"A Fortunate Man with MS" Podcast

A Very Special Episode

Hi, this is Jack Greenman. In honor of national MS Awareness Week, which this year is March 9-15, I’m excited to bring you this very special episode of “A Fortunate Man with MS”! For the first time…

Reasons for Optimism

In my work on mindfulness, I open to what arises: sounds, sensations—including pain—and then, of course, thoughts. They arrive like waves on the ocean. Occasional waves of reality-based optimism are…

S1E42 Our Summer on the Bay Downtown

My amazing wife Lisa shared an idea: “I think Gil and I should come [to the Edgewater Hotel} every Friday in the summer and spend the night. We can have drinks in the bar in the middle of the day…

S1E41 Let's Dance

Will the chronic inflammation and lesions that have plagued me and brought a dramatic worsening of my condition for almost two years start to calm down?

S1E40 Purpose

As my acute troubles continue - chronic brain inflammation with new lesions, losing my vision, inability to feed myself, and confusion- I have been thinking about purpose.

S1E39 The Old Street

For me, 2018 was like navigating this street in a wheelchair. I am currently sitting stuck in the largest pothole.

S1E38 Lessons from Mr. Rogers

"It’s you I like, It’s not the things you wear, It’s not the way you do your hair– But it’s you I like The way you are right now . . ."

S1E37 Samurai

Lying on the wood floor, I played a game with myself. I imagined that I was a samurai sleeping across the threshold of his Lord. Samurai slept on wood without anything else, I thought.  So “samurai!…

S1E36 Get Busy Living

“Please call me asap” read the text from my neurologist.  This could not be good news.

S1E35 Mindful Through Terror

These days, my experience of walking feels like climbing a rock face.

S1E34 Christmas Wolves

There is a story about a Cherokee grandfather teaching his grandson about life.

S1E33 Gratitude showers our lives with Grace

Grateful and together, we celebrated on Thanksgiving. Now we move forward in Grace to the next moment. And the next.

S1E32 An Urban Symphony with Extra Needles

After my needles were in, I stared at the ceiling and tried to meditate on my breath. Not today. Frustrated, I smoldered until a set of sounds came together in my conscious mind.

S1E31 The Story No One Wants to Read

Everyone living with MS knows that each story is individual and unique. The picture of the disease that we paint needs to take into account some of the harsher parts.

S1E30 At Last, a Disease Modifying Therapy

Then I wake up. But this is no dream. This is the story of my year-long search for a treatment, a disease-modifying therapy that will halt or at least slow this inexorable disease.

S1E29 11:17am

My dogs are thinking “will he ever get up from the chair and go somewhere else so that something interesting might happen?"

S1E28 To Be Known and to Be Loved - A Poem

S1E27 Some Good News from an Old Buddy

My left leg sucks, no two ways about it. But last week it started to suck worse, like a lot worse...

S1E26 Family and Forgiveness, by Pope Francis

"There is no perfect family."

S1E24 No Mud, No Lotus

There’s been a lot of mud described here in the last few posts, so I thought I’d describe a Lotus that bloomed in Washington DC recently.