Category: A Bit Of Randomness

When I used to work, I used to wash my hair every day. Now that my disease has progressed as far as it has, it is very difficult and   Uses up a lot of my energy to wash my hair every day. I now wash my hair every other day. It really doesn’t matter because I am pretty much homebound anyway but that is how it is. Sometimes, washing my hair takes way too much energy, more than I have, so I would just have dirty hair if I am not going to see anybody.

Sean and my Mom have witnessed me  like this. Today,  I washed my hair. It was kind of cold after my hair was washed  and still wet so my Mom suggested that I blow dry it. While working, I would wash my hair every day and blow dry it nicely so it had a finished look to it.  This past spring and summer, it was too warm to blow dry my hair so I just let it air dry. It’s actually better for my hair to let it air dry sometimes.

Because I was cold, today was the first day I have blowdryed my hair since last April I think. It felt strange as I ran my fingers through my hair as I was drying it. Yeah, I no longer use my round brush to style it because I’m not going anywhere.

I told my Mom that my hair felt funny on my fingers as if there was a film on it and maybe all the shampoo was not rinsed out. She told me to watch it again tomorrow because I have an appointment with Dr. Moore. I can’t remember the exact context of what she said but she told me that I have, “Greaseball hair!”

I threw my head back and laughed hysterically! Maybe that is why I used to wash my hair every day? Now that physical exertion takes it’s toll out on me  so much, I just let my hair sit another day. Tomorrow, I will be out in public so I guess it won’t hurt to wash the again. I just have to gear up to get it washed tomorrow too.

I continued laughing so much so then my Mom started to laugh as well.  I absolutely love it when we can laugh! It makes me think of the quote about having 1 million things to cry about but choosing to laugh. That’s me because having MS and my knee hurting so much it is very difficult but I love to laugh any chance I get, especially with my Mom!   I don’t even care if it’s at my expense with my, “Greaseball hair.”   We laughed most of the morning and afternoon today!

Well, my knee felt really good with this stim on yesterday but what I was afraid of happened! As I had it on my leg for a while, I asked Sean to peel back the top of my sock to see if my leg was swollen. It was! He told me that,  “Your leg looks like a baseball bat!”   I called my Mom and she came over to fix it.

She had a REALLY hard time putting my sock back on my leg. Putting compression socks on isn’t an easy task but my Mom handles it quite nicely. However, because my leg was so swollen, it was very difficult to put the sock back on. I was nervous how my leg would feel throughout the night.

Well, my leg did not hurt while I slept but shortly after I awoke, when I was drinking my teas,  my knee began to hurt again. This time, my Mom put the pads on upside down so the cord was facing upward, she put my compression sock on my right leg  over the pads and she fed the wire up through my pants and out at my waist. Once I was situated in my motorized chair,  I was able to turn it on.

It feels nice but still leads me to have many questions.  What I was afraid of yesterday happened last night, my leg swelled up. I’m hoping with my Mom and me brainstorming, we will have fixed that problem but I guess time will tell.

After my last appointment with Dr. Moore, I now use a tens unit every day. This is NOT an easy thing for me to have on my knee but it seems to be the only thing that gives me a little reprieve from the pain I’ve been feeling in my knee for over two years now.

After the first day of using it, my Mom and I realized that I couldn’t have it on my knee without my compression sack on.  Because my leg will get really swollen.  So, we hook it up to my leg and then pull my compression sock over them.

This procedure adds 45 minutes to an hour for me to get ready in the morning. My Mom will pull my compression sock down put the electrodes on my knee. (Three in the front and one in the back of my knee) She then pulls my compression sock up over the pads and turns the system on because at this point, my leg has begun to swell because my compression sock is tight around my calf. With the stim. on, it eases the pain a little bit because I still have to put my pants on! 

I really hate to put this picture in because I have ugly knees  but it shows what I have to put on my knee every day and the fact that my knee is already beginning to swell by not having my compression sock on and pulled up. You can see my scar from ACL reconstruction and if you look really closely, you can see the scars from my meniscus repair on either side of that scar and the Tenex procedure I had done Scar is on the lower right just above the compression sock. It is still kind of red because I had that procedure in February.

So this is what my Mom and I do every day. Well, mostly my Mom!

I couldn’t figure out why I started getting headaches and I’ve had a headache every day since I started doing the tens unit. I have since learned that one “con” of using a tens unit is that you can experience headaches. If you are prone to migraines, it will be a migraine.   I don’t get migraines; my Mom and my brother do but it is because of the electric stimulation being surged into my body that causes the headache.

The tens unit has been the only thing that  has taken the pain away so I keep it  running on my knee until I begin to feel a headache at which time I turn it off and take some Tylenol. I don’t wear the tens unit when I go to bed.

Well, last night as I laid in my bed on my back watching YouTube videos, my right knee popped out. I gasped and rolled over onto my stomach until my knee popped back in. I think it’s crazy that this is still happening a year and a half after surgery  and more than two years after my injury!  Naturally, my knee hurt even more this morning so I kept the tens unit on until just a little while ago for which I had to turn it off because I was getting a headache… AGAIN.

I scheduled cleaning appointments for Sean and me six months ago at the dentist I have been going to for over 30 years and I’ve taken Sean there for his entire life. Today was the first cleaning he had with his hygienist since he’s gotten his braces off. My hygienist who has been  my hygienist for about 20 years and who Sean used to call his, “Tooth Fairy” when she cleaned his teeth when he was young marveled at his teeth. They all did.   That fact made me really happy!

Sean nor I had any cavities and I made our return appointment for May.  After Sean got me into the car, I told him he could choose where we ate.  He wanted to go to Popeye’s. He really likes it but I remember having gone there with him once before awhile ago and not being impressed.

I still let him decide. As we were driving to Popeye’s on our way home from the dentist, I reminded him of the Jimmy Kimmel interview of Damson Idris.  He remembered the interview and we both started to laugh and quote Damson Idris quoting Dub C.

We sat in the parking lot next to Popeye’s, ate our food, and talked. We both got the five dollar combos and I thought it was all right.  Sean paid for it and the fries were good. We didn’t get honey for the biscuits though…  something to look forward to for next time, I suppose.

I’ve been missing my Dad A LOT lately! It’s coming up on my parents’ anniversary soon and I just miss him with all of the challenges I’ve been facing!  My knee is killing me still and a couple Thursdays ago, my roof leaked. I called Tallon roofing because they put my parents’ roof on when I was 16.

I remember hearing the roofers bang on my parents’ roof at 8 o’clock in the morning in the summer. I jumped out of bed and went to the dining room table because my Dad was sitting there eating breakfast. I was irate! I told him that it was crazy that they were working so early and that I am trying to sleep;

But then I saw one of the shirtless roofers walk by the dining room window. I told my parents that I was going outside to water the flowers. That was the ONLY time  that summer that I watered the flowers because I wanted to watch the young, shirtless roofers work!

A memory I have had for a long time was when me and my Dad drove somewhere. I don’t know where we went and I don’t know how old I was but I know I was young and we stopped to get gas. I sat in the car as he went in to pay.   When he came back to the car to pump the gas, he opened the passenger side door and handed me a bag of peanut M&Ms.  That was the only time he did that.

Sean was driving his car  yesterday to the dentist and we stopped at the gas station to get gas. He kept the car running as hr went to pay for the gas  so I would be warm and he told me he would turn it off before he started to pump. He came back to turn the car off and placed a bag of  peanut M&Ms next to me the armrest.

I was touched! I didn’t open the bag until he came back into the car. I had already eaten Popeye’s and my knee was really hurting. I ate the peanut M&Ms and thought  of my Dad.

When the Tallon roofing guy came for an estimate for my roof that Thursday after my roof leaked, I told him the story about watering the flowers and the hot, shirtless workers.  He laughed and believed it. The day my roof leaked, he patched it and that should hold for a little while. If anybody has 10 Grand in their back pocket, that would be cool!

I love peanut M&Ms because I rarely eat them now and when I do, I think of my Dad and the gas station and now I will think of Sean and that gas station too!

Yesterday, Sean had a doctor’s appointment and I needed to accompany him as his sole legal guardian.   The appointment was set for late morning so I did not have the  45 minutes to an hour to attach the tens unit to my knee.  We also had cleaning appointments yesterday at our dentist where I was pretty sure that I was going to need to get x-rays of my teeth done.  I didn’t want to have electric stimulation on my knee as an x-ray was being taken of my head.

Because of the appointments, I was unable to wear my tens unit yesterday. My knee hurt so much! It was a pain I was familiar with and that really stunk! Even though my knee was hurting so badly, I did not have a headache nor did I feel anxious.

Today, I was able to put my tens unit on so my knee is feeling a little bit better.   I take Tylenol just as I turn it on but I’m just waiting for the headache that comes after I’ve had the tens unit on for a while and the anxiousness that will accompany me having the tens unit on for multiple hours.

I keep my tens unit on until the headache becomes too much to bare.  Then, I turn a tens unit off so my knee will start to hurt and my head stops hurting so much. Why is it a trade-off that some part of my body has to be in pain?!

Probably the first time I saw it, I thought my tens unit looks like a beeper. A beeper that I had in high school. However, it is not a Motorola and it is not blue  like mine was. I laughed when I held it in my hand for the first time and told Sean that this is what beepers looked like.

I told him that it had to be an early 90s beeper because when I got mine, probably 1998, it was a little bit smaller.

I used to hook my beeper to the  left front pocket of my jeans.

How I used to check my beeper:

Sean was amused because the concept of a beeper is so foreign to him.

I’m still trying to get used to having the tens unit on. It’s only been a little over a week. Also the electrodes help my knee, but my headache is a lot worse today! A  friend suggested that I take some Tylenol before I turn it on and that seems to help but today it’s hard to handle.

I called my Mom to let her know that my headache was pretty bad today and she asked if I was going to turn it off. It’s the only thing that helps my knee so I am just trying to tolerate my headache with my beeper on  as long as I can handle it.

This morning, my Mom and I laughed so much!   Maybe I was just in a good mood because the Lions beat the Packers yesterday. I’m not sure how we started talking about this but as she was putting the  patches on my knee for my tens unit, we started talking about Sean learning sight words when he was five. I lived in my second apartment back then and he was in Kindergarten.  We did flashcards all the time with him and after all the word families were completed, we started using sight words. One of his sight words was , “BUT.”

He would burst out into gales of laughter at that word! I explained to him that it wasn’t that kind of, “butt” but that didn’t matter. He still laughed tremendously!  I remembered that I was in the front office at CCA and was telling my friend and colleague about how he laughed so much at the sight word, “BUT.”

She laughed at that as well and told me that the word she always had trouble keeping a straight face with was, “DUTY.”   I remember that when she told me, we both laughed and laughed!  All subsequent conversations and/or text messages would make a point of using the word, “DUTY.”   I would laugh at the image of her being a small child laughing at that word just like Sean laughed at the word, “BUT.”

I am kind of freaking out that he will be 17 soon and my heart was warmed at the memory of hearing him laugh when he was a small child! I will never forget that sound as long as I live!   I absolutely loved that and when I finally left at the word, “BUT,”  he looked at me with a straight face and said, “Mom,  I’m over it!”   Man, I love that kid!