Ghost Of MS Past

It has been a long time since I have been this sick. With my highly evolved brain I have been able to deduce why I got so sick: I had my Tysabri infusion on Monday, came home to 3 sick roommates hacking and coughing their black plague infested germs all over me, and by Wednesday I had to paint the black X on my door to let the neighbors know that there is sickness here. (And you thought geniuses only lived in lamps!) I had forgotten how much fun MS and sickness are. I never get sick unless the stuff they pump into me makes me sick, ie getting Tysabri done, hence lowering my immune response, thus making me more susceptible to the tuberculosis being spread around this house. (Not exactly sure what is making the rounds here, but I know it is a hideous thing worthy of quarantining all of us.)

I haven't been really sick in so long and the few times I have been under the weather were not as bad as this, so I forgot how it can kick up The Ghost Of MS Symptoms Past. I have had so many attacks in the 3.5 years since being diagnosed, and the attacks I've had have run the gamut so that I can't believe there is a part of me that has not been affected yet. So yesterday, at a really low and sick point, my vision became so cloudy and obscured I could hardly see a thing. Kind of like my first major attack that took my vision for 6 hideous, dark, irritating weeks. My right leg had as much strength as a boiled noodle, my left leg was boiled a little less (which allowed me to remain upright) so I had to pull out my cane collection and decide which one was appropriate for my needs. I chose a walking stick because we were going to a flea market and it had been raining for days, so I needed something that could take the mud. Today I am going to use Spongebob because I am going to be mainly indoors and that one is a traditional cane, albeit spruced up with Spongebob stickers, (Note to self: Make a Hello Kitty cane to match the days I have a pink attack.) and has a handle made to be leaned on more. The walking stick is more for steadiness. I have decreased sensation in all my extremities, I have had attacks that have taken every limb at one time or another, especially on my right side -- I cut my finger and didn't notice until my sister pointed out that I was dripping blood. My bladder has turned into warm jello, so I go to the bathroom at the first sign of a drop of urine in there. I have the dreaded itchy spots, now in more places and really bad on the right side of my face and upper left arm, which I have dug up with only limited relief. And I would swear on a stack of MS magazines that my cognition is at an all time low too. One of my biggest lesions is located in the corpus callosum, between the two hemispheres of my brain. And I swear it slows down my cognition between the two. I am having a harder time finding the right words for stuff (<---see?!) and putting into words what I am thinking. My response time and how long it takes for something to click are really slowed down too.

So I am sick, itchy, twitchy, slow to comprehend anything, and very wobbly on these over-boiled noodle legs of mine. The only good thing about this is that it reminds me of how good it feels to be well. How nice it is to not be a bundle of MS symptoms that I thought had gone away. Sometimes when I am feeling this cruddy I wish it was bad enough for me to go into the hospital for. A catheter and someone to bring me my meds and meals while I just sleep would be very nice right now. I am going to have to hobble back to the flea market again today, it being its last day and knowing that the sellers will be more willing to come down on prices because they don't want to have to haul all that crap back, and I have my eye on a few things. Too bad it is an eye that has a spotted field of vision and no depth perception at all, so I hope the stuff I want is as good as it seems to me right now. Who am I fooling? Like I care when it comes to cheap crap that I don't need! I'm a sucker for these kind of things -- they are the only thing that could make me leave my house right now.

This is probably rambling and disjointed, so I apologize to anyone who had to wade through this to see if I made any points worth making. My stupid vision is so messed up I am going to have to count on spell check to correct this for me. Hope you are doing better than my black plague/tuberculosis ridden self. Love you, Blindbeard.