I informed Mom and Dad I was cooking southwest wraps for dinner: ground turkey, black beans, corn, and rice rolled in tortillas and crisped in an iron skillet.  He looked at me funny and asked, “Rats for dinner?”  “Wraps,” I reassured him.  Earlier in the day he had cut himself.  He had reached through the bathroom doorway for his walker handles, and the door’s strike plate had sliced the paper skin of his forearm.  The CNA wiped the floor clean with baby wipes, and bandaged his arm.  He sat at the kitchen table telling me about it.  My daughter Laura has sent me her ten favorite recipes—all winners—and I have made two or three each week to spice up Mom’s and Dad’s dinner time.  Tonight, we gobbled up Cajun chicken with dirty rice, which I learned is rice cooked in the fats and juices and spices from cooking the sausage and chicken pieces.  Dad praised the meal no fewer than six times before we finished eating.  I relish the experience of making beautiful and delicious dishes which people enjoy.  As we ate, Dad told me the results of his Mayo Clinic spinal fluid test.  The nurse had called to inform him that his spinal fluid is “completely normal.”  Completely normal.  “My spinal fluid is completely normal,” he sounded discouraged.  “But I am getting worse by the day.”  Once again, the good news was hard to take.  No diagnosis equals no treatment.  Here was one more possibility explored.  Here was one more hope disappointed.  Here was yet another beginning of searching for elusive answers while suffering unanswerable pain and weakness and while fighting for his life and for his quality of life.  I am powerless.  All I can do is cook dirty rice.  James the physical therapist stopped by after dinner to evaluate the effectiveness of therapy.  He asked Dad all the same questions everyone else has asked.  He poked and prodded and asked “Does that hurt?” a dozen times.  Yes, it hurts.  A lot.  After ten minutes, James had figured out what dozens of doctors and nurses and tests and therapists had not figured out.  The spinal nerves are inflamed, causing him pain, due to his age and his recliner sedentariness and his stooping over and due to his spinal joints not being moved and not circulating blood to the nerves which therefore are inflamed and causing him pain.  Simple.  Just do these exercises.  And don’t sit: sitting kills your nerves.  I am skeptical of any one person who has all the answers, and that quickly.  But, could he be onto something?  I will try to help Dad to the exercises.  Meanwhile, he is too tired and weak to anything but sit in his recliner and kill his nerves.  He invited me to turn on the Christmas lights wrapped around the bushes, and asked if they had come on despite the snow.  Yep, I answered, for I had wrapped every joint and plug with black electrical tape to keep out the water, as I did last year, and the year before.