Well, we're gathering for games with good folk again. I tried a new game I'll mention in an upcoming post. And, of course, we brought some old favorites with which to torture them. Meanwhile, though, in this post, I'll be a hermit away from the gaming and do as I promised several a long while ago -- tell you some results.
I've been trying to live with the idea that maybe there's nothing going wrong. Perhaps it was all a fluke. Perhaps I'm just aging or have something simple and what generations in my family have had -- arthritis...or maybe strange allergy symptoms. But, the numbness and weakness in my hands/arms/legs/feet, the foot drop, the fatigue, the eye pain and blurriness, etc. have all remained. Even on cooler days, our 1-2 mile walks sometime end with my being barely able to drag myself back to our front door. Did I forget to make a lease payment on this body and penalties are kicking in?
I'm truly thankful this isn't worse. It won't do good to gripe except to "lower the mask" so we can feel the human bond that comes from life in the same trenches, so I'll proceed with that in mind.
I've been able to tell myself that I am used to the goofy symptoms. I try to ignore it. I have for years. I tell myself, "If nothing is wrong, nothing is wrong. Buck up!"
But, you see, I'm writing this in the wee hours of the morning because I wasn't able to ignore the leg spasms and hand jerks. Thankfully, it wasn't keeping hubby awake, but I cannot say the same for myself.
Then, the other night, I got hot and got all shaky and headache-y.
Then, when I tried to be sociable and play a game in the upper room yesterday where the sun was beating in the windows and the thermostat was turned up, the world started to tilt again. Shakiness, weakness, eye-ache, and mild vertigo joined the party. I got outside and rode with the group to dinner, but couldn't look out the car window because my brain and eyes got all jittery at the passing landscape, making me queasy and like the earth had been wildly tilted off its axis.
Walking toward the restaurant, I had to concentrate hard to keep my foot from dropping and tripping me.
Okay, okay...I admit, it gets a little hard to ignore...
Conversation as we were walking to the diner:
(Hubby explaining how I got hot and it was affecting me a little.)
(Friend offers his arm. I decline. Perhaps I shouldn't.)
Friend: "So, it's decided this isn't MS?"
Hubby: "Yes."
Friend: "Well, that's a good thing, I guess."
Hubby: "I think so."
Friend: "Though we don't know what it is then."
Hubby: "No."
Meanwhile, I'm listening from behind and starting to stray from the straight path because there's a smoker ahead, and I don't want to make matters worse for myself by breathing that in. In so doing, I'm adding extra steps to my trek right when I just really need to get there and rest in a chair. I'm silently telling my brain with every step, "Raise your toe. Raise your toe. Raise. Raise. Agh, don't shuffle; it'll be heard, and they'll know what a struggle this is. This is nothing."
And, I'm listening to the conversation and thinking to myself, "I didn't want to tell anyone in the first place. It was never sure what this is, and now I'm in limbo again and the mind games are back. This is all in my head again; right up there where there aren't any lesions." Yet, when the doc (during the 2012 vertigo) was so sure it was MS, we decided to just tell people so my symptoms and preventative counter-measures could be explained.
"Lift. Lift. Concentrate. We probably shouldn't have told anyone. I probably shouldn't have started that blog. I have no business writing about MS."
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