Month: December 2016

12.28.16 Sweet 16

Today’s my day.  It’s my Sweet 16.  This journey has been anything but “sweet.”  For sure!  I cannot believe that I’ve been fighting this battle for 16 years!  I can’t believe that the fight has been THIS brutal!  If someone would have told me that it would be THIS bad, I wouldn’t have believed them.  Who can handle this?!

The answer to this aforementioned question is – ME.  I’ve asked my Mom SO many times, “Why?”  I don’t know the answer to this question but I know I am not alone in this fight.  SO MANY people are fighting this battle also.  They are fighting their own battle simultaneously to me and this battle is fought inside their own body.  The only casualty in this brutal battle is ourselves.

This battle is invisible to other people but that does NOT make it any LESS painful!  Rather, it is MORE painful because no one can see it.  We are not making this up or crying wolf!  So my battle has been going on for 16 years and even though I know there are many people who have been fighting this battle longer than I have, I don’t want to diminish my fight.

Sweet 16 parties to me have been marked with pink “frilly” decorations, friends, family, and a beautiful dress.  My day is not marked with these things; rather, it’s marked by losses, inabilities, and hardship.  I don’t want to spend time enumerating all the difficulties that are faced every single day.  My fellow MS fighters know the fight all too well.

For my MS Sweet 16, I pray for an ease to these terrible symptoms for myself and everyone in this fight; I pray for the strength to endure these symptoms if they are not to ease just yet; and mostly, I pray for and would LOVE a cure for this really mean disease!  That would be SWEET!

11.21.16 MRI

I didn’t go to ATI because I had my MRI for my knee scheduled.  I was nervous about what it would show because my knee STILL hurts so badly two months after my injury.  I wondered if surgery was going to be necessary and I know first-hand that knee surgery hurts MORE than having a baby!  I have to admit that I cheated and had a C-section but that hurt too, cutting through my guts!… Anyway, we had a little trouble finding the place because we had never been there before.

Once in the office, I filled out some paperwork (rather, my Mom did and I just signed it).  The MRI tech wheeled me out the back doorway of the office through a long hallway with what seemed like a lot of turns.  She told me we were going back outside   We got to a door to the outside so I put the hood of my sweatshirt onto my head.  She pushed me through the door, outside, and onto a platform.  It was a mobile lab.  An older guy with big muscles pressed the button to activate the lift so we could get into the lab.

It was small and the MRI machine was to the left.  The guy with the big muscles carried me to the table and helped me lie down so the MRI tech could ready my knee to get my MRI.  She unsnapped my pants and folded the unsnapped part above my knee and clicked a kind of cage on my knee.  She put headphones on my ears and left to control the machine. As the table moved into that tube, I heard Aaliyah in my ears.  I was immediately in high school again!  I tried to commit to memory all the songs I heard but couldn’t.  I know that it made a little more comfortable trying to see if I remembered all the words to these songs from my high school years, the last time I had problems with this knee.

My MRI was done and that big-muscled man put me back in my chair.  I commented on the music I heard and the tech told me that was the only radio station that came in this morning.  She gave me the disc that had my MRI pictures on it and she wheeled me back o the office.  Once outside and in my car, I realized that I was in my MRI for an hour.  I’m comforted knowing that whatever is wrong with my knee is documented.  Dr. Frush already has access to them because this place was part of the DMC.