I have been thinking about writing this blog post for a couple of days now. I just spoke with my Speech Pathologist after speaking with my nutritionist two weeks ago.
I will say that year 22 of having MS ain’t no joke!!!
I am completely startled and taken aback at how quickly things are coming at me! It has always been a slow slog of losing abilities but this trifecta that I am experiencing right now (vision, speech, nutrition) is a bit much! But I am surviving it… just barely.
I searched through the archives of my blog and this is the reason that I write this blog! I re-posted posts from two years ago and last year. It was all talking about my lack of hand strength. I have been thinking about this since I told Sean the story about me intertwining three full bottles of beer in my right hand and three chilled bear mugs in my left hand when I was a surfer. He marveled at the fact that I could do it but I told him that I can’t do it anymore!
That conversation had me thinking about my apple tasting lesson when I taught English. I used to bring the apples in, and cut them on my demonstration table at the front of my classroom and I had my team teacher pass around Apple slices for my students to taste and to describe using as many adjectives as they could!
I couldn’t do that now if I tried! I don’t even hold utensils anymore! A spoon and that’s it. But with this loss of hand strength, I squeeze my extra firm therapy putty for an entire rosary every day. 17 minutes:
There are multiple exercises you can do with the putty but I just bought it and so it is quite firm right now so I will have to wait a little while. But since I have two of them, I started this one on January 18 and on June 18, I will start the second putty.
It’s kind of crazy how every single aspect of my life is on a schedule… I think it’s even a bit too much for my scheduling self!
22 years I can’t believe it hun. But your stories are treasured memories and every time you think of them they make you smile that beautiful smile. Love you.