A Taste of the Future? Reviewing Augmental’s MouthPad^ Wearable Controller

Through a combination of frugality and needs, I long ago landed on a combination of speech recognition and a mouthstick to do my writing and editorial work. But as a C4 quadriplegic with multiple sclerosis, and growing older, my seating and positioning are growing more precarious. I wanted options that might free me from some of the physical contortions and frustrations that have long been part of my work setup. After using the same computer accessibility setup for about 30 years, I recently decided it was time for a change.

Having read about Augmental’s MouthPad^, a custom-made wearable controller that looks and fits like a dental retainer, I was excited to try it out. I expected a novel tool that was somewhat of an upgrade from the speech-driven mousegrid/voice control navigation I’ve been using half my life. What I got was a genuinely exciting experience and an instrument I believe I’ll continue to master and explore with. 

Multitasking with my MouthPad

The MouthPad^ has an embedded touchpad that you use with your tongue, but the device also recognizes other easy inputs like head motions, sip and puff, and bites. Through Bluetooth and an accompanying app, it can control devices that run more recent versions of Windows, iOS and MacOS. It helps control Android devices too, in a more limited way.

I found the device to be extremely mobile, discreet ("Ah, sweet privacy!" says the decades-long speech recognition user), and versatile with its many features. Funding and product-life are two concerns, but vocational rehab often does fund the device and there are other financial sources available.

It gives me better control of my device, like when a phone call comes in while I'm working, I'm instantly able to pause work, switch off speech recognition and answer the call long before it goes to voicemail. A big improvement for me.

Finally, it is fast. Many of my most basic activities, like editing; navigating between files and programs; or working my way around websites, go much quicker. To me, that's not just a convenience. So much of my disabled life is about losing time: the waiting, the slower pace, the obstacles, the need to do things more than once. When I can move quickly, it’s exhilarating, it's empowering. The MouthPad^ lets me to do this.

Check out my full review in New Mobility for details. The future for disability users tastes spicy, and I like spicy.

Disability rights under Section 504 and ADA are under serious attack

tl,dr: Do you like ramps and curb cutouts? How about accessible voting, and staying out of nursing homes? Then ASAP go to https://dredf.org/protect-504/#anchor6 and act.

REV UP Texas rocking the graphics. FYI TX AG Paxton is running for U.S. Senate.

Image description: A repurposed photograph of a patch with dark blue, beige, and dark red horizontal stripes. There's a white star at the top and a white outline of the state of Texas at the bottom. The text over the graphic reads, "Don't Mess With 504 Call Paxton"

Now that the Supreme Court has done the unthinkable and cut out the heart of the Civil Rights Act of 1965 -- the prize achievement of a Civil Rights movement admired around the world -- what could possibly be next? The Civil Rights Act stood intact for over 60 years, for two-to-three generations during which we've made great but imperfect progress. 

This same court has also struck down Roe v. Wade, which was settled law also lasting for a couple of generations, a 50-year-old reproductive rights law. So now Blacks and women have lost personal rights.

Now what about the Americans With Disabilities Act? Look at all the change that has happened throughout the country because of this law that has been around for almost two generations. They wouldn't touch that, would they? After all, it's been on the books for 36 years, right? But 36 years is less than 50 years and 60 years. So don't think people with disabilities couldn't face the same bitter consequences. In fact, that process is already under way.

The attorneys general from 17 states objected to Biden administration updates of Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, which since 1977 has opened access to government buildings and programs and eventually led to the ADA. You may remember it from the documentary Crip Camp, the part when Judy Heumann and scores of activists occupied the San Francisco Federal Building in order to get enforcement of Section 504. 

Among the Biden updates were provisions extending accessibility to those with gender dysphoria, which is a medically recognized impairment but still one that the 17 states objected to. They went further, too, and claimed that 504 itself is invalid. You'll get a way better understanding of this from https://dredf.org/protect-504/#anchor6 

The good news is that nine of these states have since dropped out of the suit. They did this not out of the goodness of their hearts, but because disabled folks and their allies sounded off on their state governments and pressured them to drop out. Eight states remain: Alaska, Florida, Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Montana, South Dakota and Texas. If you live in one of those states, it's time to make phone calls, visits, or write newspapers or any other contacts you have.

Image description: Gray map of USA with the following states red: Alaska, Florida, Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Montana and Texas.

Specifically the states argue that the Olmstead provisions -- that disabled people must live in their own homes and communities instead of nursing homes -- are something that the federal government has no right to impose on states. They argue this despite people's homes offering a better, healthier, more accessible quality of life that is preferred by disabled people, and the fact that living at home with attendant care is far more affordable to the individual and the state, than nursing homes.

What is most dangerous is that, by bringing this case, these states may eventually give a hostile U.S. appeals court or the Supreme Court their opportunity to tear into key portions of Section 504, which may later be used to knock down the ADA.

The states must file their final papers in the case on July 7, 2026. .If you live in one of these states, it is important to contact your attorney general, governor, legislative reps, and media outlets ASAP. Tell them about your situation and preferences, and maybe include some of the points above. I'm including the link to DREDF, experts in the case who provide contact info and talking points. https://dredf.org/protect-504/#anchor6

Update this week: South Dakota just dropped out of the case! Indiana did before that. Your pressure is working!

The Parking Placard (Black n') Blues

or, How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love the ADA, Which Just Turned 35

Thanks to the Underground Bookshelf for awarding this the winner of its Disability Pride contest. It will be featured on their website next month.

It’s an epiphany when you realize for the first time that the white stick-figure on the blue parking sign is you. That's you. Now you can park in that fat sirloin of a spot. Now you are “the disabled.”

For me, this leap to disabilityhood was as every bit as much a mental process as a physical one. And I fought the knowledge, down the line, tooth and nail. I always did, with every new adaptation or assistive device, fight, fight, fight. To some that sounds courageous, but really it’s ridiculous. But I was young, I was always healthy, and I was a guy. I didn't need no stinking hot parking placard: that's for other people. I didn't need nothing. 

I had a thick head. 

So what changed my mind? I can’t remember the moment I decided to pick up a disability parking application. It must have been some watershed event, perhaps my 1,000th fall, the one that rattles your very teeth. Falling itself was no big deal by then, and I might do it a half dozen times in a day (at least that's how it felt). After a while, my body looked like Keith Richards’ after a bender, but cry-cry, I dusted myself off and got back in the game – because you've got to, nobody's going to pay your rent. But maybe that 1,000th time was the one to slosh my brain in its comfy bath of cerebrospinal fluid: Wake up, you green-gray piece of fat!

I used a walker then. An aluminum walker, to go along with the studs of my biker jacket. I would drag the thing to the grocery store for a few items, forgetting half of them by the time I reached the aisles. No browsing, no price-shopping, just throwing things in a shopping bag, and teetering back to the checkout while I fished for cash. Then I dragged my Frankenstein feet out to the parking lot again, cars politely navigating around me   the occasional Einstein would honk, not that I could turn around to see him, not that I could reach around to flick him off.

As my legs exhausted themselves, my steps grew smaller, smaller, until my energy exhausted itself and my limbs locked into jointless boards due to muscle tone. In the middle of the parking lot, I stood stock still, like performance art, like the Tin Woodsman before Dorothy Gale came along. 

The walker had wheels on the front legs so I could push it along instead of lifting and planting it with every step. But once fatigued, I lost the power to hold the walker in place, and the wheels took on a more insidious role, creeping forward slowly. As they gained momentum, I thought, 'No, no, not again.' Unable to lift my feet, my upright posture deteriorated into a letter A, opening wider and wider as the walker rolled away. I couldn’t let go   my hands were locked   so at the fateful moment I'd take a deep breath and bail, thinking: Don't land on the Chef Boyardee!

This happened once on a cold winter's night, after my friend and I attended a wake and, on the way home, stopped for a nightcap. The tavern parking lot was a thin, solid sheet of ice. I straggled back to my car, up a slight incline of drainage built into the black asphalt. Along the way I stopped to rest, talking to my patiently shivering friend while we waited for my legs to unlock.

I detected motion. Yep, I was sliding backward over the ice, in the direction of the drain. I was unable to move or resist; like a Gemini astronaut, I was only along for the ride. At the time I had no idea where I was going: I wasn't even facing where I was headed.

My buddy circled around nervously. “Hey, Fred Astaire, what do I do?”

I was picking up speed. So I had to be honest with the guy. “I got nothing."

Jim dug in behind to brace me, but honestly, in our leather-soled dress shoes, we might as well have been wearing ice skates. At this point he's pushing back simply to save his own hide. But there was nothing he could do; there was nothing anyone could do. We were a runaway train, and I was taking him down with me. Sometimes you're the slowly rolling bowling ball, and sometimes you're the pin. He was the pin.

I could imagine what it was like for someone sitting in the warmth of their car, watching us gliiiide across that parking lot. Floating, gracefully rotating in space. Maybe the Blue Danube Waltz was playing on their radio, while we skated from one side of their windshield, all the way to the other. … Faster and faster… Have you watched curling in the winter Olympics?… On and on and on…

What would become of our intrepid lads?

That’s when I started laughing. When things are out of your control, you do well to laugh. In Chicago when freezing your behinds off we often laugh it off with friends. Because it's better to freeze your heart behinds off together and be laughing, than it is to freeze your behinds off with a straight face. And that's the science behind that.

Also, convulsive laughter is helpful in defeating spasticity. In an instant, we were a giggling heap of metal and man sprawled across the dark ice. In our slick shoes, we'd be stranded on that parking lot a long time. For the life of me, I can't figure out how we ever got up again.

Lucky were the times when there was a friend around and frictionless ice to fall on. More often, it was a sidewalk or a bathroom or a busy street crosswalk, hopefully with one or more gallant onlookers there to drag me out of danger and stuff me into my car. After rebuffing their offers for medical assistance, I would fall asleep on the front seat, sometimes more than an hour, sometimes with the engine running.

Somewhere in there happened magic No. 1000, the one to knock some sense in my noggin, the one to make my noggin scream, “Get the blue placard, already!”

Before then, I clung to a weird, outmoded notion of what independence was. But once I crossed into that thin blue sign, what I found waiting for me was a Technicolor world of fuller independence, of accessible services, jobs, housing, education and protected rights, medicines and tech and yes, even decent curb cutouts and primo parking spaces   a whole societal push to involve everyone, including me, and bring everybody to the decision-making table, even hardheaded fools who happened to fall upon the right decision one day, after he fell absolutely every other place first.

Viva the ADA. Let's get riled up and make sure it lasts another 35 years and another hundred after that.

Girl, it’s so worth it: This red nylon sheet is a powerful tool for caregivers

At Endeavor rehab, when transferring me to bed for the night, a couple of the nurse’s aides lowered me onto a torso-length red nylon sheet spread on the bed. They used this sheet to move me on the bed. My roommate in this place was recovering from shoulder surgery, and turned out to be a real busybody. She always had her nose in my business. “What’s that?” she said to the female aides working on me. See what I mean?

“We use it for positioning,” the aide said about the red sheet. “It makes things easier. I use it all the time.”

Or do you say "slide sheet"?

The roommate got on her phone and found it online. The aide explained that the sheet comes in one-ply and two-ply versions. Some people like the one, other people like the two, it all depends. “Either way, it doesn’t cost much,” the nurse said, “Girl, it’s so worth it.”

“Huh,” said the busybody. She was working that phone of hers, so I had a premonition that at some time in the future I would be seeing one of these at my own home. I guess I should mention here that the roommate was also my wife.. Details, details.

“Done,” she said. “I ordered one.” See? The nurse’s ‘girl’ sealed that deal.

I should further disclose that the roommate is also my caregiver. Also that she and I are mighty grateful to that aide because the red nylon sheet has proven to be a very useful tool over these last several, eventful months.

The way the sheet works is that the nylon material is so slick that there is little to no friction when sliding. Mab will lay it out on the bed and lower me onto it with the Hoyer. The sheet is about 26 inches from top to bottom enter before we incorporate and about 52 inches side to side — only large enough for my bottom, but I guess that’s where most of my weight meets the bed. ( ! ) (Do you like my character? I came up with it just now.) Next, by grabbing an edge of the red sheet, she can more easily slide me into position higher or lower, or side to side.

Also, since we ordered one that is a continuous piece between the top layer and bottom, she can pull the red sheet out in a really nifty way. From the side of the bed, she grabs the bottom layer of sheet and pulls it out from under me. With several small tugs, one after another, she pulls out more and more of the bottom layer, while the top layer directly under me lies undisturbed. Eventually even that top layer gets tugged out, and voila, she’s pulled out the entire sheet without having to turn me over this way and that, like she would to remove a cotton sheet, for instance. It’s pretty ingenious. And the more she uses it, the better she gets with it, and the more uses she seems to discover.

A good example was when we broke an axle on our travel trailer during a recent cross-country trip. We got stuck in a Motel 6 for a weekend until we could arrange a repair for the trailer. Of course, like so many hotel beds nowadays the motel bed was on a platform. Many of you know what happened next: We were unable to use the Hoyer lift to transfer me in and out of bed because the platform blocked the Hoyer’s legs from rolling underneath. Bed platforms are everywhere in hotels across the country and are the reason we moved to a travel trailer in the first place. We have many horror stories about dealing with platforms and with hotel management concerning them. But wait, now we have the red nylon sheet. Stand back, citizen, and watch it work its wonders!

Rather than brute-force me up and out of my wheelchair, my brother had the great idea of lowering me onto the corner of the bed as best we could with the Hoyer. So, I was barely on the bed and way out of position, but I was on top of the red nylon sheet. My brother took hold of the sheet and slid me all away up to the top of the bed, just like that. His eyes bugged almost out with surprise at how easily it went. Actually it was pretty fun!

We are especially glad to have it now with Mab's still-healing post-surgical shoulder. She’s been operating carefully with 1.5 arms. Since she insists on still caregiving for me, but her using the red nylon sheet, the tasks of moving me around, and pulling the sheet out at the end of the process, are all much easier and safer. Thank goodness.

The cost of this wonderful aid: $12.

If you’re a caregiver, or know a caregiver, then girl/boy, you need to know about this one.

Here are some demonstration videos.

Hard days night: To CPAP or not to CPAP? My New Mobility article

For years, Jennifer Miller, 55, of Carleton, Michigan, was a problem sleeper, snoring and gasping through the night. Because she struggles with PTSD from the car crash that injured her spinal cord — and isn’t the biggest fan of doctors and hospitals anyway — she put off seeking treatment for her sleep issues. “I didn’t say anything for a long time,” she says. But that changed a year ago, on a night that literally left her speechless. 

“I couldn’t find breath and I couldn’t say anything. I couldn’t wake up my fiance. I had to sit up and … kept trying to breathe in and nothing was happening,” Miller says. When finally she could draw a breath, her sleep issue had new urgency. “It scared me [and] prompted me to actually speak to the doctor.”  

Illustration by Mark Weber.

Miller’s overnight scare is an extreme example of sleep apnea, the interruption of breathing during sleep. Sleep apnea is experienced by between 9% and 38% of the general population, according to one study, but within the disability community it can be much higher. More than 80% of those with T6 -vertebrae-level injuries and higher have sleep-related breathing problems, according to pulmonologist Dr. Abdulghani Sankari of DMC DRH Sleep Disorders Center in Detroit. In those with disability similar to mine, at C4 and higher, the rate is more like 90% of people.

So then it's no surprise that I turned out to have sleep apnea. Although I didn't learn about it as dramatically as Jennifer Miller did, but I still do so remember exactly the moment I found out. I'd just switched to a new neurologist, Daniel Wynn of Northbrook, Illinois, who would change my life. My daily 20-minute naps clued him in to order an overnight sleep study. Shortly afterwards, he left a voicemail … on a Saturday afternoon: “Mr. Mohler, you have very severe sleep apnea.” My sleep study report read like a horror movie script. In six hours, I had stopped breathing 327 times, with full stoppages averaging 45 seconds each. In short, I wasn’t breathing for 2.5 of the six hours. My blood-oxygen level — considered healthy in the 90% range and severe below 80% — nose-dived to 62%. 

“At least we know you have a healthy heart,” he said later, “because if you didn’t, you’d be dead.” He always has a way with words.

Sleep apnea is nothing to snooze about. Uncorrected, it often leads to, fatigue, messed up decision-making and memory problems, as well as risks for high blood pressure, heart problems and type 2 diabetes. Chronic poor sleep has been linked to shorter lifespans.

The good news is that it can be effectively treated with CPAP and BiPAP machines — but for some people, the bad news is that it is treated with CPAP and BiPAP machines. Some people get used to the things, and others not so much. The masks and tubing come in various degrees of cumbersome, ranging from annoying and uncomfortable to triggering full-on alien-abduction vibes, with strange, elephant-like hoses and Hannibal Lector-type face masks. In terms of looks, they bring to mind the spidery face-suckers from the Alien movies, and they sound like Darth Vader gasping for air. And that push/pull between very good and very creepy, my friends, is the basis of a story:

https://newmobility.com/better-nights-better-days-cpap-bipap-and-disability/

How do you sleep?

Disabled Texas Woman May Lose Coverage and Home From Medicare Cuts

“I've worked hard. I'm to the point where I own my own house,” says Nancy Crowther, 67, of Austin, Texas. “I have [attendant] services, and to lose that would be to lose my livelihood and to be desperately placed in an assisted living or something.”

Although she has spinal muscular atrophy, a progressive muscular disease with no cure, Crowther remains socially active and fiercely independent. She’s thrived for years beyond everyone’s expectations, she says, and chalks it up to her Medicaid home-care attendants, who help with daily necessities she cannot do on her own — and which she risks losing if Congress passes historically large cuts of $625 billion from Medicaid. The Senate is working through the weekend to pass its version of the spending bill in order to meet Pres. Trump’s stated goal of signing it into law by July 4.

Crowther is one of 70 million covered by Medicaid, and she’s also someone who has publicly told her story for decades to help score wins for the Texas disability community and the attendants who care for them. Now that the U.S. House passed its bill that would cut 13.7 million off of health insurance, Crowther is using her voice to call senators to tell them what Medicaid does for her — and urging others to join her.

(Above, radio version of story, from The People's News, KPFT-FM Houston, May 22, 2025.)

“{Medicaid] involves so many programs for young, for old, for different types of disabilities. It’s just a multiuse tool and if you start losing pieces of that tool, that's part of your independence that you’re losing,” she says. “Our lawmakers don't even understand that.”

Medicaid is the primary funder for home- and community-based services to keep seniors and people with disabilities living in their own homes with families and caregivers, instead of in institutional care like nursing homes that are more costly to taxpayers. These popular attendant-care programs already have waiting lists for enrollees in states across the country, and with current plans to shift Medicaid costs away from the federal government onto the states, with fewer resources, “usually, historically, the first [programs] on the chopping block are those home- and community-based services,” according to Jason Resendez of the nonprofit National Alliance for Caregiving. Losing her independence this way would be Crowther’s worst-case scenario. “The lowest thing on the totem pole would have to be an institution,” she says. “That would just be the death nail.”

In the House bill, the savings only partially fund $3.7 billion in tax cuts, the largest share of which going to those with the highest 10% of income. The bill would add $2.4 trillion to the national debt, not counting adding interest on that debt.

Crowther discovered the power of her voice years before the Americans with Disabilities Act, in the 1980s. She got involved in the movement to make Austin public transit accessible not only for people with disabilities, but also seniors and families with strollers. Since then, she’s been awarded for her groundbreaking work and has continued speaking out across her state of Texas, sometimes sharing her personal story with policymakers, or being the only disability perspective present at a meeting or serving on an advisory board.

Crowther was part of the push that moved the Texas legislature to boost wages for attendants who care for the disabled and seniors in 2023. Last month, members of her group, ADAPT-Texas, were among 300 wheelchairs users and supporters who packed the U.S. Capitol. Twenty-seven were arrested for bringing a House committee hearing to a halt, demanding they not touch Medicaid. This week, Crowther encourages fellow Texans to call their U.S. senators and relate their own stories and those of families and friends to whom Medicaid is important.

“It really fills you up with a sense of boldness, strength and compassion because you've done what was right,” she says. “And, you know, when people complain about things, I just look at them, like, ‘And what have you done about it?’ Not to be mean, but I've got to put it back in their hands.”

To reach senators’ and representatives’ offices, call the U.S. Capitol Switchboard at (202) 224-3121.

Now how did I get into this one?

I rolled onto my side for pressure relief. I have the laptop in bed next to me — I change the screen orientation to portrait so that it’s sideways, and this works pretty well. But as I’m working, I notice the craziest thing. There’s an arrowhead sticking out underneath my nipple, the bottom half of it anyway. Not a typical arrowhead, but a smooth plastic one, almost like a guitar pick. It even has a purplish composite pattern similar to a guitar pick. But it’s sticking out of my skin.

What the hell did I do now? It doesn’t really hurt and I didn’t even notice it going in, but Mab is going to blow her stack over this. I mean, how did I even do this? Because I’m always getting into bonkers crap by accident. Pulling the cantilever table off of the wall. Plunging into a ditch getting the mail. Rolling over a floor-mounted art installation. Ramming into my desk while trying to sidle up for a sip of water and finding out I sliced back a layer of skin on my forearm. My chair ought to come with safety cones because I’m a rolling disaster.

To make things worse, the arrowhead is a good ways in, and angled so that it’s disappearing under my skin … almost like my otherwise healthy skin is pulling back into position and bringing the arrowhead with it. No blood yet but I’ve got to work fast before things get sloppy. Mab has forceps that would be perfect for this but by the time she gets here it’s going to be lost under the skin and then it’s a trip to the ER and all of that. So, I didn’t have much extra fingernail but I try pinching the small corner of arrowhead before it disappears, before it turns into a UN incident.

It’s while I’m pinching at the thing — unsuccessfully, because it keeps sliding further under my nipple — that I realize that I haven’t been able to move my hand this much in years, so either this is such an emergency that my body is pumping miraculous amounts of adrenaline into my hand (something like this has happened before, but that’s another story),

Or I must be dreaming.

Postscript. It was very comfortable lying in a new position like that. When I awoke, my nipple was not pointy. I was not in trouble with Mab. I don’t take naps, but that was a helluva good one.

A view on disability leave that you probably haven't seen before

On the MS Society's Momentum blog, I write that disability leave is usually very helpful, yet it's a two-sided coin:

I remember the quiet, so pristine I wished I could bottle it. It was my first week on Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI). I couldn’t believe I didn’t have to go in to work: No more taking 3 hours to get ready, then driving 45 minutes downtown, parking and struggling to reach my desk on the 14th floor in time. I didn’t have to do any of that, only heal. My apartment was so silent and still that the air was almost ringing.

It was heavenly.

Fast forward a few years. I got up to start my day and begin the long process of pills, washing, dressing and breakfast. My apartment was so silent and still that the air was almost ringing.

And it was driving me freaking insane!

It surprises me that I've never seen another writer saying this: that going on disability was a lifesaving opportunity for me, but the comeback effects in terms of social isolation, depression and more, brought serious consequences for me. I'd definitely like hearing from any others who had experiences like this. 

I encourage you to go for a better life on disability ... but keep your eyes peeled for both sides of the coin. 

Disinvited to the party: A new administration means new challenges to people with disabilities

Seeing the president quickly claiming that disabled workers and diversity, equity and inclusion programs played a part in the fatal Jan. 29 Washington D.C. air collision, when investigations were barely underway and no one knew anything for sure, was certainly a batten-down-the-hatches moment. Especially when it was soon apparent that there is a long record of close calls between military and civilian air traffic in that area, and even now the NTSB is looking at several possible causes including equipment malfunction that may have led the military aircraft to fly too high in the air space. Yet the knee-jerk response was to go after people with disabilities. Then, it’s not surprising from someone who publicly mocks the disabled for a laugh line.

Obviously DEI is this season’s political bogeyman. However, there are practical reasons why DEI programs came about. Yesterday I learned about a paraplegic who works for the government developing emergency response protocols to cover people with disabilities, because who is going to know how to handle the needs of people with disabilities better than other people with disabilities? And since professionals in the field want to better their knowledge, they actually want to learn how to best help people with disabilities from people with disabilities. Does that follow? It’s hardly a nefarious scheme. Many times I have been asked, as someone who is disabled, for ideas on how to set things up in ways that are better for people with disabilities, from architectural details to technology questions and even the shapes of tables. This week I was hired for a job because they need someone who has experience with disability because some of their clientele have disabilities. I hadn’t thought of it until now, but I guess that makes me a “DEI hire.” Egad. I feel so dirty.

What’s interesting is seeing how quickly the broad-based corporate support for DEI fell like a tree, affecting not only the disabled and minorities but women too. But I understand that corporate America doesn’t want a fight with authorities — it wants stability and predictability, and so its support was always as thin as a dollar bill. Take note of that time you see a commercial tugging at your heartstrings about how much the advertiser cares about you. But it’s also wrong for me to paint with too broad a brush, when plenty of big names are standing behind their principles, like Apple, JPMorganChase, Delta Airlines, John Deere, Costco, Ben & Jerry’s and e.l.f. Cosmetics.

Add in that Medicaid — a major insurer of the disabled and the guarantor of services that keep people living in their own homes instead of (and for cheaper than) nursing homes — is a likely target for cuts after the U.S. House of Representatives passed a budget resolution this week calling for a massive $2 trillion in cuts.

Also, Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1977, a major piece of accessibility law that led to the Americans with Disability Act, is being challenged by the attorneys general of 17 states. Some of those bringing the suit claim that the challenge is limited to recently amended parts of the law that cover transgender people, but the language of the suit specifically targets the entire accessibility law.

Taken together, the disability community is definitely on edge. Rather than sit and squirm over the news though, long-time disability advocacy leader Bob Kafka’s advice is “don’t mourn — organize.” For instance, the House would have to go through many steps before any proposed Medicaid cuts would become a reality, so it’s a good time begin calling your rep (Capitol Switchboard 202-224-3121) and let them know what you think about how they voted this week and how Medicaid cuts would affect you or those you know. You can likewise chime in on the Section 504 case and tell your attorney general how important accessibility is to you, the voter. These policies and provisions were hard won, and once they’re diminished or gone, they’ll be extremely hard to claw back.

It ain’t pretty but it sure is beautiful: ADA accommodations like a concrete pad can be pretty cheap

We have needed new gravel on our driveway for a couple of years now. Dry sandy soil, thick tree roots exposed by erosion, and bumps left from heavy work equipment: All have made getting around our place more and more difficult. Actually for the past few months it’s caused me to go out less and stick to the porch instead. With every year and every gully washer of a storm, the problem has grown worse. We’ve invited contractors who seem interested in the job, but then don’t hear from them again. I’m guessing that our job is too small to warrant their time, but who knows?

Then last week, I got stuck at the base of the ramp in front of the house. I was chasing a rare patch of winter sunshine, being careful not to stray too far, but on that day, even 3 feet out was too far. When I turned to go back up the ramp, my wheelchair tire started spinning in the dirt. I called Mab over to help eye up the situation, and together we buried that tire down even deeper.

They say good guys wear white hats. Well, the good guy in my story drives a white pickup. And the first thing I saw when I lifted my eyes from the buried tire was that white pickup passing by on the street. It was my buddy Gary coming home from work.

“Siri, call Gary.”

A few short minutes later, the cavalry had arrived: The white pickup pulled up right there in front of us and out piled Gary. He’s a big guy, and even though his hip was ailing, he wasn’t content to just help with pushing. Instead, he lifted the rear of the wheelchair right out of the dirt. I skedaddled a retreat up the ramp before I could land in any more trouble, but Gary didn’t leave right away — here-around you’ve got to “visit” first. All the while, he scratched his head, looking at the derned problem-spot at the foot of the ramp.

It was a couple days later, a Saturday, when he showed up again. In the bed of his vehicle he’d loaded five bags of gravel and two more of concrete mix. He raked the rock into a hook shape, curving away from the ramp. Then he spread the powdered concrete over the gravel. Mab brought the water hose and the two of them worked the concrete into the rock. I was in bed, healing from a saddle sore, during all this. But by the time I laid eyes on it a couple days later, here’s what I saw:

Not good pics, but I've gotta get this posted already.

Behold $83 of materials, 700 pounds of material, less than two hours’ work, and a whole heck of a lot of friendship. The “pad” is about 3.5 feet wide and extends out some 9 feet before curving back around like the tail of comma, giving me a good start up the driveway. For now, this gets me through. To harden a couple of remaining loose patches of gravel, Gary brought one more bag of concrete to add over the top. So now it comes to about $90.

As has been stressed over and over by the Department of Justice and many others since introduction of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, access accommodations needn’t be expensive — they only take a willingness to do them. Praise be for good friends who make life a joy. Meanwhile, I’ve found another contact for gravel, and we’ll see how it goes.

World Gone Sideways: Bedsore Recovery Turns Life Topsy-Tervy

I ruptured my hull.

I done sprung a pressure sore down there, on my business end. Actually not a pressure sore, it’s a pressure “sort of”: started with a tiny cut, a fissure in the skin. When we found it I stayed in bed the whole next day, that’s how seriously I took it, and in the morning it looked safe to sail again. I kept my sails trimmed, lying back frequently in my wheelchair to take pressure off, and everything was cool.

But the next morning, we were taking on water. The split had splat. The cut had widened into … well, you don’t need the details. But now it was a thing, with its own address. It had set up shop.

For a wheelchair user this is a code red. We do our best work on our asses. Some of us even are asses. Getting a wound there would be something like a nondisabled person stepping on a nail or broken bottle, except a wheelchair user doesn’t have a second, uninjured ass he can still get around on with a crutch for a couple of weeks.

Unless you’re lucky, these things heal slow, so I’ve been in bed since last week. Once I spent the better part of a summer in bed, biding my time. When I finally made my way out of the house in late August, the bluest sky in history was out there waiting for me, blUing its ever-lovin’ top off, right above my head. Heavenly days!

But back to the here and now. In true Texas fashion, where we go bigger and more catastrophic than anyplace else, my lovely wife tripped while she was walking the critter, and landed hard on her shoulder. The urgent care center said nothing had broken or ruptured, so she’s been going around doing everything, including the caregiving, with one arm. Baby’s still got chops, but does em at half-speed.

Capsized  

A couple of weeks in, we’re generally on the mend but it’s slow going. Mary Anne is the quickest of studies, learning how to do everything one-handed, and taking more breaks through the day. She has new respect for our friend Judy, who was born with half an arm. “How ever does she put on her bra?” Judy loved that.

I am lying on my side now writing you this. And we can't get the laptop computer to lie at the same angle as my face, so it's … weird. My world is tilted, like the bad guys' hideouts in the Batman TV show.

Mary Anne made some fried rice, zapped up with sambal oelek pepper paste from Indonesia. Sitting on a stool, she feeds us the spicy rice as I lie capsized in bed. It’s at once pathetic and more romantic than our first date together, which was 35 years and 10 days ago.

But we’ll survive and rise again, like we’ve done before, then, down the line, stumble into another breakdown, so that we can rise again from that one. The waves they go up and down, but always they carry us forward. Anchors aweigh.

MS anti-inflammation and improvement from a cheap, safe OTC supplement we all know?

Studies show that oral N-acetylglucosamine produced benefits for remitting-relapsing, primary progressive and secondary progressive types of MS. After one month, nearly one-third of subjects reported less disability. No serious side effects were seen even after supplementing for long periods of time. As of last summer, the National Institutes of Health was continuing to study it, but as lead researcher Dr. Michael Demetriou of University of California Irvine School of Medicine points out, "Anyone can get their hands on [it now] if they have $20."

And that’s just what I’ve done, except that it was $17.99 — for potential MS anti-inflammation and symptom improvement.

I don’t know how many out there are like me, but I’m without an MS treatment. With primary progressive MS like mine, there are few disease-modifying drugs available. The DMT most prescribed for PPMS is Ocrevus, but my neurologist, who was one of the researchers that helped to get the drug approved, strongly warned me away from it because of the risk of respiratory infections that I, as a full-time wheelchair user, may not be able to fight off. So while the MS Society recommends that everyone with MS should be on a DMT, I haven’t been on one for years. At this point my case is only very gradually worsening, but I don’t know how much more spinal cord I have left before I develop breathing and swallowing problems or more.

Then, instead of just playing defense with symptom management alone, I’m been open to looking at promising research-study results. Nothing crazy. I stick to NIH-related stuff. One of my past neuros, who had MS himself, pointed me to a study about intermittent fasting, which I read and, yes, gave a try for a few months. It wasn’t for me, but I tried.

Another, I still stick to. Overcoming Multiple Sclerosis is a program started by Dr. George Jelinek in Australia, who has MS and went through the scientific literature of the time to come up with his protocol. It’s a number of lifestyle changes, like exercise, meditation, minimizing stress and taking daily omega-3 fatty acids in the form of flaxseed oil. The most difficult step for most would be the largely plant-based whole foods diet, except for allowing various cold-water fish — so really it’s a pescatarian diet. The thinking behind it is to minimize saturated fats, which according to the work of influential doctors Swank and McDougall, contribute to the most rapid MS deterioration. I tried going the extra step of cutting out meat altogether, since I was 95% of the way there already, and I did fine with it, and have been vegan now for about a dozen years.

There are no miraculous cures anywhere on this page. OMS is about maximizing your well-being while living with MS, including using DMT’S, Jelinek writes.

Still, taking glucosamine — make sure it’s oral N-acetylglucosamine for best results — which is available for cheap at your local anywhere store, to maybe get both anti-inflammation and improvement? With little or no side effects? Tantalizing, yes?

Related articles:

https://jneuroinflammation.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12974-023-02893-9

https://www.webmd.com/multiple-sclerosis/news/20240710/could-help-be-coming-for-progressive-multiple-sclerosis

https://multiplesclerosisnewstoday.com/news-posts/2023/09/19/sugar-molecule-supplements-glcnac-may-ease-inflammation-ms-trial/

https://www.ucihealth.org/news/2024/07/progressive-multiple-sclerosis

https://tinyurl.com/baj4ejzb

https://multiplesclerosisnewstoday.com/news-posts/2020/10/09/simple-sugar-molecule-may-be-potential-myelin-repairing-therapy-multiple-sclerosis-mouse-study/

Be Like Boye

This has been a hard one to post. I wrote most of it a couple weeks ago, but for some reason, have been putting off posting it.

I’m writing this tribute to my friend we lost recently, MsBoye Nagle. When we hear warnings that death can come for us at any time, this is it. I’m sorting my feelings by writing.

It is Christmas Eve, when we remember our shades, our ghosts, and now she is one of them — who will always be one of the special, joyful ones. Poet, actor, teacher, coach, mentor, MC, activist, Brahma, cheerleader, friend. She’s still eerily near the top of my email inbox. Most of all I hate writing and reading this because I’m talking about her in the third-person, like she’s a past event, like she’s a stone monument already, when I still think of her in the second-person: MsBoye, when are we finally hanging out? When you have time? I’m sorry I made you wait. I was busy doing stupid things. When are we going to work together again?

I, in the first-person, feel like a fool that she had to leave for me to say these things. Ineffectual words, like throwing water against a wall. Is this all posturing, or am I going to do better?

I have to explain that I’ve only ever known her in two dimensions, on my computer screen. I joined Art Spark Texas’ disability-centered Speaking Advocates program, where she was teacher, as a lockdown thing to do. We spent more time together working on the True Tales of Disability Advocates podcast, and over the years at the Lion & Pirate Open Mics, but it was always remotely. This was the year we were going to meet, when we were going to hang out. You’d think someone with a progressive illness like me would have a better respect for time: As the sands fill the hourglass, they’re also burying more and more of my body.  But at this instant, if I could pull one of my arms free, I’d shake a fist not at fate, not at the doctors, but at myself. Maybe I’m having my Ebenezer Scrooge-morning-after moment. Maybe MsBoye is teaching me something still.

Always I marveled at her bottomless well of poetry. I marveled whenever I got to hear her recite it. She was wonderful. 

I learned a lot from her about embracing others, and embracing myself. That my story is good enough to tell, so to let it spill — just set a timer and write, write, dash, race to the end. She was always quick with a compliment and encouragement, and hearing her say time and again I have a British sense of humor, made me feel a kinship with her.

I’m certain she made everyone in this room feel just as special. Some possess that rare gift, and others like me are just lucky to fall in with them.

She was one of a kind, and, as our friend Birdman said at her memorial, completely genuine. It was moving to hear how she enriched and supported so many with her many talents and interests. She lived her life thoroughly. It’s mind-boggling when someone with energy like that simply ceases to be. But does she really? Because she is playing out in each of us who knew her – that’s the kind of impact she had, demonstrating an impact that we all could have.

Our friend Thom Moon compared her to a long line of the great poets through the ages. She belongs in that pantheon. For her work, for her ways, for her spirit. According to Thom, the great poet-spirit was like an undying flame that gets passed on through time — that she carried the same flame as Homer, Shakespeare, Wordsworth (who our friend Eric Clow read from), Byron, Nikki Giovanni, Andrei Codrescu and others. So, to Thom, she’s always with us, and if that’s the case, then I get a chance to say, “Heartfelt thanks to you, my friend. I miss you.”

 

Who Gives a Care?: Plans To Help the Sandwich Generation and the Growing Care Crisis

Don’t you get nervous talking to attorneys? I do, and it’s been a nervous time for me lately.

I’ve been calling lawyers to ask about opening a trust — no, I don’t really know what that is either, except I keep reading advice that I should look into one, like, right now. You see, with advanced and progressing MS, and with my wife and I both being seniors, we have a good-enough chance of needing care down the line. While full-time home care can cost nearly $69,000 a year (CNN) and a nursing facility at least $104,000 yearly (KFF), our home and life’s savings won’t last long. To get any assistance, we’d have to qualify for Medicaid, which requires selling off the home from under my wife. My nervousness talking to attorneys is a small price to pay.

 francescoridolfi.com | Credit: Rido - stock.adobe.com

We’re not alone. Seventy percent of us who live to be seniors will need care, according to the Urban Institute. More than 105 million in the “sandwich generation” are caregivers of some sort, a number that has more than doubled in the last decade (Rand Corporation). More than 14 million are caring for service members or veterans. Two-thirds of them have to balance this with a job, and often they take a hit in income by having to go to part-time work or taking time off (AARP).

Seventy percent of seniors. One hundred four million people. Hm, think there’s a constituency there? Seniors just happen to be the most reliable voters, too.

Citing her own experiences caring for her late mother battling cancer, Vice Pres. Kamala Harris has proposed a Medicare at Home program, which would expand Medicare to help with home care costs for seniors and people with disabilities who might earn too much to qualify for Medicaid but cannot afford long-term care. She also wants to cap child care costs at 7% of income, pass paid family and medical leave, and raise wages for care workers. (The last one’s critical, because there is already a severe shortage of care workers due to the poor pay.) She proposes paying for this with savings from negotiating more prescription drug prices down with pharmaceutical makers, which has already been successful with a handful of drugs under 2022’s Inflation Reduction Act.

This follows Pres. Biden’s ambitious 2021 proposal to invest $400 billion in care services for children, seniors and people with disabilities. That part of the Build Back Better bill got shot down in haggling with Congress, but it was a bold target to set. Now the idea out there.

The need is great: I have spoken to an at-home care coordinator in Pennsylvania who says people in her area are stuck in nursing homes not because they need intensive care, but because there are no home workers available so that they can live a place of their own in the community. Also I’ve talked to the head of a statewide network of care workers in Austin, Texas, who recited a list of care workers she knows who, out of love, continue to work beyond what their aging bodies can handle, because there are no younger workers to take their place in caring for their clients. According to Nicole Jorwic, who has long watched the issue as head of advocacy at nonprofit Caring Across Generations in Washington, D.C., "It doesn't matter if you're in Portland or if you're in central Illinois, … it is a nationwide problem.” Plus, she noted, the population is aging and the need for care will only increase.

This weekend Donald Trump proposed a tax credit be given to family caregivers. Advocates like Jorwic are skeptical without details or ideas to build up the needed care “infrastructure,” i.e., creating more care workers and supports. But the point is that the care issue is on everyone’s radar now, and that’s good for us.

But for now, I pick up the phone, and prepare to get nervous again. Go vote and let them know we’re out here, people.

Looking for Dr. Right (Cause the difference between a good doctor and the right doctor is huge.)

Imagine you and your roommates are desperate for a bite to eat, and at long last some carts roll in. Everyone gets a covered dish, all but you — before you can even ask, somebody says, “Oh no, that’s not for you. Wait until the next round of carts.” The dishes are uncovered, and there’s some grousing but everyone chows down, right in front of you. Then another round of carts shows up and the roommates get a choice to change over to those meals. All but you again, because “Oh no, that’s not for you either. Wait until the next round.” On and on this goes, for years.

Let’s hear it from the other primary progressive MSers with plate-envy. Most cases of MS are diagnosed as remitting-relapsing, with distinct attacks of symptoms, and for whatever reason, most of the medicines treat that variant. In comparison, those with primary progressive have gone with empty plates until recent years and a treatment approved for PPMS, Ocrevus — but I’ll get to that later.

Johnny, tell him about our exciting parting gifts.

Over my decades with MS, I’ve been on a couple of disease-modifying treatments, with little results. As my condition progressed, my treatment screeched to a standstill. Though my chief neurologist in those years was a leader in the field, I received little medical support or encouragement, other than the occasional round of physical therapy I requested. Pretty much all of the treatments that came out after Betaseron did in 1993 were named “Oh no, that’s not for you.” That’s all I was hearing, so that became the attitude that seeped in and I settled into a kind of long-term funk. If my expectations were low, my morale and self-esteem were probably even lower.

Then a crazy thing happened on Reddit, of all places. There was a new treatment out, Ocrevus, and someone had found a doctor across town who was one of the drug’s researchers. The Redditer was eager to try the treatment because she felt kicked around by the disease and the medical establishment since her diagnosis eight years ago. Welp, eight years? What about 25 years, which was how long I’d been struggling? Frankly I was getting sick and tired of hearing people complaining about MS — which of course they’re going to complain because they’re frightened and frustrated — but for that one moment I’m thinking, ‘My case is so much worse than almost every case I’ve encountered.’ And here I was, getting passed up yet again, this time by someone who has had the diagnosis less than half as long as me. What about me? What am I to the medical establishment?

I was fed up and tired of eating from everybody else’s dog dish. From the info online, I found a research nurse who worked with this doctor and I contacted her, hoping she wouldn’t hang up on me. No, instead she helped me schedule with her doctor! The clouds parted and the angels sang and my jaw dropped to the floor so hard I had to winch it back into place. I floated around for the rest of the day, singing and whistling with the bluebirds like I was Snow White or something (but sounding more like Dopey).

Bringing it.

I went to the appointment to ask for Ocrevus, which was being promoted for PPMS, and the answer I got was “Oh no, that’s not for you”: It turned out that Ocrevus carried a risk of respiratory infection that I’m ill-prepared to fight off. So why was I so happy, ready to hang out with muh bluebirds when I left the office?

The difference was that the new doctor and nurse had a plan, an entire anti-MS battle map. This was an appointment that changed my life forever. My MS would not get treated directly, but there was a cascade of MS side effects that we would be taking on, with a whole team of medical pros. A new rehab doctor would be managing the great amount of spasticity/muscle tone causing me stiffness and fatigue, and hardship (even hazards) for my wife as my caregiver. A new pain surgeon would be giving me a baclofen pump implant to address spasticity more effectively than any oral tablets could. A new urologist would give me a suprapubic catheter, to manage ever trickier bladder issues. A new physiatrist would eventually give me Botox injections to better control my muscles and fatigue. New physical and occupational therapists would be there to help me learn these new ropes.

It was a lot of appointments, for sure, but as long as my insurance held steady, I didn’t feel put out or overwhelmed. Rather, I was energized: I went from nothing-going-on, to a whole bunch of stuff going on, for my wife and me both. Each of my new team was in touch with the others, so I felt supported like never before. This was the opposite of “that’s not for you.” There were tangible improvements happening in our lives.

My new rehab doctor, whom I hadn’t even met, told me over the speakerphone, “We’re going to give you a new body.” My wife beside me had tears running down her face. Something was happening — for me, for us — at last. We had a medical team to consult with, who had our backs and listened. Seriously it felt like the doctor and nurse possessed a golden key that unlocked the great puzzle that was my world.

Since then, I’ve added and made changes to my team. This felt like such an awakening in my life, like I had come back from the dead. Starting here, I gained a lot of momentum in life. The only other thing that compares is finding my friend Dave Perez and the Skydiving for MS event he offered in my area. Both moments felt like I was shaking off a lot of rust and getting off to a running start again in life. Life can pass you by quick, so be careful of remaining still for too long.

You best heed, whippersnapper.

Finding my health care team and improving on it over the years was a godsend. It’s something I recommend to everyone. Usually it’s difficult to find those doctors who take time with you and listen and function as collaborators and team partners, but once you find them you’ll see how worthwhile it is.

Mark Twain said “the difference between the almost-right word and the right word is … the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.” Here’s wishing you lightning and inspiration in your upcoming appointments: I want you to hear, “Oh yes, I’ve got ideas for you.” There is a huge difference between a good doctor and the right doctor, just like there’s a huge difference between “oh no, that’s not for you” and an appointment that will change your life.

Shiva Jukes Their Back Out

A jack of all trades is a master of none, though oftentimes better than a master of one. That’s a caregiver, in a nutshell. Except a caregiver is usually limited to two arms, the righty and the lefty, the dexter and the sinister, which limits how many trades they can exercise at once. Many have 10 articulating fingers, true, and brains that span in a million directions, though all of their capabilities and selflessness is nailed down to a single austere plane, where a pair of clock hands turn on a perpetual axis of time: Everything is the slave of time.

That is why the Hindu God Shiva should be the patron of caregivers. With multiple arms, each with their own purpose, Shiva is the Swiss Army knife of Hindu deities. I don’t want to make light of it, because this is someone’s deity, but I’ve long had a thing for Shiva, ever since I saw him through a shop window on Devon Avenue on the far north side of Chicago, where you can find a mile-long stretch of Indian and South Asian stores and restaurants. One evening, I toddled out of one of them, chewing aromatic fennel seeds, still blissed out from the curry. Have you ever had a spicy curry or a pepper dish that makes you levitate out of your seat? So I’m walking off this incredible meal, weaving between the cars rushing by, because, as Dennis Hopper would say, ‘That cat’s on the curry, man.’

In a glass showcase I spotted a colorful graphic on a sheet of 8.5” by 11”. There was Shiva, red and brightly adorned, with arms fanned out like peacock feathers and holding an array of implements — a sword, a pike, a lantern, a little dancing Pentecostal-type flame, an eye that opened in the palm of a hand — and in another of his hands he holds a blue guy’s head. (A quick search tells me the dripping head belongs to Brahma, who I thought was the head man — no pun intended! He doesn’t look happy about the situation. I’ll read more about this later, but from the grizzly scene and body language, it looks like a domestic.)

What was most beguiling was that Shiva does this all with such a placid, lovely face. It was very matter-of-fact, like Shiva was hanging out the wash. I liked that aspect of him, that he was knocking out some serious work but it was just business as usual, and he was doing it in style, with fine threads and fine face — in fact I just found out I’d accidentally been misgendering him for decades: Sorry, Shiva. So I went in and bought it, and hung it on the wall of my new apartment. I was pretty healthy then.

After a couple of years of those two hands turning on their axis: not so much. The apartment was no longer very tidy. I’m sure you could find dust, plenty of it, and a sinkful of pots and pans because I’d lost the energy to do anything about. My transmission was stuck in multiple sclerosis overdrive, and I did the bare minimum to get from day to day: Basically using one set of dishes and silverware, stretching out the laundry for as long as I could, like that. The handrailing leading to my second-story entrance wobbled now because I leaned on it so much. Shiva himself had fallen on the floor a couple of times and been re-tacked up, but still he had on that same groovy face, and I needed to see that.

There was a couch there in that small living room, a sleeper sofa that was my Oma’s. Man, was it heavy to carry upstairs into the apartment. Often I’d pitch face-first into that couch, still in my leather jacket and clothes, and shoes scuffed on the one side where I dragged my foot. I would dive into that couch and zonk out for hours. If I woke in the middle of the night, the glow of the streetlight outside would stream onto my wall, striped by the half-opened window blinds, and illuminated Shiva above me, coolly and calmly transacting her 24-hour killing spree up on my wall. You can count on some things: death, taxes, Shiva. I looked up and thought, Shiva, come save me. Before I zonked back to sleep.

One of the friends I shared great times with on Devon was a girl I was dating, someday to be my wife.

Even before we were married, as we grew more serious — as my condition grew serious — I watched her grow many extra arms, new ones daily, right before my very eyes, and become a caregiver, doing more things than a person with two arms should rightly be tasked to do. We don’t have kids together, and this was before our vows, before our engagement, when she had no skin in the game. But there was that level of devotion from her, an unfolding a mystery which I didn’t understand. This little Shiva is tough, smart and resourceful, but it’s an even match: multiple arms versus multiple sclerosis. She’s 5-6, I’m 6-2. She’s 140 pounds, I’m 172 — you do the math. So far she hasn’t taken off my head, YET.

So, plot twist, what happens when Shiva gets hurt? When her array of arms is going great guns, but her back weakens and becomes injured? When the daily tasks of dozens of hands go unmet, and pile up? And far worse, when her calm and pleasing visage gets twisted in pain and frustration? That has been the story of our summer. We’ve gotten through this before, and we’ll do it now. I’ve seen this movie before, and Shiva does rise again. She’s already on her way back.

Meanwhile the two hands keep spinning, faster and faster on their axis.