Nose Back To The Grindstone...

Back to work after my 6 day furlough...why does it NEVER seem like enough time off? I have only been back at the "grind" for two days and already I feel exhausted. Of course, it doesn't help that I have been having some moderate shoulder pain since last Friday and now today, I am quite certain someone ELSE'S cold has caught up with me! Oh the horror of other people's germs...I've developed a stuffy nose and a somewhat sore throat over the past two days (but of course, I DO have to remember I was breathing toxic paint fumes all weekend...sigh...).

I don't know about the rest of you's MS peeps, but when I begin to "catch" some nasty bug flying around in my face (that someone else obviously breathed upon me), I really don't feel well systemically...it doesn't matter if it is a cold virus, stomach flu, or syphilis (just trying to grab your attention here with dramatics!), the result is the same. I feel overly tired, drained, fatigued, irritable, achy, and just plain ill at ease. I can only imagine "normal" people feel some degree of this dysfunction as well. But it seems like for those of us with compromised nervous systems (and particularly immune systems), the effects of "germination" (aka, that time frame in between the "catch" of something to its full-blown culmination of disease symptoms...I made that definition up...hehe) is especially difficult...it becomes just about all I can do to drag my sorry arse out of bed let alone "pretend" wellness. And I notice this getting harder and harder with AGE as well.

So, I'm not going to pretend wellness here any longer and I'm just going to bed...I need to feel that ever-so-comfortable mattress cradling me for a few hours...hopefully I will sleep through the night without my shoulder waking me in pain as it has done for the past 5 nights. I don't "think" this new pain is MS as I imagine it is just old-age arthritis acting up...at least that's my story right now and I'm sticking to it. It's really a beauch to get old...and even worse to get old with MS!...