I usually don't say anything in these threads, I'm not sure why. I haven't read this one until this morning, and I know why. It's too real, it's too scary, it's too upsetting, I have spent enough energy staying tuned in my own little world recently. My doctors are very helpful in keeping me boosted, but there are so many things we don't understand, and to be told that I can't understand makes me angry, affecting my balance, mental and physical.

To we who live this thing, know this: every time a medical person asks me to what I attribute my slow progress and relatively good function, I list several fact-based reasons, including the fact that a lot of people are praying for me.

I have had periods of time when I decide to get better, and I do.

Beyond my self, stranger things happen. A friend who is a pianist burned her fingers over a steamy pot. As she soaked the fingers in ice water, I laid my hands on her burned one, and as a Reiki practitioner allowed some of the life force to flow through me to her injury. Some of the pain went away. What happened? I have no idea. It just works. (For Peg and Paula, I consider the Reiki force to be the holy spirit's work and the act of laying on hands to be a form of prayer.)

I am not asking for a study of religion (although that could be intriguing), but a study of attitude, as others above have suggested. For that, clients/patients/consumers/customers should surely be in a focus group with input to the researchers and their IRB, if not at the conference table.

Jaye