MS Can Do Whatever It Wants To Do!

This article may sound a little negative or sound like I’m feeling sorry for myself but I’m not. I’m turning 50 on March 9th and I guess I thought my life would be a little different than it currently is. Oh well! Even with my MS I have a lot of things going well for me and I can look forward to the next 50 years. I don’t want to burst anyone’s bubble or infer that people with MS will turn out like me. We know that everyone’s MS is different. Multiple sclerosis really is an individual disease and maybe that’s what’s so frustrating for me. I can’t turn to another person with MS and say, “how did you react to this situation like a person who’s had heart surgery or something like that”. It’s different for everybody! There doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to it. It can do whatever it wants to do!

Another reason for my negativity is that the month of February 2008 was a terrible month for me. I’ll be blunt. It’s really sucked! During the first week of February my computer’s hard drive froze up and as of now I’ve lost everything. There might be hope down the road but I’m not holding my breath. It took me two weeks to find a guy to get me a different hard drive and program it for me. For only $200 US! I had documents that I use for my work, all my old newsletters, my e-book about my MS and most importantly I had about 100 pictures of my son on it from age 3 until the present. I had some really good pictures on there of my little Matty! I’m prejudiced but he’s a cutie and the light of my life! I’m not computer savvy so I never knew that a hard drive could freeze up like that. Of course now everyone says I should have had a backup hard drive or made copies of my pictures. Do you think someone could have suggested that before this happened? Noooo! My computer is only two years old and other computers that I’ve owned seemed to run forever with no problems like this. I learned something new at my ripe old age!

About the same time as all this computer business was going on I had the exacerbation of exacerbations! It wasn’t that bad but what made it worse was that it took my walking completely! The left side of my body was also in a state of numbness or tingling. It’s a hard feeling to describe. It’s not really numb and it’s not like my tingling toes. I do know that when the physician’s assistant for my neurologist got out his safety pin and started poking me I could feel it so it wasn’t completely numb. All I know is that I feel a different feeling when I’m numb like that. As I said besides my numbness I had great difficulty walking. In fact I couldn’t walk at all! I couldn’t even use my walker because my legs just didn’t move. For the past three weeks I’ve primarily used my scooter to do everything including cooking, laundry, bathing and cleaning. Some of you may know this because I sent out an email telling folks of my problems. One thing I learned is that I can survive as long as I have my scooter!

However, the one thing I worried about the most never happened. I thought I would have troubles loading and unloading my scooter. Anxiety was building as I wondered how I would do this simple task with no leg power at all. I have a van and when I load my scooter I have to take off the seat first and then load the scooter with the lift that’s in the van. When my legs are good I can stand up and take the seat off the post. Then I use the lift to steer the body of the scooter into the back of the van. My fear was that with the ice and snow of North Dakota, USA I wouldn’t be able to do this because my legs were so weak.

Here’s what I ended up doing. I sat on the back end of my van and park my scooter really close to the back bumper. As I was sitting there I could put my feet under my scooter making it impossible for them to slip around. Then I lifted the seat off as I was sitting. Then grabbing and leaning on the lift I was able to put my scooter in the back fairly easily. That was the loading and unloading was even easier! I was able to get my scooter off easily with my lift and again parked it so I could sit on the back end of my van and hook my feet. From there I could reach my seat and the post where the seat had to go. I had no problems with slipping on the ice or snow. My anxiety was relieved and I was able to go in for three days of steroids for an hour each.

The steroids was two weeks ago and I’m walking better with my walker in my apartment. I also have more feeling on my left side. It’s not perfect but it’s better than it was. I’m continually amazed at what the brain and body will do when challenged by an exacerbation or similar problems. Some people in wheelchairs or on scooters have always said to me that I should walk as long as I can. I agree with that but I’m also now thinking like this. If I’m tired or having problems why not just ride my scooter? Screw it! Fatigue is a major problem for me and why waste what energy I have for walking or for that matter walking with my walker? I accept that some day I won’t be able to walk so why should I sugarcoat it to myself and others that I can walk. I’d rather ride my scooter so I can make 50 more telephone dials for my business. I can’t walk and I know that I can’t walk!! Enough said!

It seems I couldn’t get a break in February as we approach the first of March. Now, I got a cold and cough which I never like to get because my immune system sucks. Colds seem to last a week or two longer for me than other people. I try to stay clear of sick people as much as I can. But in the northern plains of the USA everything is shut up because of winter so when one person gets sick they pass it on to others. I’ll quit complaining now!! lol I kind of rambled on there but this last exacerbation has taught me that it doesn’t matter what I do. I’m eating better (even veggies), taking my copaxone everyday, trying to get my sleep, I don’t drink alcohol anymore and then I still have a whopper of an exacerbation! MS can do whatever it wants to do to a person. That’s what I’ve surmised and I’ll go with that!