[img]2624|right|Diane||no_popup[/img]Dateline San Francisco – Our fifth monthly trip to the ALS research clinic has brought a soothing measure of comfort to One of Us 7½ months after Diane was diagnosed.
When Dr. K, our favorite, like-family neurologist, and his team, separately, one by one, enter the first-floor Exam Room, One of Us is wordlessly confident that further good news will be delivered.
Since a cure remains evasive, when Dr. K says “you are progressing slowly,” this is the maximum positive assessment. To an optimist, this is almost equivalent to a cure, unvarnished cause for leaping up in the small room and belting out an unrestrained cheer.
One of Us.
The Other of Us speaks evenly, drearily of being far more impaired once the calendar flips into a new year, almost as if horrid decline were an obligation. Walking will be but a memory, the Other of Us declares with as much conviction as if she were announcing the day of the week.
“You don’t know that,” Dr. K says. One of Us hunches forward, grunting unmistakable assent. The Other of Us resists with firm, unsmiling, medically-steeped disagreement.
The Other of Us not only is distressingly more cautious, but downright depressed. Reversing that outlook is the dominant theme of Dr. K’s monthly critique. He urges the Other of Us to bathe in today, to lather her body, more importantly her mind, in the richness of this day.
“No one knows what is going to happen,” he says.
Tomorrow never comes, Annie told us.
The Other of Us has written out all the chapters of this tragedy.
The task of Dr. K and One of Us is to convince her to put away this book, burn it. The library is crammed with other volumes that will lift Both of Us out of this stultifying, gaseous environment.
Never live for tomorrow. Only for today.
