FND and Neglect; Buffy Again

This is an experimental grove of trees, deep in the foothills of the Sierras, that was planted long ago by people at UC Berkeley. My understanding was that it was to study tree growth in relation to planted distance. And while it goes unnoticed from ground level, from the air it becomes one of the most unique sights in the forests of California.

•

'Being "Indian" has little do with sperm tracking and colonial record keeping,' says Buffy Sainte-Marie. This woman, whom I once revered, is nothing to me now, but her music is still, and will always be, her music, and some of it is brilliant. However, our current movement is called “truth and reconciliation.” The first word is truth. One’s truth is not universal truth; her truth is BS to me. 

Here's a comment from Indigenous actor Joel D. Montgrand: “It’s not our fault—those feelings we had of pride and joy when we celebrated these people were legitimate. We love to see our people succeed. After all, we’re just trying to find our paths and flourish in our own careers. But we keep being overshadowed by people who have a strange fetish for our cultures…. We’re resilient, intelligent, hilarious people. We have to be in order to survive. Our voices can and should raise above the noise.”

•

Monday was bright and sunny. It was a great day. I did lots of house cleaning and tidying and I got a start on cleaning the car—inside and out. The car gets so untidy, so easily. Every time I and Sheba get in, we both bring tons of crap into the car in my shoes and in her hair. Plus, I must take the bed out and put in two chairs to that when Paula and David are here, there is a seat for everyone.

And I read through mid-day. It felt good to get back to my book and in the reclining position. I expect I’ll be up to more today. There are things needing doing. I need another hour on the splitter to get through the next few weeks. Using the splitter or the generator are both things I don’t like doing. I’m not a machinery guy.

In the evening I watched The Seagull, a contemporary and wonderfully, magical version by National Theatre. It was breathtaking and one of the cleverest staging I can recall seeing in decades. How I love National Theatre at Home.

 

Oxford University publishes a journal called Brain. In their November 2022 edition, there was an article written by six researchers titled: Identification of biopsychological trait markers in functional neurological disorders. I read these studies like this one because it is so unquestionably authoritative, and in this one, I came on this sentence: “Additionally, emotional neglect was identified to be much stronger associated with the symptom development, and thus weakened the dominating role of sexual abuse in the suspected aetiology of FND.”

Just one sentence in a complex article that was challenging to read, meant a great, great deal to me. This sentence reinforces the diagnosis I was given by Dr. Shoja and it affirms my faith in her. This sentence makes sense of my condition and I am very grateful to the writers and publisher for making it accessible to patients. Knowledge is power.