Personal reflections / impact of Young Onset Parkinson's in life of a late-40's musician,husband,father and teacher. Metaphysical implications of disease, musings on life, music, poetry ...

Saturday, November 22, 2008

El NeuroMigre


Back after another followup at the neurologist.    Interesting conversation – apparently, the problem is all in my head.

 

But, there too, may lay the solution.

 

How convenient. 

 

Research points to the presence of dormant stem cells already there in your own brain – already there – no need to conduct some surreptitious cell harvesting from the unformed brain of a preborn spawn of some frantic juvenile coupling –

Though I do remember those being ‘kinda fun – the stem cells, the are ALREADY THERE  - inside your own head, an unused bench of new hitters for your cognitive world series, the one that really matters – the one that is you.

 

Imagine – there they are, all lined up on the bench in crisp outfits, telling off color jokes, their witty urban banter punctuated only by the occasion emission of a spent chaw of chewing tobacco,   All set !  So what the is the problem???

 

They’re asleepL

Dormant…

Unconscious, unknowing.

Totally and blissfully unaware

 

So, my neurologist tells me, the engineering task from the pharmacological perspective is to first wake up all the little bastards and then direct them to migrate to precisely the right location in your ‘wittle head, link dendrites and fill the gap of their dead and dying Brothers of the Dopamine order, to stand in the breech singing kumbaya and  forever  cure that what ‘ails ye, afflicted readers of this blog. 

 

Piece of cake, no? Take two aspirins, eye of newt and call me in the morning….

 

Clearly not an easy task – but I felt momentarily positive thinking that maybe a solutions does lurk near.   Migrating stem cells – why didn’t I think of that?

 

Then I did think of that and here is what I think I thought:

 

If it were me, if I were one of those neuromigrants, and you woke me up – well, first of all, then I’d be pissed….no-one likes being woken up, right?   And then, after waking me (remember, I’m pissed) – now what do you do?  Hand me marching orders to assemble somewhere  within the Substancia Nigra, not the best neighborhood by far, hell, I’ve never been there, and while the march for racial equality may have indeed transcended its challenge with the election of Obama in macro-world, whose to say that my sleepy Grey – matter brothers would ever willingly move to a place characterized by all the Dark Matter of the substancia nigra –never underestimate the predjudice of of pigmentation.

 

No – as a young, recently awoken plurapotent stemcell no way in hell that I’m about to willingly hitch my wagon to a dying brain.   Hell no, I don’t want to be an enable of some near-50 mid career frustrated- high school band director- who left New York to find fame and fortune in Hollywood as a wanna-be film composer, who went from wanna be to has been with out having been there.

Just because he HAD potential and squandered it, now you ‘tellin me that me, with my infinite stem cell superpowers I have to go and shoot my wad on some bum like that?   You talking to me?  You TALKING TO ME?  

 

Great…. now you’ve gone and radicalized the little bastards…

 

 

Desperate times call for desperative measures.    Woken and ordered to do the

“Man’s” work – with no say in the matter – its entirely reasonable to assume that a critical mass of the newly politicized neuroMigre would look for ways out….hop on the bus, Gus,..make a new plan, stan…..Hitch a ride on the gust of a sneeze, sling down a thread of mucus hanging from your nose, swinging like a little Tarzan in hopes of  somehow finding the way into the head of an up and coming basketball star, supermodel or at least that of a musician who knows better than to do clubdates as a sideman……    

 

Migrating Stem Cells – wake ‘em up, tell em where to go, what to do, and don’ talk back or ask too many question.    So what do you make of the odds?

 

Go figure,

Modemdavid

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