On an otherwise cold, gray, blustery, wet and miserable day, a few rays of sunshine poke through during the late afternoon. If sunshine and warmth are possible on a day like this, anything is…

I know, I know: this sounds uncharacteristically optimistic of me, doesn’t it!?

In my most recent entry regarding the experiment with low-dose Naltrexone (LDN), I mentioned that there seemed to be some improvement in my CMP (chronic myofascial pain) symptoms, though I had, at the same time, developed some additional pains after 12 days on the drug. Here’s another report on my LDN experience.

I believe the LDN trial was probably worthwhile, but, for me, it just didn’t work out. The additional pain symptoms overtook any possible gains I was noticing just one day after my last report. So, after 13 consecutive nights on the drug, I discontinued it for the next two. Amazingly, after backing away from the medication for just that short period of time, the tendonitis symptoms in my arms began to recede. I had been reading on the LDN listerve that some individuals need to start LDN at an even lower dose (1.5 mg per night) than I had been taking (3 mg) in order for the body to adjust. So I started back on the drug, taking one pill every other night for the next two weeks (another 7 pills). All told, I took 20 of the 30 pills I had been prescribed, though I have now stopped altogether.

I am completely distressed to report that I am in worse shape than when I started; the last pill I took was six nights ago and I’m still looking for an improvement in the new and additional pain symptoms that ultimately resulted. Although my arms have seemingly recovered, I am now experiencing more back pain than ever before, and in new locations. It has me rather scared about what I may have done to myself, though the dose of the drug was so low and the time period so short, I’m hoping that if these new symptoms are at all related to the drug (and not to the hugely increased stress in my life in the last week), then I can look forward to the pain backing off in the next few days. However, as of yet that has not happened, and the pain level is really getting in the way of normal life. I took a day and a half away from work this last week because of it, and I’m likely going to need some more time away tomorrow if I can get in for an appointment with my chiropractor in Eugene. I have decided that I need help to deal with this.

My advice to anyone trying the LDN approach is to be very watchful and mindful of what you’re doing. At the first sign of unpleasant side effects (which are supposed to be practically non-existent, but in my case was not so), critically evaluate what you might be doing with/to your body. LDN was not approved for many of the things it’s being used to treat. Be careful out there.

I’ve previously written about my struggles with “fitting in.” This has been another one of those weeks, and especially one of those days, when I’ve re-engaged with that issue. I’m in a pretty much “glass-half-empty” kind of space tonight as I contemplate a few indicators of a life that’s not working all that well at the moment. So, here they are: how you might tell your life could be in better shape…

• Losing a job that you’d had for nearly a decade. Being ignored, unappreciated and unceremoniously dismissed in the process.

• Spending the best hours of every day on the downhill side of life working and looking for work. (Well, and writing the occasional blog entry.)

• Worrying about health. Worrying about safety, security, and stability. Worrying about worrying to death.

• Finding work that is merely temporary. Being treated like a temp.

• Having (or at least taking) no time to stop and smell the roses. Having no time to produce art. Having no time to read a novel.

• Barely enough energy to get out of bed, lots of times, just imagining the difficulty level of the day ahead.

• Constant, chronic myofascial pain, accompanied frequently by headaches and symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome. Other strange aches, pains & afflictions and occasional infections.

• Coming home after work and always finding that it’s another evening alone. And, consequently, anticipating that dying and death will also come very alone.

• Spending part of every evening taking a hot bath, trying to soak away some of the pain. Easing into the hot water, being overwhelmed with hopelessness. Feeling, fighting, the inclination to sob.

• Feeling the large part, of most every day, like a misfit.

It wasn’t that long ago I went to the movies almost every Saturday afternoon. In recent times, though, that behavior has all but disappeared as the product from Hollywood seems to be more and more drivel-of-the-mindless-type all the time. Until Friday (two days ago), the last movie I saw in a theatre was sometime early last summer before I moved south.

But when I was in Eugene on Friday, I decided it was time, again, to take in a first-run film…so I went to see Stranger Than Fiction on its opening day. This was a rather odd choice of a movie for me, as anything with Will Ferrell in it is bound to be rather juvenile, isn’t it? I mean, after all: Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby ? Give me a break!

Despite these thoughts, though, I had seen the movie trailer and it seemed oddly intriguing. Also, it had other interesting cast members such as Dustin Hoffman and Emma Thompson, actors that generally appeal to me. So, given that I was in the mall right across the street from the theatre, I said, what the heck…

This movie tells the story of Harold Crick (Ferrell), a single guy, who (rather like me, I’m afraid) “lived a life of solitude. He would walk home alone; he would eat alone. When others’ minds would fantasize about their upcoming day, Harold just counted brush strokes…” (well, no, I don’t count strokes as I brush my teeth, thank you very much).

The passage, in quotes above, is from the voice (Emma Thompson’s) that Harold begins to hear in his head one morning while he is brushing, a voice that narrates the events of his life as they happen, a voice that speaks, according to Harold, “about [him], accurately, and with a better vocabulary…”

The incessant voice is quite annoying, and it was heading in the direction of totally immobilizing him (as it was the only way to stop the running narration). That is, until one day, the voice observes, “little did he [Harold] know that events had been set in motion that would lead to his imminent death” … an observation that, naturally, tips Harold over the edge. He’s going to die? Imminently ??

Having already sought help from a psychiatrist (played by Linda Hunt) – who simply wants to medicate him – Harold then decides to seek assistance of another type, this time literary help in the form of literature professor Jules Hilbert (Dustin Hoffman). The dominant questions become, after Jules finally decides to pursue the investigation:

• is Harold’s life a comedy or tragedy? and
• what are the possibilities, among living authors, for the identity of the narrator’s voice?

Naturally, as it turns out, Harold is the character in a novel being written by the Emma Thompson character, author Kay Eiffel. And it is Eiffel who must figure out a way to kill off Harold, as all the heroes in all her books always die in the end.

Along the way, however, in a totally romantic-comedy manner (and coincident with the decision that his life is a tragedy), Harold has an incredible thing happen to him. He meets bakery-shop owner Ana Pascal (deliciously portrayed by Maggie Gyllenhaal), and begins to think about her all the time. Although love has (apparently) never been a part of his life before, it becomes a dominant element now.

Despite all this, Eiffel continues to struggle mightily with just the right way to end Harold’s life. As die he, inevitably, must.

As Roger Ebert points out in his review of the film, the question of how (or even whether) to kill off Harold “is the engine for the moral tale.” Ebert continues…

How rare to find a pensive film about the responsibilities we have to art. If Eiffel’s novel would be a masterpiece with Harold’s death, does he have a right to live? On the other hand, does she have the right to kill him off for her work?

I suggest you go see Stranger Than Fiction and wrestle with the issues raised. I don’t think you’ll regret the time you spend engaged in your pondering mode.

We’re just two days shy of the third anniversary of Governor Kulongoski’s announcement (on November 13, 2003) that he was asking for the resignations of several members of the Oregon State Board of Higher Education (OSBHE). Also part of his action was to express a desire that former Governor Neil Goldschmidt be appointed to the OSBHE and installed as its president.

That Fall day in 2003 was one that not only changed the lives of the Board members involved, but mine as well; as a staff person in the Oregon University System Chancellor’s Office, the OSBHE was my direct employer. On that fateful Thursday, I was attending the annual conference of the Association for the Study of Higher Education in Portland, and I heard the news, first, as a “rumor.” Somebody mentioned to me that the Governor had “fired the Board of Higher Ed,” which, of course, was unbelievable; no chief executive in our state had ever done such a thing since the department of higher education had been established in the late 1920s. I knew all of the Board members quite well, and there had been absolutely no behavior on their part that could, or should, have led to such a wholesale action by the Governor. The Board members were, all, dedicated public servants, doing the best job they could for higher education in the State.

However, as the course of the day wore on, the information became increasingly more clear. I went to my room in the Hilton late that afternoon, watched the early edition of the evening news on KGW, and discovered the rumor was actually fact. There were a couple of main topics with my dinner companions that night: speculation about what this action would mean for Oregon higher education, and a rather wild story about a recent internet dating experience of mine. We entertained ourselves quite well over that meal, as I recall, with lively conversation on both topics.

Of course, the next few months brought about many changes for the higher education landscape here. New Board members were appointed, and the Governor got his wish by having Goldschmidt elected as the president. However, the Portland media broke the story, a mere few weeks later, that the former Governor had had a sexual relationship with a 14-year old girl during the time he had been mayor of Portland years ago. Amid huge headlines, he resigned in disgrace and Kulongoski himself assumed the role of Board president for a couple of months. The Oregon University System Chancellor resigned, after less than two years on the job, upon assessing the political environment and reading the handwriting on the wall regarding his future. The Board, at the direction of the Governor, started a process (billed as a study to examine the “structure and function” of the Chancellor’s Office) which ultimately resulted in the elimination of the Office of Academic Affairs (and the jobs of the Vice Chancellor and several staff, including me).

My life has really not been the same since that day in November 2003. I was thrown completely off-balance and have been struggling to regain it ever since. I have gone on countless interview trips, and had two “interim” positions at Oregon community colleges, of course, but have had neither predictability nor stability in my life. As the current calendar year begins to fade away, the new job search season begins again for me. I hope to secure a permanent position in higher education (somewhere!) by next June 30.