(Tuesday, December 17, 2024)
On the morning of my first trip to the Mayo Clinic (Friday the 13th), I have a short dream about the four edges of a wall I am painting (top, bottom, left, right), next to an open door (left). I touch the edges with my fingers and see/feel how they are randomly and poorly done. As if I have not even used a brush. They almost look like capillaries or nerves. So I grab my favorite two-inch brush and cover the incorrectly-applied paint with a nice, smooth layer of white. In the next fragment, I pick up a golden bike chain from the ground. It is tangled. I pull on it with my fingers to make the fix, to unlock the bound-up links. Freeing them for a safe ride.
Day notes:
Bicycle:
bi: two, twice
cycle: 1. repeating series of events, 2. long period of time, 3. a vehicle, 4. a set of poems or songs
Chain of events? The word cycle is similar to circle, and bike wheels are circular. This reminds me of my tarot reading about the Mayo with the Wheel of Fortune card symbolizing the past.
The Mayo Clinic was a tremendous experience. Buildings were filled with thousands of people, hundreds in wheelchairs. Everyone I met was incredibly kind and gifted at their profession. Beautiful artwork was mounted in many of the hallways, including over a dozen prints signed by Andy Warhol. I can still feel the historic, spiritual presence of the Mayo. My favorite experience was the two grand pianos being wonderfully played all day on Monday (December 16). I sat for hours in the Gonda building, waiting for my five appointments while listening to Christmas jingles and dramatic, modern melodies. One woman pianist had a gorgeous, high-octave singing voice. Another woman wore her blue nursing outfit, arriving at the piano bench in a wheelchair.
A discussion we had last month at Wisdom Ways with Dr. Paul from the Mayo included the large white element on the border (edge) of the brain, the CSF (cerebrospinal fluid).
Result this morning of my MRI:
Impression: Asymmetric left anterior temporal lobe volume loss, similar or minimally progressed since 4/3/2024. This can be seen with the semantic variant of primary progressive aphasia.
At my Friday appointment with my neurologist, after the doctor said semantic dementia was the slowest in progression, I told him about Ralph Waldo Emerson’s aphasia lasting twenty years. Saturday morning, before my second trip to Rochester, I got a full-moon email from neighbor astrologer Deb O’Connor, beginning with this quote from Emerson. I told her Waldo had had a stroke and aphasia, which she did not know:
To the dull mind, all nature is leaden.
To the illumined mind the whole world burns and sparkles with light.
I like Waldo’s reference to fire, as that reminds me of the dream I shared at our last Dreamsters meeting. Synchronicity.
More MRI data:
Review of the quality control images demonstrates good segmentation of the hippocampi:
Left hippocampal volume: 2.94
Right hippocampal volume: 3.49
Hippocampal asymmetry index: -16.93
Combined hippocampal volume: 6.43
Combined hippocampal volume age-adjusted percentile: 30
Combined inferior lateral ventricles (temporal horns) volume: 3.01
Combined inferior lateral ventricles (temporal horns) age-adjusted percentile: 96
Patrick recently shared a dream with The Dreamsters Union that was about tangled gears in his bike.
