List of pissed

Yes, you read that right.  This is a short list of things that piss me off.

1.  I can't run.  There was a time when I didn't want to run.  I didn't understand why anyone wanted to do it for fun and now that I can't, I want to.  I see people out running with their ear buds in, seeming like they are running away from all their cares and to top it off they are getting exercise enough to burn off all the pizza I want to eat.

2.  Exercise.  Everyone talks about how great exercise is for you, staves off various diseases, strengthens the body, burns off pizza (no I don't have a one track mind; stop asking - okay, since you asked I'll have pepperoni).  No this is for normal people.  For me it causes me to get shaky, wobbly, weak and worn out for the rest of the day.

3.  Memory or lack there of.  I forgot what I was going to say.

4.  People that assume you are just lazy for any number of reasons.  One I heard recently was that if you don't wear makeup you are lazy.  If you don't make all your own meals from scratch you are lazy.  If you don't mop all your floors weekly you are lazy.  If you wear sweats to bed and don't change into other clothes before leaving the house you are lazy...um true story not that I would ever do - that last week Thursday.

5.  People that think you aren't trying hard enough when you can't figure things out. Yeah, thanks for making me feel stupid again.  No I didn't just randomly give up.  No I haven't smoked a disproportionate amount of marijuana while binge drinking.  I have a free pass, brain damage and all.

6.  Profanity is frowned upon.  Okay, I get it.  You don't want your children dropping f-bombs because they spilled their Cheerios.  I try my best to refrain when I'm within the range of people under the age of 18, 16 tops.  Fact is, sometimes those are the only words that come out.  If I say I have MS Tourettes, fucking believe me.

7.  Fatigue.  Never feeling awake.  Feeling like I could sleep always.  Yeah, that blows.

8.  Dealing with the medical community.  There should be a personal liason that handles every medical pile of BS that comes down the pipeline.  Need a med renewed but your prescription has run out.  My secretary will handle that.  Need an appointment during the morning hours when you only have a nice, reliable vehicle every other week - secretary. Need a foot massage and some nail polish, my office girl will handle that.

9.  Cooking.  Look, I get it.  Cooking from scratch is good for me, for my whole family.  I do it a lot of the time.  It makes me feel like a dolt and it takes me so much longer than the average person; I swear it has to.  I have to look at the recipe over and over and over again.  I forget what I was doing, how much to measure, which ingredients I still have to add - blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.  Don't even get me started on cutting a recipe in 1/2 or doubling it.  There is a near 100% probability that I will forget to do the calculations on at least one ingredient.  I would live on peanut butter, fresh fruit, fresh veggies, sliced cheese and crackers - every day, every single day.  Change it up with some tuna fish, hard boiled eggs and Hot Pockets (pepperoni pizza - yes, I'm an addict, shut it) or actual pizza now and then and I'm good to go.

10.  Grammar.  Now I'm not perfect, of course.  It makes me crazy when people make grammatical mistakes that shouldn't have been made if passed the 3rd grade.  It's not that hard.  I'm not asking you to diagram sentences (*shutters*) or win a spelling bee against a poet laureate.  Knowing where to place an apostrophe in a contraction isn't rocket science.  You just put the apostrophe where a letter is removed (was not - remove the "o" and make wasn't).  Again, not asking a lot (not alot - see, two words).

11.  Not having the energy to ramble on about my other pissed list items.  Bah.

Later taters!

Legless MSer.

So there's these odd things that happen with MS.  There's blurry eyes after a hot shower, a finger that just feels like it wants to move, scalp that's divided right down the center with sensations that are different on both sides, just to name a few.

Then there's this:  I was laying in bed and it dawned on me that I didn't know where my legs were.  Now, of course, I knew in my mind where my legs were but it felt like they weren't there.  I moved them so I could feel where they were.  My mind made the connection then but what an odd thing to lay in bed and feel like your legs are somehow missing.

When I had significant back pain my chiropractor told me that I should lay in bed with my "hip stacked", they should be in direct line one on top of the other.  Every night that I have a little ache in my back I remind myself to stack my hips but I never know if one is leaning more back or forward without feeling my top hip.  It's just like I lose all sense of where my body parts exist once the lights are out.

I also have trouble walking in the dark, I do a sort of shuffle and try to grab the visual cues I can, digital clock, moonlight through the skylight, in order to just stay upright.  It's a proprioception issue and I suppose that may account for my other strange, detatched body parts feelings, too.

It would be an interesting trick, with Halloween looming, if I could make those legs disappear to those around me, just for the night.  May as well get a free costume out of this MS beast, eh?