1 result for (book:deavf1 AND heading:"essay 9 monday may 31 1982" AND stemmed:ll)
[... 25 paragraphs ...]
Jane rejected that total at once, feeling it’s far too high, and announced that she’ll probably go back to her old routine of eight to ten aspirin a day. We’re angry and dismayed. It’s very unsettling for us to learn that the prescribed medication isn’t doing its job after all. It is, I remarked somewhat bitterly, another sign of the frustrating, mixed results one must learn to expect, at least in some instances, from the imperfect practice of medicine. To treat rheumatoid arthritis with aspirin? We’d always found that incredible. Yet it’s still the best way to go, Dr. Mandali said, even with the new anti-inflammatory, nonsteroidal drugs that the FDA (the U.S. Food and Drug Administration) has released to the marketplace recently, for often they produce more side effects than aspirin. And her advice is reinforced by published material I’ve collected lately for our files.
[... 6 paragraphs ...]
At my age (63), then, I’m learning once again that I can’t live Jane’s life for her, or protect her from the motivations of her own physical and psychic explorations and choices, no matter how much I may want to. Nor could she do that for me. On many levels that kind of psychic interference is quite simply ignored by the individual in question, and rightly so. Jane’s determination would see to her own protection in any case. And her innate mystical nature must fully know and accept that the time, manner, and method of her physical death, whenever it occurs, is as much a part of her body’s life as its life is. I deeply believe that her psyche would insist that she doesn’t need any sort of basic protection by me (or anyone else) to begin with—only understanding. I live daily with the proposition that my wife is in the process of making profound decisions, and that once she’s made them she’ll respond accordingly both physically and mentally.
[... 5 paragraphs ...]