I'm retreating....

I feel my chair calling me and I am not ready to give up but just feel too damn tired to fight it. I hope I can manage just a couple more weeks of "life" before I have to give in because it doesn't seem quite as depressing if winter is in full swing and I have to sit and crochet in front of the TV but it is really depressing to have to watch the beautiful crisp fall weather from my living room window - today my left leg is bothering me and both of my shoulders, but I'm hoping the shoulders are just from overdoing it yesterday. After a terrible morning of the sleepy shit when I could not even keep my eyes open I was finally able to drag myself out of bed around noon (I'm bleeding like a stuck pig and that MAY have something to do with that) anyhow, once I got moving a bit I was overwhelmed by the animal hair and mess in my living room and got out the carpet shampooer and proceeded to shampoo over and over and over - so that may be why my shoulders are extreme knots and tender this morning. And because I'm in bed later these days I'm not falling asleep much before midnight - and the vicious circle continues. Been waking up with numb limbs again too - wonder if that is circulation or what? And then what comes first, the chicken or the egg - guess it doesn't really matter as long as I keep waking up every morning and so far so good on that front. Really trying to adjust the diet for the cholesterol thing - added soy milk, snacking on almonds, eating yougurt and blackberries every morning, and of course my fiberliscious bread with the ground flax seed - I can't believe it but I'm out of zuchini and I'm missing having that to snack on so have been snacking on oranges and grapes and bananas. Well, I still have some big zuchini, but I'm out of the snacking size. I saw a recipe in this months family circle for zuchini pickles - never heard of that before. but I'm sure they aren't as healthy as munching on the raw sliced zuchini - wonder what kinds of nutrients a zuchini actually has - may have to look that up. Well I obviously don't have a whole lot worth writing about today so I'll just stop.

Honey, I'm hoooome!

My multiple sclerosis has knocked on the door once again and I tried valiantly to keep it outside but it's charging in uninvited and I feel myself retreating into my cave and nestling into my chair. I was so enjoying the holiday from pain and fatigue, I really was. But the chest is getting heavy, the shoulders are locking up, my legs hurt all day and the bowels are tight and the bladder is loose - and today I took a shower which means I've accomplished twice as much as I did yesterday. Yoorah - or however the marines say it. On the plus side, there is no place I HAVE to go, and for that I can be grateful, and there is nothing that I HAVE to do, again, I can be grateful for that - but I was really embracing the old me and I want her back again because I didn't get everything done! I should be used to this, but every year I hope that it won't end - or that they will find a way to bottle whatever it is that causes this little holiday - because I want a double order! I still have a lot to do - so this morning I made a list because we are back to needing the satisfaction of crossing at least one thing off once in awhile - instead of doing 15 things in one day - I really was a little dynamo before M.S. - sometimes it's been so long that I forget how much I used to accomplish. At least I got the kids raised - even if it was a challenge - and I don't think they felt like they missed out on too much because of me - I tried so hard to conserve my energy for the things that they needed - the first year I had to pull Andrew out of a few things, but once my M.S. found a new balance with my stay at home life he was able to get back into things - we never did rejoin 4-H, and of course I left the church so we didn't go back to sunday school but I taught dustin's class, not andrew's - I did manage to make it to most school events - and most sports events - I certainly tried to be a good mom. Dustin often complains about how he didn't have a dad growing up and Andrew did because Ken was working 80+ hours a week but I don't think he realizes how much more of a mom he had than andrew had because of my M.S. - so dustin had less dad and andrew had less mom. It probably balanced out in the end.

The cold cometh and take my fatigue away

Well, it's that time of year - the cold starts to envelope the countryside and as the warmth and humidity leaves it seems to take a bit of my fatigue with it. However the cold brings an increase of pain and spasticity but I do think I fare better with that than the fatigue. I just can't fight the overwhelming blah's - even with the new amantadine - it wakes up my mind but I still have to find the little extra something deep within myself to actually propel me out the door - with the provigel I didn't have to think so hard - that was more like the energizer bunny and I went and went and went until the batteries died for the day and then I started up fresh the next day with a new pill. But I can't afford the provigel and I CAN afford the amantadine - however the constipation it is giving me may make it unacceptable after all - but I'm just not sure if it IS the amantadine because my whole system seems to have slowed - I have a slight hug showing up now and again and my bowels have gotten tight and my bladder loose - so for the time being I am going to have to go against the medical communities steady advice and depend on laxatives because if I wait for my body I'll be in emergency for sure - or end up like Elvis Presley and no one should have to die that way!

As for my Little Melrose Life - this past week we harvested our first (and therefore limited) supply of honey from our backyard hive - it was as exciting as christmas morning - and we also learned that we will be the proud grandparents of a bouncing baby boy ETA 2/14/10 - that makes it a pretty exciting life as things go. I am so glad that I will get a baby to play with before I lose the strength to play with him, and I just hope I have enough energy to do all of the things I've been planning and dreaming about for the last 15 years since my own children stopped playing with me voluntarily LOL. The day they started to say "no" when I made fun and educational suggestions was a very sad day for this mom. But now I'll have a whole new set of minds because I'm hoping he will be just the beginning! If not the poor young lad will have to fill this grandma's expectations all by his little lonesome - what fun we will have ;o)

Liquid Gold!

I researched harvesting honey from our backyard beehive without an extractor and was successful in my search for how to's. Ken got home late last night so we didn't start until this morning, and for the first time since we put the hives up, he got stung - but they were defending their home and family so you really can't blame them. Since it is our first year we didn't get a lot of honey, but we got enough to be excited about the future and watching that first little bottle fill up with liquid gold was thrilling to this homebody. Hopefully we'll get enough to share a little with friends and family and christmas - if not this year then next.

On the MS front - I feel pretty darn crappy these days. Read something interesting yesterday - a study about lisiniprol and MS (lisiniprol is the blood pressure medication I take). Says lisiniprol seems to reverse MS paralysis in mice with EAE and this totally explains my reaction when I was pumped with lots of lisiniprol (for my extra high blood pressure) and I told the doctor I felt like he had saved my life and he was confused because he said high blood pressure didn't usually cause that kind of symptoms - which just tells me it was all MS (the exacerbation in february) and the high doses of lisiniprol cut the inflammation enough to give me my life back - because thinking back, I did really feel like I was going to die - I was putting on clean and nice pajamas at night so when they found my dead body I'd look okay - which made Al laugh - as an EMT he said nobody looks at your clothes and nobody looks good when they've recently died. So it all makes sense and I guess it was a happy accident for me. I am bummed that I've seemed to exhausted the ride after my first steroid infusion - it was so nice to feel almost good - I think over the course of the last decade my bar has gotten a lot lower and it doesn't take much to make me happy in the way of physical health - but since I HAVE to do so little, just a little normalcy is all it takes to make me feel happy happy.

Family First & Fatigue

Last night was the first wednesday of the month and for me that means family first - we invite any and all family to our house for a pot luck dinner - I've been making fiberliscious bread and last night I added garden fresh chili, killer zuchini cake, my first batch of refrigerator pickles since we left the farmhouse, and chi-chi's corn bread. It was delicious! I sent the leftover loaf of bread home with my pregnant daughter-in-law to feed my new grandbaby. We had a couple of leakers - my husband is stranded someplace in Ohio waiting for a reload, my great uncle got stuck at the bank working on guardianship stuff and my father, well he's just a leaker - he figured since I had to run to town on Monday to get him a new cell phone and he treated me to the chinese buffet that he had already seen me this month I guess. Which was okay, we had a really nice visit. My mom beat me in a game of bean bag toss, my son harvested his hops plant, and we thoroughly enjoyed a low key visit. Today I'll sit and look at the dishes and by next week this time I'll find the energy to get the done. My fatigue has been rather high again and I am not happy about that, at all. Just when I feel ready to rejoin the world, take on something akin to a normal life, it sets back in. I should be used to this. It happens a few times a year. I feel better, I feel better long enough I start to set some wheels in motion, and by the time I get anything really started, the wheels grind to a slow stop. And then here I sit, feeling able to do not much more than crochet. I guess since we have a new baby coming there are worse things. But I was really excited about the prospect of trying to return to school, and I still might push myself a little harder to make this happen. We are poor enough this year that I'm sure I would get some assistance, and even if I only went part-time, if any of my credits from decades ago transfer then I might be able to add a bachelors degree to my personal resume - not that I'll probably ever use it - but I might - maybe GIFT15 will be the MS answer - and then I could go teach poor children in arizona or las vegas or even new orleans! someplace WARMER but not killer hot - because I know that heat makes my MS butt drag but cold makes my body hurt from head to toe and I'd rather take pep pills for a little oomph than have to fill my body with pain pills like I do now. Enough about that - don't have enough energy to waste it whining.