recommended neuro enhancing reading

MJ Hyland article regarding using Modafinil (or 'neuroenhancers') to minimise the impact of ms fatigue:

hmmm alien thinking?

'...
That's when Paul told me he'd used the drug, and changed my life.
Talbot's article, like many published since the mid-1990s, turned, in part, on the fuzzy ethics of the use of neuroenhancers. These controversial drugs, strictly licensed for the treatment of narcolepsy, sleep apnoea and ADHD, have become immensely popular among users without prescription because they promote a keen sense of wakefulness and sharper cognitive focus.
...
It's not known how many people are using neuroenhancers: the drug remains strictly off-licence in the UK and the US. But on 9 November 2011, the BBC's Newsnight tried to get closer to an answer by running an anonymous online questionnaire. There were 761 replies, from New Scientist readers and Newsnight viewers: 38% said they'd taken cognitive-enhancing drugs, 40% said they'd bought the drugs online, and 92% said they'd use them again.
These numbers are crude and anecdotal, and that's because, as Newsnight discovered, it's nigh on impossible to find hard data.
...
In the first weeks of using modafinil, I felt a bout of happiness, a steadily upward-moving mood; a strange and sustained euphoric effect. I doubt this heightened state was caused by the drug's pharmacological workings. It's more likely to have been brought on by pure relief, perhaps even the power of placebo. After more than two years of being made sluggish and clumsy by MS, my mind muddied and muted, I was wide awake. In the stuffy, darkened house of my head, all the windows and doors seemed to have been flung open and the air was crisp and cool.
...
I'm not cured of MS, of course – my right hand (and leg) still flags, still stiffens, still weakens – but the effects of modafinil have a way of sacking off the urge to quit. The mysterious workings of the drug seem, somehow, to trump or override physical weakness, and the effects allow me – compel me – to push through the pangs and the pains, and the pesky failings of my right hand.
In this hard-to-describe way, modafinil has revealed something more complicated.
...
In the US, modafinil has been trialled for MS patients (albeit on a small scale) and the results have been positive. Yet the drug remains off-licence, and in the UK there's still no sign of any major randomised controlled clinical trials.'

Full article at the UK's Guardian

She mentions people stopping using them because of the 'too good to be true' factor that begs caution in a Brave New World kinda way to my mind but the below the line comments also reveal the frequency and degree to which the general population tend to conflate cognitive and fatigue impacts with psychological variances.

Curiousier and curiouser
Anyone dabbled? And/or heard of 'neuroenhancers'? 

have wheelchair assistance, will travel

Museum of Old and New Art Where in the world??

Back at the start of the year, while cocooned in a never-ending stultifying summer lockdown, my friend msged me to say one of the domestic airlines here in Aus had tix on sale: 'let's snaffle some and get ourselves to David Walsh's MONA in Hobart town?'
Hell yeah.
For those farther afield than a sunburnt country, allow me to add some background:

Hobart lies across a wee strip of ocean from Melbournia (definitely Portland's wannabe cousin) and in this neck of the woods yr last significant city on your way to antartica - and significantly in MS speak: it stays cool!
You start to see where my impulsive 'hell yeah' came from? No matter that our tix were booked for April, three months and a whole season away.

The obligatory dodgy airline bit: thanks Jetstar
All to quick we found ourselves on the tarmac (so much for the online selection: why yes, I would like airline assistance that includes a wheelchair AND a staffer).

Alas my photo snapping abilities are about as adept as JETSTAR's ability to follow through on the 'type of assistance' it insists you select from - and nowhere near the efforts it employs to rort money out of punters booking 'onsale' tickets through an online system. Why sure, add an arbitrary $17 to my bill after I hit 'confirm' for an 'online administration fee' that wasn't mentioned at any earlier point.

I admit, the warning signs that this would not in fact be a 'cheap getaway' in lieu of taking travels to exotic foreign lands were there. If only I had held my gaze.

Here's a not-brief perspective from a 'why yes, how thoughtful, assistance would be dandy' perspective of an Easter sojourn to the Apple Isle:

Iconic Salamanca Markets
The first day we were there, the de rigeur Salamanaca Markets were on as they are every Saturday in Hobart. To boot our hotel was so close we could hear and see the bustle.

My friend went off on reconnaissance to find a way to blend my wobbly teetering with the mega popular touristica bustling anxiety-inducing crowds. We were pleasantly surprised to discover the Hobart Council offered a free wheelchair service. Let's just say, you get what you pay for:

Nothing says incapacitated like... an incapacitating chair

chair post 'modifications'

...
...
.....
These are the 'after' shots: after one of the two left foot plates had had some impromptu work done to it to make it a 'right' foot plate.
Yes, this is in a pub.
Why yes, that is my bag, not me, getting a free ride.

Sadly for  you, thankfully for me, there are no images that captured me hanging on for dear life as we trundled about. I did have at least three people ask if I wouldn't mind if they prayed for me. Coincidence?? Or hobby of the region?
 

Desperate times, desperate measures. Above is the day's special at said pub.While tempting, we settled for one of the specialities of the region (!): chili mussels with hot chips and a pot of beer. Highly recommended for those conquering dodgy council loan wheelchairs.

In the interests of sharing the ambience: here's one of the 'authentic' stained glass pictures that adorned the bar:

Look closely at your own peril

We were so late getting back to the information booth, that it had been packed up and 30 seconds later there would have been no sign even of an information booth. Maybe  they have been wanting it to get 'misplaced'??

Moody Musing MONA

The windswept lawns at MONA (with pyramid installation)

This is what we had come for, after all.

First (well, second, everyone else had gotten off at the real entrance):The low rent landing dock for wobbly teeterers (click to check out the main 'james bond vilain island' landing!)

The golf buggy highway for wobbly teeterers to the entrance - again contrast with the main James Bond villain entrance

The deceptive entrance to the main event: abstract mural or distorting mirror? ... or both?

No happy-snapping inside the gallery: you get given an ipod as you arrive that curates you around the art as it can 'read' where you are in the gallery and conjure up the lowdown on the works nearest to you. Categories include: 'Wank' and 'Gonzo'. You are meant to 'save' the items you liked (or wanted to remember) as you go along and it will email the whole bunch of them to you. Sadly, in my haste to escape the complimentary humunguous wheelchair, I forgot to do so before handing my ipod back.

True this wheelchair did come with the theoretic advantage that someone in it might actually be able to wheel themself. However, I kept having the discombobulating sensation that perhaps I had stumbled down Alice's rabbithole (rather than descended the James Bond lift to the third level where the gallery has everyone begin) and had drunk some of Alice's DRINK ME potion (or is it the EAT ME) that shrinks her but my gwds I had never been in a wheelchair of such breadth.

And not just breadth: it was hard to stay from slouching and sliding out of the chair - and casting me far more decrepit looking than was the actual case as a consequence - while my friend generously tried to push it (and me and our gear) around because my feet couldn't properly touch the foot plates (thankfully there was a left and a right foot plate this  time, yay for small mercies) which meant it was awfully hard to stay in the chair ... or focussed on the art for that matter...

giving said chair some room to move

I decided it would be easier if I got out and used it as a kind of ginormous unwieldy walker. It sure got people out of my way and plenty of sidelong glances. I suspect some people thought I may have been one of the eccentric installations pushing my empty gi-normous wheelchair around...

Alas so wide, at one point there was a musical tunnel I entered - again rather  Alice-like - at the other end  the exit out was rather smaller than the entrance in had been (although the self opening glass doors I entered through had been no mean feat either). I'd thought it must have been the way to the lift and the way back to the main entrance. (I'd long lost my friend in the low lit subterranean galleries.) Actually, it lead into a series of even smaller spirally passageways filled with people and certainly without room to turn back plus the distinctly unpromising prospect that going forward was A Sensible Thing. People were looking at me with some consternation - if there'd been room they would have lent away.  Eventually I was relunctantly rescued by a black-clad MONA person who cleared the way I had come of punters while I s-l-o-w-l-y reversed myself back to the tunnel... Good times!

Wim Delvoye's cement truck scultpure: it seemed a necessary addition at the time

the Tasmanian tiger: a bit of australiana MONA style

Token obligatory foodie shot at Smolt

Special mentions:

Oysters
Fab local artisan and fresh food is Hobart's other ever growing fame it is claiming. Half price oysters day at the bar attached to our accom before our late flight back meant I ate as many oysters as I had probably eaten in my entire life prior to the trip in that trip - sooper yummo and fresh they were gone every time long before I would remember to get my camera out. :P

Pick up stick
The design fault of sticks everywhere - you know the one, sure you do: tangling in people's feet no matter where you put them,  turned out it could work as a winning pick up line: who knew? Again, perhaps a Tasmanian thing... not to play to sterotypes :)) but let's just say oyster farms and his murky connections working for David Walsh made for a veryily entertaining evening once I had ever so daintly tripped him up with my stick. Ha.

Contraptions to get me back to Melbournia: going up? (Perhaps better known as a 'forklift')

The red-eye flight back cabin staff were a hoot; benefits of our up the front seating - if you are also requesting assistance don't bother to pay for a seat as Jetstar try to get everyone to do, as you will be put in the second row irrespective ... seats that otherwise cost a premium to book, such be the ways of the world. It also meant we got the fall benefit of the flirtatious (with each other) stewards and as we were last off the whole crew revelled us with airline cabin staff urban legends: 'trust me'. 

At Melbourne airport again the ground staff abandoned us once we were off the tarmac and left us to our own devices to wheel the deserted halls and departure lounges and concourse - again, irrespective of the option selected that a staff member assist, apparently not, if you are on Jetstar's last flight in for the evening. In fact, we could have packed the wheelchair in the car - I guess they know they are not very tempting for would be wheelchair theives??

Wow managing to look blind as well as 'wheelchair-ridden' lol: Don't be fooled by the abstract art/distortion mirror entrance making the chair look slimline - yes the same entrance pictured earlier above.

Many thanks to my partner in crime, the fab Ms P for suggesting the jaunt in the first place - and I wouldn't have seen half as much without her adept wheelie manoeuvring skills under extreme conditions!!

things afoot!!! (excessive exclamation mark usage required)

oooh big adventures afoot, folks


On to the adventurers whose plans I have mentioned in ghosts of posts past (Dave here & here and Slomo camino here) but now the real deal is about to unfold, feeling the anticipation, even as a couch potato well-wisher :P



The sloooow way? Way way ... or no way :))

Sil's Slow Camino-ing pilgrims over at Amawalker are just a couple of weeks off kicking off and even though I am not able to join them (play smallest violin in the world for me at this juncture), I find myself reading about the amazing camino-ing Sil has woven together with an increasing sense of anticipation. Can only imagine how excited they all are with the countdown to May.

Like my trip - in fact it must be the two eeek three-year anniversary since my trip, time flies hey - they will be starting in Sarria in order to walk the final 100km of the ancient Santiago de Compostela camino.

potential line in camino footwear??

Her latest post gives a bit of background to the feisty peregrinos doing their last minute hiking stick checks, poncho and hiking shoe perusals ... could it be true?? perhaps even a rollator or two??... who will be joining her, which only adds to that sense of anticipation. Let alone the postcards back if the rumours that a Trionic Veloped might be making the journey are true???
Buen camino, peregrinos.

Flying leaps of faith Oz style
Almost at the same time, Dave starts on his epic flight around Australia come April 29. Yes: REALLY soon, something like five more sleeps!!  It is not so much a raising funds exercise (although donations are always welcome) as to raise mainstream expectations of what people with quadriplegia are capable of (and others with disabilities and impairments too). It's been five or six years since he first started  toying with the idea - I can't begin to imagine how excited he and his team must be as they head into the countdown.
Get the low down at his blog and website On A Wing And A Chair.

(Should be just the armchair travel to mollify yours truly's dreadful lapse in letting my passport run out last month AND motivate me into the paperwork traipse to rectify that disconcerting lack , eek)

Blue skies, adventurers: Wishing you grins ago go!!

pleasure and pain: no saccharine

Seems this is turning into a tribute wall of late.

Vale Chrissie Amphlett, one sassy lady of rocknroll who never fell for the saccharine :

"Unfortunately the last 18 months have been a real challenge for me having breast cancer and MS and all the new places that will take you," she wrote.
"You become sadly a patient in a world of waiting rooms, waiting sometimes hours for a result or an appointment.
"You spend a lot time in cold machines... hospital beds, on your knees praying for miracles, operating rooms, tests after tests, looking at healthy people skip down the street like you once did and you took it all for granted and now wish you could do that.
"I have not stopped singing throughout all this in my dreams and to be once again performing and doing what I love to do."

More at the ABC news website.

Here's some vintage 80s Divinyls telling it how it was and still is: 

.

Vale msketeer and mouseketeer

(No doubt this is doing the rounds on ms blogs today but damn you Google for hiding Reader from me in the countdown to its departure I haven't been able to check, so herewith for those who may not have 'heard'.)

Not sure that 'nostalgia' seems quite the correct word to be associated with the 'Iron Lady' - as the Russians dubbed Baroness Thatcher - but no such fear with mouseketeer and ms-er Annette Funicello who also passed away this week: RIP

While the other beach girls were bikini clad, Disney decreed that she was far too wholesome to display her navel in those romps with Frankie Avalon

hospital revolution ...with velcro

Anyone who has spent any time admitted to a hospital knows this indignity all too well so
not before time:

A new Velcro suit for hospital patients could spell the beginning of the end of the traditional backless gown, according to its designers.
Health chiefs at Birmingham children's hospital have unveiled the suits being used on some of its wards.
The Dignity Giving Suits for patients are the first of their type to be used in British hospitals. They have been universally welcomed by the hospital's doctors, surgeons, nurses and also patients, who have been trialling them.
The wraparound suits, designed and made by a UK company, have Velcro button fastenings along the seams, doing away with the flimsy tie-backs of the traditional backless gowns.
Chief nurse Michelle McLoughlin said she had wanted young patients to feel "protected, safe and secure", and the old gowns were failing to do that, so hospital chiefs authorised a replacement.
When it became clear there was no off-the-shelf solution, they started from scratch, she said. The process from idea to manufacture took 18 months.
McLoughlin said the suits were proving so popular children have been asking to take them home while parents have been bemoaning the fact they are only available to children.

 more at the UK Guardian