Just as focusing becomes better, memory eclipses occur. Just as memory eclipses fade so does long term memory. Just as energy is more available, muscle spasms attack. Just as things seem to stabilize, a seizure strikes. Just as sleep begins to get easier, nights become interrupted cat naps.

No one day is a predictor of another. No good night becomes a pattern. The constancy and perseverance that post-encephalitis requires is similar in many ways to the active period of the illness. Each new day brought a new development. Fever down, lung collapsed. Infection under control, renal failure. Awake for a brief moment, asleep for weeks. The circularity of up and down, better in one way, worse in another, demands an ability to endure and sustain under extremely difficult recurrences.

There is no steady upward relief. There is no steady forward improvement. There is, instead, recycling problems and unending new wrinkles...and yet...

There is your constancy, your courage, your commitment to deal creatively with whatever pops up next. The steadiness is in you, your efforts, your stalwartness. There is a gradual growth, forward, inward, upward, downward and guided by integrity and ever more hopeful, you move through and within, toward intimacy with yourself. With stature you confront your lot. You are liberated not cured. A much better state. Hurray for liberation.