Month: February 2021

This morning, I opened my eyes and it was daylight outside. Having MS is NOT easy by any means or without pain or discomfort but I wasn’t in the same kind of pain that I was in yesterday morning and for that I am most grateful!

I still have and will have many obstacles to face and I deal with SO much daily but for this day, I’m grateful that I am not in as much pain as I was in in the wee hours of yesterday morning! I came across this meme on Facebook this morning and it completely resonated with me!:

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Today, it seems that I am equipped with enough to get through this day! I am most grateful for that!

I have been perplexed about the events of early this morning and I STILL am quite perplexed as I’m trying to move through it. I have had Multiple Sclerosis for just over 20 years and I have dealt with many changes in my abilities over the years. Because of this morning, I am still perplexed and dealing with this latest development.

I first want to say that my current bed is the MOST comfortable bed in the world! I bought this bed when I moved to our second apartment that had two bedrooms 15 years ago. I had an awesome Queen sized four poster bed frame that went with it that over the years that I have since had to get rid of. Even though my bed is now on a simple metal frame, it still is extremely comfortable! Sean agrees and he used to sleep in it right after my latest knee surgery and I slept in my medical recliner. My Mom has also taken naps in it and she loves it! She says that it is, “Heaven.”

I also want to say that when I got fitted for my motorized wheelchair, Dave (the tech who explained how the chair worked to me) told me that it is NOT designed to sleep in but many people do that.

So then, there was this morning. It was still dark outside but my body hurt so badly! It was in my bones. My hips and my shoulders ached and I called out to my Mom for help. I moaned as she came into my room and as she pulled me out of my bed and transferred me into my wheelchair. I reclined my chair and was able to fall back to sleep for another four hours in the living room.

In the over 20 years that I have had MS, I have never experienced pain like this! I have dealt with MANY changes in my abilities over the years and I have taken them in stride as best I can. These changes are unfortunate and sadden me whether I am talking about my inability to drive now, the difficulty I have with my speech at times, the changes in my vision, or my inability to sing anymore. All of these things, though sad, I just have to deal with.

But with the pain I experienced this morning and knowing how comfortable my bed actually is, is perplexing. In fact, it’s downright scary. I am scared that it will happen again. I hope not but I guess I will just have to wait and see tonight.

I have a number of takeaways from yesterday’s Super Bowl. The first takeaway being that I have missed watching football immensely! I turned the TV on with three hours and 37 minutes to go until game time. I ABSOLUTELY love pregame! I turned the TV on during a commercial, (which was one that I love and maybe will write about soon) But when CBS programming started again, Nate Burleson was talking to us! I had to exclaim, “Oh Nate, I love you! I miss you!” I haven’t been able to wake up early enough to watch GMFB as a result of the progression of my disease. I was so happy to see him! He has cornrows now and I really liked his suit jacket! As I watched the pregame, I realized how much I had missed football and I loved seeing the plays even though they were two teams that I’m not very interested in. Football is football! I had already told my Mom that I was going to watch the Super Bowl!

To NOT keep you in suspense, I did NOT win the, “50,000 smackers ” from the Rocket mortgage football squares but I enjoyed watching football again!

it’s second thing that I took away from the game was that I haven’t been that indifferent to who won the game since the Giants and Patriots Super Bowl. During that one, Sean watched the game by himself while I made Kiefer for the first time with my Mom. I bought a cleaver specifically to do that but left her in charge of using it because I did not want to lose my hand and at that time, my hand-eye coordination had already begun to slip. My Mom made the Kefir until the price of young coconuts got too expensive so it was better to buy the kefir already prepared from the B.E.D. website. It’s been a minute since I purchased that because money is an issue for now but I have not ever really watched a football game when I was not cheering and screaming for one particular team!

The last takeaway I have from the Super Bowl is that I am old!!! I was not interested in The Weekend’s performance because I wasn’t very familiar with his music.

Sean came by and sat with Leia as we were double masked and watched the halftime show. He let me know that one of the songs was, “From that dirty book you liked” which made me laugh but he definitely was NO Bruno Mars which was an EPIC halftime show that we watched together.

As for the commercials, they were mediocre but the one I liked the best was the Geico commercial and I cannot get over how OLD the guys from Tag Team are!!! They are old enough to have a white hair, that means that I am old too! If they were in my kitchen, I would be dancing like the parents in the commercial were and Sean would roll his eyes like the teenage girl does.

I first started watching professional football, (Lions football)in 2009 when Sean began playing football when he was 7 for the Dearborn Lions. That was when I first fell in love with Matthew Stafford. I can’t even begin to think about what next season is going to look like without him as a Lion but that’s a completely different subject.

I clearly remember going to my brother, Steve’s, house to watch the Super Bowl in 2011. It was the Steelers versus the Packers. I wanted the Packers to win and I think it was a couple years later that I ordered Cheeseheads for me and Sean. I received them after the Packers were eliminated from the playoffs.

it was in 2009 when I first began watching the NFL network religiously. Sean and I would wear our Cheeseheads during the playoffs but we have never got to wear them for the Super Bowl. I was hoping that would change this year but they were also eliminated.

The Super Bowl in my house has been a holiday every year! I save money to get my “Bandwagon T-shirt” (as Sean calls it) ordered after it is decided who will be playing in the Super Bowl.

I go all out for Super Bowl food! I would order pizza AND cinnamon sticks or I have placed an order at B Dub’s at noon for a 6 o’clock pick up of family size boneless wings, artichoke dip, AND cheese sticks.

But this football season has been completely different! Now that I am sheltered in place with my Mom, someone who is definitely NOT a football fan, this whole season has been strange! I checked football scores on my phone rather than yelling at my TV. I did NOT order a shirt to wear for it because I’m indifferent to both teams in it and I don’t have money for that anyway.

I’n not going to order food this year and that feels weird. But I AM going to watch the game because STILL LOVE football And I have four Rocket Mortgage squares riding on this game and I could win “50,000 smackers!”

But, it does make me a little bit sad that this Sunday will NOT be a holiday!

My Mom and I watched a movie last week that I had not seen since I might’ve been six or seven and my parents, my brothers, Jimmy and David, and me walked down to the Camelot theater to see. It was super close to my house growing up and we walked there often:

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The theater is no longer there and it is now a fruit market. Pulling up this map on Google made me laugh because to show the distance from my house going up to the theater, they chose to use Miller Road as a way to get there.

I will never forget the debate we had as to the shortest way to get there. My brothers said that we should take Miller Road but I thought we should go down our street and turn once we got to Warren Ave. to the corner where the theater was.

It was decided that my Mom would accompany my brothers and walk down Miller Road as my Dad and me would walk down our street and turn on Warren Ave. and then get to the corner.

So, we all walked down one block on our street and then at the corner, my brothers and my Mom walked to Miller Road. And before they got to Miller Road, we all set the rules. There was NO RUNNING ALLOWED and whichever group got their first would be correct and have bragging rights.

My brothers and my Mom walk to the corner and my Dad and I stayed on our street. Once they had gone to the corner we yelled, “Go” and we all began walking.

I think my Dad and I must have walked six or eight steps before he turned his head to the right and looked down at me and told me to, “Run!” Now, I was only six or seven, so of course, I was going to do what my Dad told me to but I had NEVER seen my Dad run! I think we ran for a block and a half before we stopped and he told me that was good enough.

We all got to the theater at the same time and a few years ago, I told my Mom about seeing my Dad run and she laughed and told me that they also, ran. I found these pictures of the Camelot theater:

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The one on the left is how I remember it and the one on the right is how it ended up looking before it became a fruit market. My Mom and I watched, Quigley Down Under on Netflix and we reminisced about this exact day because this is the movie we saw at the Camelot.

Yesterday evening, Leia talked to my Mom. In the 10 months that we have had her in our house, she has become accustomed to taking two walks a day. One in the morning and one in the evening. On these walks, she prances around, will spin in a circle, and hop. She’s a really happy dog!

But, we got her at the end of April when it was warm outside. Last night, when Leia started talking to my Mom, it was 25° outside and it felt like it was 14°. It was dark outside and my Mom was tired and just didn’t want to go. She made that video to send to Sean to have him come over and walk her.

My Mom says that she wasn’t speaking sweetly to Leia like she normally does and didn’t like that it sounded that she was not sweet to her in the video.

My Mom is COMPLETELY sweet with Leia all of the time! So much so, that I had to kind of check her a little bit when she was speaking to Leia and loving her up, she called Leia, “My baby girl!” I had to stop her there because I AM her ONLY ”Baby girl!”

after my Mom sent that video to Sean, she got up and put her coat on and took her for a walk. This was Leia 30 minutes after they got home:

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I’ve had my blog for a long time but haven’t figured everything out yet so I will post the video of Leia talking to my Mom on both Facebook and Twitter in a little bit. You can hear music in the background because I was watching a Hallmark movie not because I am sophisticated and listen to classical music for recreation or something.