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The thing is, in order to justify the philosophy of nonsense as a mechanism of coping, I think that one must also strip meaning from, well, everything. Can one truly isolate their affliction into its own realm of nonsense, without considering the life with which it is inextricably entangled? How can my life have any meaning if something as fundamental as my senses are subject to absolutely meaningless damage? After all, how can one say that something that destroys lives is meaningless, unless the life itself has no meaning?

About the idea of "random chance" - I am no physicist, but it seems counterintuitive that something random should ever exist. Which suggests that everything that has ever happened, could not have happened differently. I was doomed to this miserable life from the start - it was my unwritten destiny to end up living like this. One might argue that every decision we make is a result of serial biochemical and bioelectric events within our CNS, which were immediately preceded by and result from other such events, etc. Say I choose to eat a cheeseburger, because I am hungry. Initially, the stimulus of hunger entered my mind, and activated the part of my conscious mind that likes cheeseburgers. Eventually, action potentials were sent to my legs to get up off my chair, and go get a cheeseburger. Of course, the events leading to this are much more complex - but did I really choose to eat the burger? One neurotransmitter triggered an impulse that released another neurotransmitter that triggered another impulse...until eventually I found myself eating a burger. Was I truly in control of any part of this process? How can we control such processes, with nothing but these very processes at our disposition to do so? Surely we do not have supreme rule over the matter and energy within our brains - surely they are controlling us, and the only thing controlling them is the laws of physics. Is consciousness then just an illusion, based on nothing but complex applications of physical laws? But if this is so, then is there even such a thing as free will?

I'm not sure if any of this makes sense. I am confused at this point in my life, and trying to sort out what I believe and what is true. Any conclusion I make with regards to the implications of PA will involve not only the disease itself, but will ultimately influence my perspectives of...pretty much everything. I would seem that I am on the path to "accepting" the nonsense of PA, but am not net certain.

"Wrong. We do deserve this. In our previous lifetime, maybe we should have thought twice before blinding people in Dungeons for our King and Queen in the 1300s."
Of course, my mistake. But still, I'd prefer to think that I invented lousy TV reception. If only I had known. What makes you think that it's all going to be worth it? If we hang on until the bitter end, do we get to come back as eagles, able to spot our next meal miles away?

ksomething, I think I heard about Nietzsche on a tshirt once...I wish I was educated enough to partake in this discussion. In any case, I certainly have some reading to do. By the way, looks like Nietzsche too was a migraineur, though I cannot find what type he suffered from.
SopuliSusie, I just downloaded that book by Wegner and it seems very relevant. I'll be sure to read it (and maybe some Plato - and of course Schopenhauer and Nietzsche - once midterms are done). Lots of food for though. Thanks guys.

"we could probably repeat the much of the same series of unfortunate events and not end up with PMA (that's where random processes kick in, I would bet)."
Interesting point. I would argue that this would be where chaos theory kicks in. I would bet that, while the expression of genetic predisposition to PMA is highly complex and that subtle differences in our environment could make the difference between PMA manifesting itself or not, it is still very much a deterministic process. Similarly, you typically can't know a priori whether someone will develop cancer, although the mutations that culminated in their disease were direct results of concrete factors.