Carnival of MS Bloggers #91

Welcome to the Carnival of MS Bloggers, a bi-weekly compendium of thoughts and experiences shared by those living with multiple sclerosis.

Dancing, Empowerment, Walking, Spasticity, Acceptance

Exercise and Empowerment
by Taylor of Dancing With Multiple Sclerosis

Lately I have been trying to find ways to empower myself. I know, that sounds like a big pot of swiss, gouda and cheddar- SUPER CHEESY. But I honestly do feel that with an unpredictable disease like M.S, we should take every opportunity we can to feel like we have some sort of control over our lives.

I have found that the best way for me to feel like I have some sort of say in my disease is by developing a plan, and sticking to it every day. For me, that involves a healthy diet along with an exercise plan. Also, setting aside time for stress-busting meditation, and taking the medicines and supplements that I know will help me. Of these things, exercising daily is most certainly the hardest.

A little background on me: I grew up dancing and dance has always been my passion. I danced all though college and even through bouts of optic neuritis and neuropathy. I was also an avid runner, with four marathons under my belt and I worked as a personal trainer for years. Last year, the most debilitating fatigue I have ever experienced hit me. Getting though a 3 hour rehearsal or a 90 min dance class would lay me flat on my back for a good day following. I would also start visibly shaking and get very weak and dizzy after a dance class (literally crawling to the wall one time in a modern dance class. Humiliating) I realized that I had to adapt every workout for how I felt that day, week, month. This has been one of the hardest things for me to cope with. When I hear runners run by my kitchen window, the desire to get out there and feel the brisk morning air chasing me is almost too much. But I cant. At least not every day.

I've learned that if I set aside 30 min a day to exercise- I feel 20x better than when I make excuses not to. Some days I only have it in me to stretch and do very gentle yoga. Other times I have been able to run, cycle and even dance. All it takes is the MENTAL strength to say 'now I am exercising' and start. Of course, there are times when I have overdone it and spent the next day on the couch. But exercising actually helps me to understand my limits and know how to operate in a way that I move and stay as active as possible without making myself sick. And *yeay!* for endorphins! Nothing beats the great flood of 'happy' that comes after a nice workout.

Exercising is one of the ways I have found to empower myself. It reminds me that I have strength even if it's just the mental strength to TRY exercising. It reminds me that my body is this physical, powerful thing and that I am connected to it in a positive way.

Anyhow, I suppose I am on this subject because I feel so great right now- and the only thing that has changed is that I have gotten back on track with my diet and exercising. I am still dealing with the same symptoms I've had for a month (burning legs, numb face, bouts of trigeminal neuralgia) but I am feeling so empowered right now. I feel like I am FIGHTING M.S again, and not just sitting back and suffering. It's a great feeling.

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What I Miss the Most
by S.S.O. from Multiple Sclerosis & Me

the ability to dance!

I'm talkin bout "bussin ah wine (the Trini dance for soca - gyrating ur hips to the music with or without a partner(s))", ballroom dancing, any kind of dance.  I've mentioned before that i cyah wine no more - wining with a cane and a stiff left leg  (my left side is the problem side - it's weaker, the left leg is generally the stiff one (it always wants to be straight)) is not pretty and does not feel right, so wining is out of the question.  All i can do these days is listen to the music, sway side to side (a slight mini wine if u will) and use my cane as a prop to stomp to the beat and in fact Saturday nite, i used it as my flag/rag and was wavin it in the air :-) - UGH!!!

I used to dance when i was growing up - modern dance - and always loved it.  As i got older i wanted to learn how to tango, so bout 5 years ago, i signed up with a ballroom dancing school.  I was quite good, if i do say so myself, but had to drop out when i realized that i would need to rob a bank to continue.  I was able to afford the lessons at first, but as i advanced and got to the level where i could perform at exhibitions and such, the cost became too much and even though i might have gotten away without robbing the bank the 1st year - beyond that there was no telling.  So instead of risking jail for a hobby, i decided to let it go.  For the short time that i did it, i enjoyed myself thoroughly and as i mentioned, i was quite good.

Nowadays when i'm at a fete or see people dancing anywhere in general, i feel a tug at the heartstrings - it saddens me just a little.  When we're partying, most of my friends will come and take a wine on my chair or me (wish i had a picture to share) - just depending on the type of chair :-) and i love them for that - but it's just not quite the same.

Spasticity Poem I

by Mary of Travelogue for the Universe

Quit pulling my leg,
You rowdy MonSter,
Couldn’t sleep past 4
Again.

Never knew what spasms were
When patients told me,

Hard to see,

Calf goes flat,



The Pain,

A Whimper,


A Grimace,
A bite of the tongue,

A face washed of smiles.

First goes flat, then gnarly, the muscles contract

In a schizophrenic symphony,

Discordant,

All wrong.

Rub my knee, flex my foot,

Jump out of bed, stomp like a weird dance,

Go away you spasms and pain,


Die you MonSter,
Die.

When to Ask For a Steroid Infusion

by Matt of Multiple Sclerosis Daily News

This morning I called the hospital to ask for a steroid infusion. My walking is very clunky and my hands feel very funky and I don't want to wait until it gets real bad to do something. For the past few weeks I've had a hunch I was going through an exacerbation. I didn't get in for an infusion this evening, so maybe tomorrow.

But now I'm not sure if I really need it. My walking is bad, but I can still walk. In some ways it feel better than last week. Tonight I walked a half a block and felt okay, so no infusion, right? I feel better than I did this morning, but it took me forever to get out of bed, which is why I called the hospital in the first place.

I'm confused, when should I get a steroid infusion? Is it only for dire emergencies or is it also for impending potential emergencies? I don't want to be "that patient" but right now I am, I'm potenitally wasting people's time. And I've done this before. I asked for a steroid infusion and backed out at the last minute six months ago.

I swear I'm not normally like this but with MS I'm paranoid. I waited until I couldn't walk at all to get my diagnosis, I don't want to do that again. So now I'm trapped in this bipolar situation where the sky is falling and then everything's okay again.

The thing about MS disability is you get used to it. One day you don't walk very well, the next day you figure out how to walk despite whatever went wrong using different muscles. Then you don't feel so bad. This is why I'm going on Tysabri, because I am the king of this. I work around new disabilities and then they don't seem so bad, but if you look at my best a year ago to my best today it doesn't look so good. I'm getting worse over time but I'm learning to deal with it, which is good for me, but it indicates that a new treatment is needed.

That still leaves the question, when should I get a steroid infusion. I have no idea. I really don't, and I hate wasting people's time.

Errands and Walking

from Judy of Peace Be With You

From force of habit
I grabbed my cane forgetting
distances are hard.

Walk, walk, walk some more
my walker left in the car
what was I thinking?

Errand to errand
I slogged on deeply fatigued
until I couldn’t. 

Stages

from Angela of Gracie's Mum: a Story of a Mum with MS

We’ve all heard about the Five Stages of Grief. You know, Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance. This model is applied to many different situations in life that involve some form of loss. Death, Divorce or Illness fall among the most popular, but there are of course many more situations in which one is forced to rally through the 5 stages. I am seeing my good friend go through this with her recent separation from her husband. Right now, she is fighting it out somewhere between Anger and Acceptance. I watched my mother in law go through all of these stages when my father in law finally succumbed to cancer. I, myself, have gone through these stages. I spent the most time on both Anger and Acceptance.

Which is where I find myself now. On the final stage, only, I wonder, why there aren’t varying degrees of Acceptance, like what happens afterward?

So, let’s recap my 5 stages: Denial, wasn’t one I spent too much time on, I was more in shock than anything else. I did have some moments of ‘this can’t be happening to me’ but they were fleeting because Anger is one dominant bitch that insists on riding ‘shotgun’ to no one. I was angry for being in the hospital, I was angry over the flip-floping diagnosis that encouraged the repeating of the first 2 steps an inhumane amount of times, I was angry because I was in the hospital missing out on Grace, Steve and my career, my students. I was angry that this was the hand I was dealt. I never Bargained, not for my life when I thought it was cancer, and not for my life when I knew it was MS. Who does an agnostic bargain with anyway? Depression, well, that’s a tough one. Of course I was down. I was stuck in the world’s, or at least this country’s, most disgusting hospital, who wouldn’t be depressed? I really feel though that the most time at any stage was spent on Acceptance. Because, there just isn’t any other way to live.

Adapt or Die right?

But, to say, ‘ok, alright, I have MS’ is totally different to saying ‘ok, alright, I have MS’ and actually living with MS. Excuse me, I mean, saying ‘ok, alright, I have MS’ and living in spite of MS. Yes, spite should be a stage of Grief for all of us that go on living to show life who really is in charge here. To show that although life may have handed us a crappy hand that we still go on to win the pot, still go on and all the while we’re flipping life the bird.

Because we have not only accepted our fate, but we’re going to rock it out while we do it.

I have only recently entered this ‘off the beaten path’ to Acceptance. Up until now, I accepted my life as a life that included MS. But I was very conscious of how exactly others would accept me with MS.

While in the Rehabilitation hospital I refused visitors other than Steve, Grace and my parents. I didn’t want anyone, under any circumstances, seeing me in a wheelchair, or trying, struggling to try, to walk. I also didn’t want anyone seeing me in that place because I’m sure that there would have been a few of my friends and family that would have not known better than to blow up on some unassuming nurse about why that place is not condemned. And that would have just been embarrassing. For everyone.

The first time I saw anyone during that period of time was at Chris and Emma’s wedding. I was still wearing the hospital bracelet and was out on a weekend pass. Wearing an AFO leg brace and using a cane with a wheelchair on backup, I allowed the world to see the MS me. I was terrified. At a pre-wedding get together I heard Emma tell Chris how at first she didn’t even know I was there until she heard me talk, and how I sounded so normal. I cried to myself hard that night in bed. And although I know that Emma was reacting as anyone would react to being shut out of a person’s life while they recover from paralysis brought on by a mystifying MS attack that left me almost senseless and in need of a brain biopsy. Without any contact with me there was no way she wouldn’t have thought otherwise. I get it. But it made me realize that people had an expectation. An expectation for the unexpected. There is no manual on how to prepare for that.

So I avoided it. Or tried hard to ignore it because sometimes it was unavoidable. Like when I still didn’t have my license back and relied on neighbours Lenna and Jenna to take me to physiotherapy appointments or for blood work. BBQ’s were tough because almost every deck has stairs to get to the dining area, so you have to go through the house and people you don’t know or haven’t seen in a very long time ask you what happened to you leg? Did you break it? Sprain it? MS? Wow, really? And then I’m MS chick for an hour and it’s hard to hide it while you explain the entire Journey Through Hell. And then you hear all the stories about the so and so’s they know who have or had MS and how they are either so normal you can’t tell or they died. I’m serious. And then of course there is the discussions focused on whether or not I’m going to Bulgaria for the ‘cure’. And then the ensuing explanation about CCSVI and my stance on the topic etc etc etc.

My saving grace was when I graduated from AFO and cane, to just cane, to nothing. And then it was super easy to hide it. And thus another stage of Acceptance: Pretending everything is normal.

Pretending everything is normal and denial are very different. I had accepted the diagnosis, the pain, the fatigue, the needles, the pills, the B.S. But I hid it because I didn’t want the focus of my life to be this disease. I wanted desperately to be able to seem normal just like them so that no one had to know about the MS thing. So I avoided the MS community completely for months because when you are part of a community you can’t get away with pretending you are not what you are that made you part of that community. I avoided eye contact with anyone in a wheelchair or with a cane. I was not like them. I had been like them, but I wasn’t anymore.

Then, I had a relapse.

I was scared, petrified actually, that the jig was up and my cover was blown and that the entire world saw me as a fraud. And then, through all the stages I went through that particular time while recovering from that flare up, I realized that I was kidding myself.

I threw myself out there. And, I screamed to the world that I HAVE MS. I have it, and this is what I’m doing in spite of it all: I’m living!

To live with MS, to be a wife with MS, to be a mum with MS means pretty much the same to me as to anyone else, you live within the confines of your limitations until they are no longer limitations or you move the hell on. Oh, as life goes on and the disease progresses, I’ll still worry about being the mum with the cane and what Grace’s friends may or may not think of me or her. Oh, I’ll still worry about being able to dance at her wedding. I’ll still worry that Steve does way too much around here and I’ll let guilt take over from time to time about not being the household-keeper-upper that I want to be. But I won’t exclude an entire group of people from my world because they too were handed a crappy hand in life and to see them is just too painful for me.

No, because I have too much to offer their world and vice versa.

Oh, it’s on.

Acceptance is a great stage, but allowing yourself to see the possibilities that acceptance brings you are even better.

And the possibilities are endless.

Rock on. MS or not. Happy Hump Day!


This concludes the 91st edition of the Carnival.

The next Carnival of MS Bloggers will be hosted here on July 14, 2011. Please remember to submit a post (via email) from your blog of which you are particularly proud, or which you simply want to share, by noon on Tuesday, July 12, 2011.

Thank you.

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