The mast cell disease has been kicking my butt the last few weeks, and I’ve come close to losing consciousness several times. Had this been eighteen months ago when I didn’t know what was going on I surely would have lost consciousness, but these days I at least know that I can try to rapidly load up on the meds and do some other things to stay conscious.
One thought I’ve had during these times is, “What joy is there in this moment?” I don’t mean that in a negative thing; in fact, I mean it as the exact opposite. For example, when the syncope started last Thursday at 2:15am and I ran outside to sit with my head between my legs in the icy cold weather on the porch, I asked myself this question. My first answer was that the cold felt good. After a little while I noticed the faint sounds of an owl making “Who ... who” calls somewhere in the distance, and combined with the cold dark silence, that was very pretty.
Frankly, my main thought was that if I was going to go unconscious again – something you never know if you’re going to come back from – I wanted my last thoughts to be of something joyful, and that’s when I started thinking to ask myself, “What joy is there in this moment?” If you’re having a bad day or a bad moment, I encourage you to ask yourself that question. For me it’s been a way of finding some gratitude in my most difficult moments.
