MS Musings

I guess I was due. It had been two and half years since my first attack, which numbed the entire right side of my body. Odd, I didn’t see it coming last month. I snowboarded a full day in Telluride. I went shoeshoeing for two hours the following day. I was guessing I just overdid it. Okay, so my right leg was A LOT weaker. Going from the couch to the fridge to get a beer was an ordeal. And lifting said beer with my right arm actually required serious effort. It felt so stinkin’ heavy! And then there was that burning sensation all over my body. As the wave of new symptoms slowed rolled in, each swell eroded my confidence. I wasn’t prepared mentally. One night when my wonderful wife Laura was away, my leg screaming at me, I realized I didn’t have the strength to stand and do dishes. So I just sat down in the middle of the kitchen floor. And cried for five solid minutes. I hadn’t cried about my MS like that since I was first diagnosed, but I needed that release. The next day, I caved and called the neuro to give them an update. Come in the next day, they said. Two days later I was getting my first of three 1,000 mg steroid infusions in the hospital, all the while stubbornly still going to the gym despite barely being able to walk. A week later, I’m now back to my relative “normal” self–the burning is gone and most of my strength has returned. Even though I put on airs of nothing-gets-me-down super ActiveMSer guy, my kryptonite experience in the kitchen–which my wife will hear about for the first time reading this blog (sorry honey)–serves as a reminder that this disease can, at times, be impossibly hard to cope with. (And I fully realize I had it relatively easy!) But cope we must. Tomorrow always dawns another day… and renewed hope.

This entry was posted on Friday, March 7th, 2008 at 1:16 pm and is filed under On Dealing with Symptoms. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.