Back from the dead...
After spending much of last week hospitalized for chest pains (thank G-d a false alarm), I am back among the land of the living.
I still am online only rarely, due to my current state of health leaving me minimal functional time, and my needing to use those moments of functionality for more critical acts of survival.
My doctors were trying to encourage me, telling me that with recent advances in genetic sequencing of mitochondrial DNA they can now test for the exact defect that is behind the illness that is slowly killing me. They encouraged me to travel to Cleavland to have these tests done.
I asked them if these advancements had led to any new or improved treatments, or if knowledge of which exact site my mtDNA was defective would aid in my treatment. They answered that so far there has been no new insights that would lead to better treatment and that knowledge of the exact defect would not change my treatment.
So no thank you. I don't need to lay out large sums of money just to satisfy the curiosity of doctors, when there is no possibility of the results helping me in any way.
If (or G-d willing, when) they have new treatments as a result of these tests, assuming that I'm still around, then I'll have my mtDNA analyzed.
My great joy is continuing to disappoint the doctors by not dieing when they say I'm supposed to. One of these "great healers" initially thought (before tests showed that, thank G-d, everything was OK) that the chest pains were due to heart damage from my MELAS having started to affect my heart in addition to my brain, and tried to give me yet another prophesy of doom. Yet again I explained that the job of a doctor is to act as a channel to bring healing into this world, and not to make predictions of the future, which is exclusively in G-d's hands, not the doctor's.
One of these days - as soon as I'm doing well enough to be able to spare some time - I will write my farewell to all of my online friends who have been so supportive.
The rarity of my being able to spend time online makes it pointless trying to maintain an online identity/presence.
Endings may be difficult, but they don't have to be sad.