Saturday 25 August 2007I said goodbye at the end of my last blog entry as I had decided to stop the CAP but thanks to encouragement from Sarah (thank you once again) and my husband, I am going to stick with it.
Monday 9 July 2007One year on CAPIt's been a year since I started the CAP, beginning with NAC at the start of July 2006. I just read over my 'baseline' entry and some of the early parts of my blog and overall I think I am exactly the same as I was when I started with regard to the ms symptoms. I had been getting a little disillusioned about this over the past week, but yesterday I was thinking that I should be grateful I am exactly the same as a year ago. If conventional wisdom is right and the ms is now progressive for me, then no obvious progession in disability over a year has to be a good thing and the antibiotics may be responsible for that.
Friday 13 April 2007We returned from our cruise around the South Pacific on Wednesday. We were all glad to be home as it was not the best holiday we've ever had. Mobility was OK as I took the little scooter and I could get to most areas of the ship but there were so many people using the lifts in preference to the stairs that I often had to wait around for an empty lift or for considerate people.
Sunday 21 January 2007New year, new blog page! I think I'll try keeping about three months on each page as my previous entry got rather lengthy.
I want to write down a few of the positive things that I've gained from ms so that whenever I'm feeling down about it I can read over this and hopefully change my perspective.A slower paceIt's taken me a while to find the positives in being forced to slow down but I've done it! Prior to ms, I was a very active person, much happier doing things and being busy than not. Rest was something I did after everything else was finished. And of course, there was always something else to do, so rest wasn't a common thing. I got a lot of satisfaction from working hard in the garden and around the house. In fact, I was probably a little obsessed with keeping our home neat and tidy. Now I am unable to do all the gardening, cleaning and tidying I would like to, but I have come to regard that as a good thing.
I want to include a history with significant events so far. I have already forgotten when certain things occurred and I need to reference them from time to time. Hopefully this will let me keep track of things better. I'm going from memory here, so some of the dates will be guesses. November 2000Diagnosed with relapsing-remitting ms (the writer/editor/proof-reader in me wants to capitalise those words, but I'm taking a stand, small as it may be!). Symptoms were weakness and tingling in my right hand, which was particulary noticeable as my husband Glen (nick: Tig) and I were owner-building our house and doing lots of physical labour. After many weeks seeing a back specialist for chiropractic-type corrections to help what I suspected was a pinched nerve, he sent me for x-rays, found nothing, then referred me to a neurologist for an MRI. By that time, the tingling/numbness/strange sensation had spread all down my right side and felt like a band around the right side of my torso. The MRI plus history confirmed the diagnosis. In retrospect, I had probably had at least two episodes in the two years prior to diagnosis. One episode with weakness in my left hand and one that affected my vision. I had a course of oral prednisolone and three weeks off work. Episode seemed to pass. After my diagnosis, I suspected that my mum also had ms as it would explain a whole swag of mystery symptoms that had come and gone for her over many years.
I intend to start a blog here so that I can look back on it with an objective eye in the future. I find it is easy to forget exactly what was going on with the ms at the same time last month, let alone last year, so I am hoping that the blog can pick up the slack from my memory. I am going to add blog entries with a history of my symptoms and significant events, then add day-to-day entries with details of treatments and how I am feeling. I think this will be especially important once I start the antibiotics.I thought I'd put my blog on cpnhelp in case it is of any use to others, though I suspect it will be excruciatingly boring! I want to include a description of some of my day-to-day activities so I can look back and see what I was physically able to do. Here's hoping that I will be able to do more rather than less in the future.