Coming Up For Air...

Well, after that previously depressing post, I thought I should quickly and briefly update all y'all several hours later to say, "I ain't dead yet!" Actually, as the day has worn on (and I DO mean WORN), I have felt somewhat improved from my early morning I-think-I'll-throw-up-or-die experience...the Zofran has kept all vomiting at bay and the combo of Baclofen and Klonopin even knocked me out for a few hours of napping during the afternoon...woohoo!

I DID spend most of the entire day lying about and RESTING, which has probably done my body more good than fancy schmancy pills or the green tea I've been sucking down. I had a somewhat peculiar conversation moment with a friend during the afternoon that left me feeling...I don't know..."odd" I guess. The conversation was about my particular *brand* of MS. I was told rather innocently, "I've known a few people with MS before and you have the worst symptoms I've ever heard of". I wasn't sure if I should feel angry, honored, or guilty! Jury is still out on this one...

It IS funny to me though, how we with MS get lumped into categories of symptoms...even sometimes by those of us ALSO diagnosed with MS. What I know to be true for me is, I only know MY MS, not yours. We may have some similarities and most likely many differences...but your experience is yours and mine is mine and I can only speak from my experience. And likewise to that of a seemingly "healthy and normal" person!

It does bother me a great deal at times, however, feeling like I have to "justify" my symptoms or experience to the "normal" people of the world (and, sometimes on rare occasions, to the MS-self righteous). Sometimes I feel a need to carry around my portfolio of MRI's and point out the large lesion in my cervical spine and the multi-lesions in my brain while diagramming how the central nervous system works (or doesn't with MS)...or perhaps overlaying one of my first MRI's to more recent ones and play a little game called, "counting the aggressive lesion formations since day one diagnosis". LOL

But then I reign myself in and accept the fact "most" people are simply speaking to me from their own sense of helplessness or fear about my condition...God knows I speak from this place all the time! And I try to think how might I be feeling if I were wearing their shoes? If I were the one watching my friend decline in health at what is seemingly an aggressive and rapid pace? When I can put myself there, I quickly lose any anger or guilt and I feel only compassion...for the "normal" person and for myself. We ARE just all trying to get by...

So, off to bed I go...I'm hoping the sleep fairies will touch my forehead and bring me pleasant dreams...and I will awaken in the morning feeling refreshed and revitalized. There's always tomorrow...