontag. Castle was friends with Sontag for a while and has some hilarious stories to tell that sometimes reveal a rather goofy side to Sontag. But Sontag was also, intentionally or not, cruel.

“The Professor” part of the book is Castle’s memoir about an affair she had while in grad school with a linguistics professor. The professor never gets a name, presumably because she is still alive and because she was and still is deeply closeted. The relationship began thrillingly enough for Castle but quickly turned into a psychologically abusive one. Castle never calls the relationship abusive and when she had the chance, many years later, to join in a class action sexual harassment suit against the professor she chose not to, believing that as mean as the Professor was to her she, Castle, also had to take some responsibility for her own choices. I can’t say that I agree with her thoughts on it, but I also don’t know everything that happened even if the memoir is very detailed.

One of the things I really enjoyed about the essays is how Castle, a professor at Stanford, is so steeped in literature that she will describe people and situations by relating them to books and characters.

Besides being a professor, Castle is also an artist. Her preferred medium is collage and the cover of the book is actually one of her pieces. Her website has more examples of her art. Salon has an interview as does The Nation. New York Magazine has a review of the book. I wasn’t oh my gosh wowed by the book, but it was definitely good reading.

Books I have been reading:

• I continue with If Not, Winter and am awed and amazed at the beauty of Sappho’s writing. I want to gulp but limit myself to ten or twenty pages at a time.
• I also continue reading Hermione Lee’s Edith Wharton biography. I have been reading of the salacious details of Wharton’s affair with Morton Fullerton. I don’t think Wharton ever had much sex with her husband and when she did it was unsatisfying. But with Fullerton she sounds like she had quite the voracious appetite. Her prose is so controlled and her image so upper-class proper that it is hard to imagine her as a passionate lover. But there you go.
• Just finished reading The Professor and Other Writings by Terry Castle. Castle is an English professor at Stanford. The book has several personal essays along with a not quite book-length memoir which explains the addition of the essays. I’ll very likely be writing more about this tomorrow after it has had a chance to settle a bit.
• Haroun and the Sea of Stories by Salman Rushdie continues to charm and delight. If you’ve read the book, the Sea of Stories is being poisoned and Haroun is now gathered with the Gupees to hear from those in charge about what is going on. And then there is the revelation of the spy!

I’ve got my copy of Vertigo by W.G. Sebald from the library for the upcoming Slaves discussion at the end of the month. I will probably start reading it tomorrow so I have time to read slowly and think and appreciate the greatness that is Sebald. All are welcome to join in the reading and discussion with the Slaves.

Next week is my last week of class for the school quarter and then I get a two-week break before the spring quarter starts. Not enough time for much of a reading binge except on the airplane ride to and from visiting my parents. But I am greatly looking forward to having, at least for a short while, free time in the evening to fill as I choose. Spring is in the air and I am hoping some of that time will be filled outdoors walking and biking. Dare I hope?

Or what about for an author who has “beaten Oprah Winfrey to a major scoop, been among the first to interview Susan Boyle, spent time on Death Row in the USA and dispensed polio drops in the backstreets of India?” That sentence could have been much better written because it makes it sound like the author spent time on Death Row for crimes he committed rather than interviewing the inmates. One has to wonder if the bio is confusing can the book be much better?

Now here’s one from a book my Dearest actually bought at Half Price Books, a short story horror anthology. Written on the inside flap verbatim:

Never before published in any book STEPHEN KING’s “Rainy Season” brings a plague of terror down from the peaceful skies of Maine… you may want to close your shutters. DAVID J. SCHOW cruises the L.A. streets with a martyred punk whose distinctive “tag” burns through the void of voids. JOE R. LANSDALE finds a plastic, inflatable friend you take almost… anywhere.

It’s brilliant. We move from a plague of terror to the void of voids to an inflatable friend? Somehow I think the horrors involved with inflatable friends are pretty much a guy thing that I would really rather not contemplate. Unfortunately Bookman has not read the story and is unable to elaborate.

Any howlers you’ve come across lately you’d like to share?