I’m rethinking this quote: “Know how sublime a thing it is to suffer and be strong.” ~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. There is nothing sublime about it.

Sublime:

1. Elevated or lofty in thought, language, etc.: Paradise Lost is sublime poetry.
2. Impressing the mind with a sense of grandeur or power; inspiring awe, veneration, etc.: Switzerland has sublime scenery.
3. Supreme or outstanding: a sublime dinner.
4. Complete; absolute; utter: sublime stupidity.
5. Archaic.
   • Of lofty bearing.
   • Haughty.
6. Archaic. raised high; high up.

No, there is nothing sublime about suffering. You can only endure, which of course is better than the alternative. And oh how you appreciate when the suffering comes to an end!  Of both physical and mental pain, I found the mental to be the worst by far and yes, I can sometimes feel sublime that I bloody well survived it. Well, wait a minute, I have to say the same about physical pain. But I don’t suffer and be strong. I endure. That’s all, simply get through this. So maybe the sublime is the after effect and I guess that’s okay but I’d like to feel some of that ‘lofty thought’ when I’m going through it.

Of all physical ailments I have been lucky. The biggest bane in my life is my migraines. Between the head pain and the nausea I’ve considered death would be a cheerful alternative. Only momentarily though, unlike with my mental anguish where I was convinced it was the only solution. Still, it’s hard just lying there for days on end waiting for this incessant pain to end. That is how I spent the majority of last week. Now, my pain is gone but I’m far from sublime. Now I get to go through the shaky few days of feeling all out of whack and trying to get to eating again and moving around without wobbling. Thankfully my headaches aren’t often as bad as this one was, but hey, I only lost about 6 days.

I chose to suffer through it rather than buy that precious little pill that would have saved me those days of misery because I swore to myself that I’ll no longer buy it if I have to charge it. Why it has to be so ridiculously expensive I don’t know. Not to mention that I can’t even get enough to keep me going through a month anyway. I’m already not taking other prescribed medicines because I can’t afford them so I really can’t justify that one. It doesn’t make a lot of sense. If I had a job and missed a whole week because of a migraine, where would I, and my employer be? Heh, I’m thinking I’d be right where I am now, unemployed. The way of the world, the drug companies get rich off the ones who can afford it and the rest are doomed to suffer.

I’ll leave the feeling sublime to greater souls than me. They can enjoy their lofty thoughts while I wobble my way back to normality.

A tiny little structure deep in my brain that I never heard of until a tumor was discovered on mine. What is a Pineal gland? The answer to that has changed over the years. Hopefully we are closer to the correct function of that gland than they were in the past. There’s some ancient information here but I found it fascinating.

1. Pre-Cartesian Views on the Pineal Gland

The pineal gland or pineal body is a small gland in the middle of the head. It often contains calcifications (“brain sand”) which make it an easily identifiable point of reference in X-ray images of the brain. The pineal gland is attached to the outside of the substance of the brain near the entrance of the canal (“aqueduct of Sylvius”) from the third to the fourth ventricle of the brain. It is nowadays known that the pineal gland is an endocrine organ, which produces the hormone melatonin in amounts which vary with the time of day. But this is a relatively recent discovery. Long before it was made, physicians and philosophers were already busily speculating about its functions.

1.1 Antiquity

The first description of the pineal gland and the first speculations about its functions are to be found in the voluminous writings of Galen (ca. 130-ca. 210 AD), the Greek medical doctor and philosopher who spent the greatest part of his life in Rome and whose system dominated medical thinking until the seventeenth century.

Galen discussed the pineal gland in the eighth book of his anatomical work On the usefulness of the parts of the body. He explained that it owes its name (Greek: kônarion, Latin: glandula pinealis) to its resemblance in shape and size to the nuts found in the cones of the stone pine (Greek: kônos, Latin: pinus pinea). He called it a gland because of its appearance and said that it has the same function as all other glands of the body, namely to serve as a support for blood vessels.

In order to understand the rest of Galen’s exposition, the following two points should be kept in mind. First, his terminology was different from ours. He regarded the lateral ventricles of the brain as one paired ventricle and called it the anterior ventricle. He accordingly called the third ventricle the middle ventricle, and the fourth the posterior one. Second, he thought that these ventricles were filled with “psychic pneuma,” a fine, volatile, airy or vaporous substance which he described as “the first instrument of the soul.” (See Rocca 2003 for a detailed description of Galen’s views about the anatomy and physiology of the brain.)

Galen went to great lengths to refute a view that was apparently circulating in his time (but whose originators or protagonists he did not mention) according to which the pineal gland regulates the flow of psychic pneuma in the canal between the middle and posterior ventricles of the brain, just as the pylorus regulates the passage of food from the esophagus to the stomach. Galen rejected this view because, first, the pineal gland is attached to the outside of the brain and, second, it cannot move on its own. He argued that the “worm-like appendage” [epiphysis or apophysis] of the cerebellum (nowadays known as the vermis superior cerebelli) is much better qualified to play this role (Kühn 1822, pp. 674-683; May 1968, vol. 1, pp. 418-423).

1.2 Late Antiquity

Although Galen was the supreme medical authority until the seventeenth century, his views were often extended or modified. An early example of this phenomenon is the addition of a ventricular localization theory of psychological faculties to Galen’s account of the brain. The first theory of this type that we know of was presented by Posidonius of Byzantium (end of the fourth century AD), who said that imagination is due to the forepart of the brain, reason to the middle ventricle, and memory to the hind part of the brain (Aetius 1534, 1549, book 6, ch. 2). A few decades later, Nemesius of Emesa (ca. 400 AD) was more specific and maintained that the anterior ventricle is the organ of imagination, the middle ventricle the organ of reason, and the posterior ventricle the organ of memory (Nemesius 1802, chs. 6-13). The latter theory was almost universally adopted until the middle of the sixteenth century, although there were numerous variants. The most important variant was due to Avicenna (980-1037 AD), who devised it by projecting the psychological distinctions found in Aristotle’s On the soul onto the ventricular system of the brain (Rahman 1952).

1.3 Middle Ages

In a treatise called On the difference between spirit and soul, Qusta ibn Luqa (864-923) combined Nemesius’ ventricular localization doctrine with Galen’s account of a worm-like part of the brain that controls the flow of animal spirit between the middle and posterior ventricles. He wrote that people who want to remember look upwards because this raises the worm-like particle, opens the passage, and enables the retrieval of memories from the posterior ventricle. People who want to think, on the other hand, look down because this lowers the particle, closes the passage, and protects the spirit in the middle ventricle from being disturbed by memories stored in the posterior ventricle (Constantinus Africanus 1536, p. 310). Qusta’s treatise was very influential in thirteenth-century scholastic Europe (Wilcox 1985).

In several later medieval texts, the term pinea was applied to the worm-like obstacle, so that the view that the pineal gland regulates the flow of spirits (the theory that Galen had rejected) made a come-back (Vincent de Beauvais 1494, fol. 342v; Vincent de Beauvais 1624, col. 1925; Ysaac 1515, part 2, fol. 172v and fol. 210r; Publicius 1482, ch. Ingenio conferentia). The authors in question seemed ignorant of the distinction that Galen had made between the pineal gland and the worm-like appendage. To add to the confusion, Mondino dei Luzzi (1306) described the choroid plexus in the lateral ventricles as a worm which can open and close the passage between the anterior and middle ventricles, with the result that, in the late Middle Ages, the term ‘worm’ could refer to no less than three different parts of the brain: the vermis of the cerebellum, the pineal body and the choroid plexus.

1.4 Renaissance

In the beginning of the sixteenth century, anatomy made great progress and at least two developments took place that are important from our point of view. First, Niccolò Massa (1536, ch. 38) discovered that the ventricles are not filled with some airy or vaporous spirit but with fluid (the liquor cerebro-spinalis). Second, Andreas Vesalius (1543, book 7) rejected all ventricular localization theories and all theories according to which the choroid plexus, pineal gland or vermis of the cerebellum can regulate the flow of spirits in the ventricles of the brain.
~Lokhorst, Gert-Jan, “Descartes and the Pineal Gland”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2008 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.).

René Descartes (1596-1650) was a French philosopher, mathematician, scientist, and writer.  He has been called the “Father of Modern Philosophy”.  He wrote;

“Since it is the only solid part in the whole brain which is single, it must necessarily be the seat of the common sense, i.e., of thought, and consequently of the soul; for one cannot be separated from the other.”

I’m glad he was wrong because I’d hate to think since I’m now without a pineal gland that I have no soul. 😉 Still, his work in ‘Treatise of Man’ and ‘Passions of the Soul’ is very interesting reading.

By the end of the nineteenth century, several scientists introduced the hypothesis that the pineal gland is a phylogenic relic, a vestige of a dorsal third eye. A modified form of this theory is still accepted today. Also, scientists began to theorize that the pineal gland is an endocrine organ. This was proven in the twentieth century. The hormone secreted by the pineal gland, melatonin, was first isolated in 1958. Melatonin is secreted in a circadian rhythm, which is interesting in view of the hypothesis that the pineal gland is a vestigial third eye. Madame Blavatsky, the founder of theosophy, identified the “third eye” discovered by the comparative anatomists of her time with the “eye of Shiva” of “the Hindu mystics” and concluded that the pineal body of modern man is an atrophied vestige of this “organ of spiritual vision”. The pineal gland is occasionally associated with the sixth chakra (also called Ajna or the third eye chakra in yoga). It is believed by some to be a dormant organ that can be awakened to enable “telepathic” communication.

Today we know that the pineal gland It is sensitive to different levels of light and is essential to the functioning of an animal’s biological clock. In many animals, including humans, it synthesizes a hormone called melatonin in periods of darkness. Melatonin synthesis is halted when light hits the retina of the eye, sending impulses to the gland via the optic nerve. Besides influencing daily, or circadian, rhythms such those of as sleep and temperature, the pineal gland and melatonin appear to direct annual rhythms and seasonal changes in animals.

So, I’m sometimes sad to be missing the seat of my soul, my third eye and especially my circadian rhythms, but I am happy to know I can survive without it.  As for the circadian rhythms, I do see the effect. I stay up at night, sleep whenever and don’t generally function on a 24 hour day. I tend towards 30-36 hour days way too often and about 5 hours worth of sleep. I sometimes wonder if I’ve lost some precious potential to reach a higher degree of spirituality for my lack of a pineal gland but then I believe that resides elsewhere, where my soul resides also.

There’s much more at the cited link. It’s the most comprehensive information I’ve been able to find about Pineal glands and so very interesting how our knowledge has progressed.

Edited to add links to my previous posts about Pineal Gland Brain tumors.

Pineal Gland Tumor

What is a Pineal Gland Tumor?

“Ordinary riches can be stolen, real riches cannot. In your soul are infinitely precious things that cannot be taken from you.” ~Oscar Wilde

I just had my yearly one and am supposed to see the neurosurgeon so he can look at it but I came home in between because it was going to be an hour and a half wait (that and I desperately needed my allergy meds). So not having thought of it earlier I just called them to see if I should bring last years in to compare. They said no. The whole thing is strange since I moved here.

In Michigan the copy I got always had a report in it, and they also kept a copy. In the reports they compared it to the previous one. Not this guy, he throws it up on his lightbox, tells me I’m fine and that’s all I ever hear. The last report I actually saw a couple years ago it WAS growing. It’s my brain and my tumor and I’d like to know what is actually going on with it. I’m the freaking patient! So because this dr isn’t all that nice and acts like I’m a pain for even coming in and having MRI’s (which he told me to do), I will ask my medical dr if she is getting reports and if not I’ll ask her to request them. It’s my brain, I’d like to know what’s going on with it.

Many people come to my blog from searches for pineal gland tumors. I thought I’d try to be a bit more informative about these brain tumors than my last post which was about my personal journey with the diagnosis and treatment of my own tumor. So here’s a list of things I know (or believe) to be true about pineal gland tumors, from my experiences and from extensive reading. I am by no means an expert or doctor so do make sure you are discussing this with a doctor! I’m posting this more as a means of reassurance for people newly diagnosed with this type of brain tumor.

I was diagnosed in 1999, with my shunt surgery immediately following. In 2003 I had most of my tumor removed at Duke University Brain Tumor Center. My tumor is growing, but not fast and it’s much, much smaller obviously so I’m really not worried.  Other than the really strange feeling from the hydrocephalus, and yes, the upward gaze problem, I have really had no big problem with this. I have gone through things that to me were much worse, the tumor was a snap to deal with really.

• A pineal gland brain tumor is very unlikely to kill you. I know of one woman that was in my tumor group who did die some time after her surgery to remove hers. She ended up with locked-in syndrome and died from complications.
• A pineal gland brain tumor can become an emergency health problem if it blocks the aqueduct of Sylvius, which serves as a passage allowing cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) to leave the center of the brain where it is first produced. Pineal tumors often compress this aqueduct, causing a build up of pressure of CSF in the brain (hydrocephalus).
• If it is not large enough to block the aqueduct of Sylvius, you can probably live with it with no problem.
• If it does block the aqueduct of Sylvius, causing hydrocephalus, you will need treatment to either install a shunt as an alternate pathway for fluid to drain (which is what I had done) or have a procedure called a stereotactic third ventriculostomy. Third ventriculostomy creates a tiny opening in the bottom of the brain using a small endoscope to allow the CSF to escape. This procedure is usually performed under local anesthesia.
• A pineal gland tumor can also cause visual changes as a result of involvement of the nearby tectal region which has a primary role in controlling eye movements. These changes may include: inability to focus on objects, double vision and impairment of eye movements. I was having trouble with my upward gaze, my tumor was quite large and growing, hence my decision to have a second surgery to hopefully remove it all.
• You doctor may prefer to do a biopsy, I did not choose that route, although obviously they biospied my removed tumor.
• The two treatments I have discussed with my surgeons were surgical removal and radiation. I went with the surgical removal.
• Most pineal gland tumors are benign! Do not panic.
• You do not need a pineal gland to live. Mine has been gone since 2003 and was so entombed in tumor, probably for years, that who knows when it quit functioning.

Well, that’s it folks, the extent of my knowledge unless you want the gory details of surgery 😉 Seriously, if you have to have a brain tumor, this is probably the best one to get.

Edited to add the last one on the list because someone came here from a search “do you need a pineal gland to live?” As far as I know I’m still alive 😉

Edited again to add a link to my previous tumor post and a newer post:

Pineal Gland Tumor

What is a Pineal Gland?

I believe I am, after all this time, indeed coming back to life. I thought I was too far down to ever climb back out of that hole. Wow am I thankful I was wrong. It’s a terrible thing when all you feel is pain and joy is not even a distant memory. Okay, enough of that gush, even though I feel that way and wanted to say it. To feel joy is a precious gift.

Firstly, I completed my goals of setting up all my doctor appointments. The getting to them will be easier than the reaching out and calling to set them up was.

Then, after group today (as per my ambitious plan), I stopped at the YMCA. Wandered all about all on my own and finally found the cool equipment I was looking for. Even better said equipment shows how to use each machine and tells you which muscles it works (can you tell I’ve never been to a place like this before?) so I didn’t have to get brave enough to ask for help. I was set! Rode a bike that measured my heart rate til my legs gave out. Then I found the room with all the cool machines. So I used every one of them til my muscles felt like they’d had enough. I expected, with the state of my body, that I’d last maybe 10 minutes in there the first time. I was there for 45! We’ll see how my muscles feel tomorrow. My plan is to go the days I go to group since it’s right on the way. That will be Tuesday and Wednesday. I’m so glad I got the courage to actually do it. I just feel so much more competent already. This might be hard to understand for someone who hadn’t lost all that they were (or at least thought so). Yeah, I’m stoked! 😉

Oh, and my therapist told me today he thought I was ready for the advanced DBT group. Wow, only took me two years to pass the beginner one 😉 I’m not so sure of course. I know the skills extremely well after all the repeats, but do I actually know how to use them? I feel like that is a big no. Part of the reason for that is being a total recluse and moving to a city away from my family and everyone I know, I have had no one to practice on (or would that be with?). If he thinks I’m ready, I’ll go for it, which is not something I would have agreed to 6 months ago.

All in all, life could be better, as in actually have friends and doing things, but that wasn’t possiible when I was filled with pain, self-hatred and shame. For now, I am happy and life feels fine.

Pink Floyd – Coming Back To Life

I signed up for a smoking cessation class at my mental health place. I want to quit, but then again I don’t. They do say it’s more addictive than heroin so I guess that makes sense. Why oh why didn’t I just get hooked on heroin instead? The class runs 6 weeks or maybe more. Our quit date is set for August 27th. In the meantime we are supposed to be arranging meds if we want them for help and setting some behavior changes. I wanted Chantix, the new pill they have that’s supposed to stop the craving. Here’s a blurb about it:

Chantix gives you the same feel good factor that nicotine gives. However, Chantix blocks nicotine from binding with the receptors and prevents it from aggravating your cells further. Chantix doesn’t have any of the addictive features of nicotine. Chantix can lead you out of nicotine addiction by gradually withdrawing you from the menace, and by giving you the feel of the nicotine effect even without taking it. Chantix makes quit smoking easy.

A regular miracle pill! I so wanted to give that a try. Then I read further:

Pfizer Inc. strengthened the warning for its anti-smoking pill Chantix and told doctors to watch patients for abnormal behavior after the violent death of a rock musician using the drug led to added reports of side effects.

A possible link between the drug and reports of agitation, depressed mood and suicidal thoughts among some patients taking it can’t be ruled out, Pfizer said today in a statement. The behavior could be worse in people with a pre-existing mental illness, the New York-based company said.

Oh well, not for me after all. Having been in the depths of despair (and sometimes still not far from them) I’ll not risk it. I quit once for 10 years with no help at all. I hope I’m strong enough to do it again.

On to the changing behavior thing. Week one I didn’t take my cigarettes in the car. Which today actually had me going about 3 entire hours without. Week 2 I’m getting even more drastic. I decided no smoking in the house. I survive that when visiting family in Michigan so I should be able to handle it and it’s not December this time! I have a lovely porch swing out front that I never use so that’s my goal, that I’ll go out there my 20 times a day I want a cigarette.

I also did another thing today that I’m really proud of, because you know how hard it is for me to motivate myself to get out in public. I signed up for a membership at the Ymca. The idea is replacing that smoking behavior with another behavior and I am so frustrated at how hard everything is for me to do because I have no muscle tone left. This falls into where we are at with DBT right now, which is take care of your health and heh, avoid avoiding. Oh I so do that, like waiting two years until my Michigan drivers license is expiring to finally get my Indiana one! Another very cool thing about the Y, because I’m on Medicare, my insurance provider for that offers a free membership into their Silver Sneakers program. That would be like, retirees, but I figure that might be the place to start since I’m so out of shape. I ask the guy though what if I want to come in and use the equipment and he told me I have a real membership and can do anything, all for nothing! 😉

My goals for avoid avoiding this week are; setting up a doctor appointment because it’s been a long time and discuss the problem of how I can’t afford all those meds she prescribes me, setting up a mammogram that I was supposed to have last December and setting up my MRI that I was supposed to have in July. Since I know my brain tumor is growing I’m thinking that one is the priority, however, I will attempt to at least get them all scheduled this week.

My last thought is, omg am I ready for all this!? I have been going along in this unhealthy funk for so many years that it’s rather terrifying. No time like the present I guess to get my life back. Wish me luck!

“The key to change… is to let go of fear.” ~Rosanne Cash