You Take The Good, You Take The Bad

You take them both and then you have the facts of life, the facts of life! Too bad there is no way for me to put music notes around all that, but I'm going to take a gamble and say that you all know that song as well as I do. After my recent visit at a pain management clinic, I received several ideas of ways to help my pain and several more prescriptions to add to my impressive collection of meds. I have tried both of those nuggets of wisdom and couldn't help thinking to myself, "who knew doctors knew so much?" Certainly not me.

The pain doctor told me to try wearing a satin camisole thingy under my clothes and to bed at night so nothing could rub against my skin where the MS Hug has now taken up residence. He said some people even wore it under their bra to help cut down on the discomfort of wearing a bra over that prickly hug. (Hmmm, prickly is a pretty gentle way of summing up that feeling, but the closest word I could come up with.) I was able, after dumping out all my dresser drawers, to find a pair of satin pajamas. I never wear anything remotely sexy to bed for 2 very good reasons: I don't want my little sister's ex bf/f to see me in them and I did not want to tempt my ex husband to sink his meat hooks into me any more than he already did. (After more than 9 years together one would think he would slow down a bit.) I have to say that the satin really helped me last night; it did cut down on the friction from the sheets and make me a little more comfortable. So today I am going to go tear up the town looking for a true camisole -- can't wear these pajamas in public -- to wear under my clothes.

He gave me a prescription for Flexeril to take before bedtime so that I would not wake up feeling like Gumby in a full body cast. I didn't know that there were options to my incredible stiffness in the mornings. I thought it just was. He was also concerned about me not getting enough sleep and thought this would kill 2 ugly MS birds with one stone. I find it very odd that I can't wake up during the day and yet still not get 8 hours of sleep at night. I took the Flexeril last night and woke up feeling so refreshed and flexible I had to move my body around to enjoy my range of motion. The only down side to it was that when I woke up in the middle of the night to drain my bulging bladder, I couldn't figure out which of the 3 floating toilet paper rolls were the right one. I pawed the air for a bit before landing on the real toilet paper roll. He gave me a bunch of instructions about how to take the new meds so that I wouldn't mess myself up by taking some too close together, but I can't remember what he said now. The day I saw him it was 101 degrees outside and I had sweated my body down to about 10% water, add all that to my non-existent short term memory and we're on a collision course to wackiness. He also said that he thought I should be using a cane so I wouldn't fall. I told him I would rather fall.

I have now put the finishing touches on my will because I am positive that this whole exercise thing is going to kill me. Oh, sure, I may get some benefits from it before I keel over, but I will keel over just the same. I have been avoiding a structured exercise program for so long I feel like I gave in to the dark side by agreeing to do it. To Sugarbowl I leave all my dirty smelly socks. To Princess I leave all my shoes to be worn by her mother to kick her butt with...