MS-relapse

 

“Every disease is a musical problem, any healing a musical solution.”

Novalis

 

Suddenly in the early summer of 2010 I fell back into the mental state of a little overburdened and panicking child. Several difficult situations had come together in my life and I felt sheer panic as to how on earth I could ever handle all this. A state of massive depression followed and lasted for over two years.

 

Due to this depression almost immediately my health situation got worse. The neuropathy in my feet that I had gotten used to meanwhile began to spread all over my legs and all the way up to my bottom. My incontinence got so bad that I hardly dared leave my four walls. I was pursued by constipations and especially from late afternoon on my legs shook with spasms. To get rid of this horror and be able to think clearly again and happily would only work the six, seven times I succeeded to follow my inner guidance and stay up a whole night and the following day. However soon as I went to bed again I felt my old fear creeping in again and take over and the next morning my panic and disorientation was worse than ever before.

 

Hadn’t it been for Evi who kept life running for the two of us over this entire period, I would have been lost completely. Whenever she left home in the morning to go to work and I heard the door shut behind her I felt like a prisoner in his dungeon.

 
 

The laughing apple

 

“I decided to be happy, because it is better for health.”

Voltaire

 

What finally slingshot me out of this hell of depression was the final memory that I myself was the one and only cause of all this horror and that I had had plenty enough of all of this panic and fear and these rotten MS-symptoms. It was one day before my 55th birthday. A good 53, 54 years before as a baby I had been in a little crèche under my grandfather Paul’s beloved apple tree marveling at the beauty all around me. I had felt so relaxed and so very well protected by my grandparents’ and my parents’ love.

 

The light from the end of the tunnel first dawned on me the night of July 27th. During the day two very dear elderly friends of ours, Elisabeth and Manfred, had taken care of me during the day time since Evi had had to go to the hospital for a foot surgery. I had been very afraid of how on earth I would be able to deal with these three days with no skirt to hide behind. All day long Elisabeth had driven Manfredo and myself through the Bavarian countryside and I remember how moved I was to see there were still cows around and meadows and villages and beer gardens and normal people leading their normal lives. Over the two years of “imprisonment” within my four walls I had been sure I would never be able to get out again and lead this kind of a normal life and enjoy such wonderful little human delights as going to the country.

 

Back home alone this night after finally being able to end an eight day antibiotic therapy I had had to do because of bladder infection my spastics too returned back to “normal”. The antibiotics had worsened these spastics tremendously from evening on all through the night, sparing me but one or two hours of sleep. So this night promised to be less crampy and shaky. Near midnight I watched a wonderful documentary on a tour by the German singer and songwriter Konstantin Wecker and from deep within me I felt my WILL TO LIVE wake up again!

 

I was so fed up with these depressions, I was fed up with these pains, and I was fed up with this jerking of my legs! I was so completely fed up with this entire MS! Fed up, fed up, and fed up with all that!!!

 

And what I was fed up with most of all was this constant fear that had meanwhile spread over so many areas of my life like some exuberant cancer! Fear, fear, fear, wherever I looked in my life! Meanwhile I was afraid of everything. There was fear of walking anyway. Of course there also was fear of eating something wrong. There was fear of smoke, fear of alcohol, fear of white bread, fear of my hunching about on two canes, fear of peoples’ reaction who saw me that way, fear of falling down, fear of death, fear of life. Fear of everything!

 

And it was this very own fear of mine I had fostered and nourished and pampered for so very long that I rendered a definite, terminal kick in the butt that night! I wanted to be alive and happy again.

 

Next noon Evi returned from the hospital. It was my birthday and yes, I truly felt born again!

 

Eight weeks later I had recovered considerably from my MS symptoms and there were still three apples on the little apple tree of our small city-garden. The one laughing apple had already fallen to the ground and so had his follow-up apple with less distinct smiley markings. Over the weeks those laughing apples had continuously reminded me of God’s face that unflinchingly showered me with its smile and I am sure some of the apples in my grandfather’s garden had smiled at me just the same …

 

Christoph Engen

 

Excerpt from http://www.miraclesarenomiracles.com