[Marxism] "Your Lupus is out of control!"

["Hunter Gray" <hunterbadbear@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

NOTE BY HUNTER BEAR:

For a provocative lead, this -- which I have just heard today on the phone
from our lead medic, following his receipt of my very extensive blood
tests -- does very well as an attention-gripper.

The situation is this and I do NOT want to belabor folks with my medical
challenges:  An appointment with the medics had been scheduled for July 19
but fell through because their office computer lost it.  Eldri and Thomas
and I got there in a timely fashion, with our appointment slip -- but the
earliest the office people could schedule conflicted with the forthcoming
visit of my editor son, Peter [Mack], and his three lively offspring, from
Lincoln.  The appointment finally occurred on Tuesday, August 10, and lasted
for quite awhile. Thomas and Eldri came with me.  For some days prior to
that, I had been experiencing some of the basic incipient symptoms of SLE
Lupus: much pain, cramped hands, sense of some fatigue, heavy night
sweating, substantive depression [not something with which I am normally
afflicted] etc.  Heart, lungs, blood pressure, temp were all OK.  Much blood
was taken and the results now show a relatively high sedimentation rate [sed
rate] and some other things. I wasn't floored at all by this news.  I did
ask specifically about my kidneys [a very major danger area in SLE] and was
glad to hear that nothing has changed in that bailiwick since May -- when
they were still, but barely, in the normal range.

The doc did not mention the hospital.  My half-Bobcat, Cloudy, would never
let me be taken there again -- nor would other members of our family.

So we are increasing the Prednisone [surprisingly inexpensive] and calcium.
I dislike the Pred very much indeed but it is, as I see it, much much better
than the alternative:  Imuran or Methotrexate -- chemo drugs that can in
some instances cause cancer in their own right.  [I continue to take the
many other medicines as well.]

In addition to the kidneys still being within a "safe" range, it's clear
that my basically renewed strength has allowed me to keep the SLE from
staging a quick comeback coup.

I will keep walking -- and always fighting.  Forever.

In another context, Joan Trumpauer Mulholland, our old civil rights
colleague spent a very pleasant day with us at mid-week.  She had earlier
had a fine visit with Steve Harvey in Courtenay, BC.  She was delighted to
get the e mail messages from Theresa Alt and Sam Friedman [who had, it
turned out, been in the major protests with her at the segregated Glen Echo
Amusement Park, Maryland, 44 years ago.] And she certainly appreciated Bill
Mandel's fine supportive message. Joan told us of a Tougaloo College family
which has lost two members to a hideous death from SLE within the past few
years.

Nialetch/Onen

HUNTER GRAY  [HUNTER BEAR]   Micmac /St. Francis Abenaki/St. Regis Mohawk
www.hunterbear.org
Protected by Na´shdo´i´ba´i´
and Ohkwari'

In our Gray Hole, the ghosts often dance in the junipers and sage, on the
game trails, in the tributary canyons with the thick red maples, and on the
high windy ridges -- and they dance from within the very essence of our own
inner being. They do this especially when the bright night moon shines down
on the clean white snow that covers the valley and its surroundings.  Then
it is as bright as day -- but in an always soft and mysterious and
remembering way. [Hunter Bear]

















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