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Last night, I had difficulty transferring in the hallway because my right hip joint gave out and I kind of gasped. But, wouldn’t you know it that #MyGirlL bolted to the doorway of Sean‘s room to offer her help!

This girl is SO sweet and it IS getting colder so, she NEEDS A coat! I ordered one for her yesterday. Sean makes fun of me but I’m so excited for her coat and pictures will come once I receive it!!! I ordered it from doggiediva.com and I am so excited!:

So, I had my appointment for speech pathology yesterday. It was a good appointment and there are a lot of things I still need to unpack from all the information she gave me! The most striking thing was that she seemed like she was like me when I taught. She had all of her documents in sheet sleeves in a binder. She had them all organized and ready to pull out to use whatever one I needed. She had a list of words for me to read from. She recorded my voice on her phone. I have read the list of the first 30 words before she told me that I could stop. It was like the test I used to give my reading kids in the beginning of the year!

After I read the words, she help me read about 10 sentences and lastly, she had me read a paragraph. One thing I noticed about these tests and I told her was that the words needed to be printed larger because I was having difficulty seeing them. My MS call has greatly affected my eyes recently. After we did those things, she had to leave the room to get A release form for me to sign and she told me she was going to record me just talking with her for about three minutes. I was completely comfortable with that. I like this woman! She reminds me of a friend I had a nice cool. I was comfortable.

Before she left to get the form, she told me to think about something to talk about for about three minutes. I told her about when I told my Mom that I was pregnant. It was a story that I have told for 20 years and I am comfortable telling it. After we were finished speaking, she turned off her recorder and told me that it may not look like she was evaluating me but she was. She told me that there are six levels of dysarthria. She added that she is seeing two of those levels in me. She had explained to me as I read the list of words, the sentences, and the paragraph that she may have to, “Bank my voice.” She explained about the possibility of needing my voice recorded if my disease progresses to where I cannot speak. Even today, that kind of startles me. I have so much more to say about yesterday but I feel like it’s too much for me to write about just yet…

I had my speech pathology appointment today and I am exhausted! I did, however, go to Best Buy and I heard this song that took me back to able-bodied days at Western. I have #SoMuchToSay… but not today…

Yesterday, I received a text notification about a doctor appointment that was coming up. I had to completely forgotten about it and I was relieved I was there in time. Well, enter MY “MS Brain”: my appointment is tomorrow and I was so frustrated absolutely because it takes so much work take it out of the house!

I have always been really good about being on time for appointments and stuff but it seems going on 21 years in, that my brain is getting muddled! That kind of bothers me. I didn’t think that things and loss of ability could still bother me but they do… 😒😒😒

I got a text reminder this afternoon for a Speech physiology appointment for tomorrow at 3 o’clock. I had completely forgotten about it. I made the follow up appointment back in August when I had my swallow test. I I think it is crazy that I had completely forgotten about it!

I am extremely grateful for text reminders because whenever I go to a doctor’s appointment, a van needs to be rented for me to accommodate my wheelchair. So, tomorrow morning, my Mom is going to call there to see if there is a van available to rent for tomorrow.

I think it’s a little strange that 20 years in, I am seriously having the, “MS brain” that so many members of my MS support groups talk about. I don’t think I’d like this but let’s hope my Mom can get a van tomorrow!

Yesterday was my Mom’s birthday and she was so thankful for all of the birthday wishes from the two posts that my brothers put on Facebook! I really liked that her birthday present from me arrived on her birthday! It’s only now that I really realize that I took over her birthday by having Sean on November 2nd. Her birthday is the 5th.

I was not able to get an actual birthdate for Leia, and her vet marked it as October 26th. So, it seems that ALL of the important birthdays in my occur at the end of October early November. I took some pictures of her yesterday showing off her new sweatshirt and Leia’s sweater too! My girls’ colors are, “Pink and pink!”:

Sean came over last night to have dinner with my Mom and me. He told me that he did not want to cake because he is, “A man now” When he called me to tell me he was coming over, I started to sing, “Happy Birthday to him as soon as I answered the phone and my Mom joined in! After we’re finished singing “Happy Birthday , my Mm started, “ May the dear Lord bless you…” which I joined in, OF COURSE!!! I ran out of steam halfway through, “Sto Lat” and Sean started to laugh and told me that he didn’t like the second half of the song anyway! That made me laugh and I still continued the song! It took a while but I got it all out and Jennie would be proud!

We ate dinner and my Mom told Sean to sit by me for a picture. He was carrying Leia Like a baby and he sat next to me. My Mom started snapping the pictures and Leia was moving around.

She got me!!! RIGHT IN THE FACE!!! Now, I love her to pieces but, I KNOW where her mouth has been! And if I think about that too long, that’s disgusting!!! Sean and I had a really good laugh!!! Sean told me that Leia has been wondering how my face tasted for a long time! I was completely grossed out! I will have to get that picture from my Momz to show you all had a later date! In the meantime! It’s still gross when I think about it!

So, Leia has gotten used to the sounds that my Mom and I make when transferring at night when we are in the hallway. She even has gotten used to when I transfer into my bed at night. It took a couple weeks before she stopped coming to Sean‘s bedroom door to see what was going on. Then she will occasionally saunter to the door when I am already safe in my wheelchair. Almost to say, “You guys okay?”

Well, last night, I made a new sound when I was in my bed and let me explain. I miss the days I worked out at Barwis Methods all the time! But, I have noticed that my hips were hurting. I had to think about it for a while and I remembered why they were hurting and how I was stretched each time to make them feel a little better. I need to be stretched out. My Mom will have to stretch me out. She is an excellent caregiver but I’m not sure that she has the skills that you a acquire by getting an exercise science degree.

She definitely was going to give it her best! What needs to happen is that I will lay on my stomach and she would need to bend my knee and pull my foot almost to my butt and hold that stretch for 60 seconds. I had her do that a few times for each leg.

There are technical terms for the stretch and, “Opening the joint” but those words escape my mind because it’s been so long since I have been to Barwis and medical terms aren’t really my thing anyway. I think I explained it correctly to my Mom but here’s the thing:

My Mom is used to looking at me knowing that my, “Bad leg” it’s on the right. But, when I am laying on my stomach on my bed, my “Bad leg” looks like it is on my left side because I am turned over. My Mom treated my legs as such and grabbed my, “Bad leg” to move it. That caused me to yelp unlike any yelp I have given out before. Tears accompanied that yelp as well. But wouldn’t you know, when Leia heard me, she came running! Right into my room, as if to say, “Here I am!!!” My Mom had to assure her that I was okay as I was trying to gather myself.

She is just too cute and I love her!:

I’ve written on my blog before that I live in my memories. I’ve had this memory for 20 years. 20 years ago, today, I went into labor. I didn’t know I was going into labor because I was eight weeks early. I was set to have a Christmas baby. I thought that it was a self-inflicted reason why I didn’t feel well and I ended up going into labor late Halloween night. I was working at dfcu financial while I was in college and while I was pregnant.

The details are a little fuzzy because it IS a 20 year old memory but I remember one of the senior tellers walking down the teller line and handing out little baskets for everyone. She told us to put it in our window and I didn’t know what it was for. She came back around and was handing out fistfuls of candy for us to give our members. I thought that was such a cute Halloween treat!

What seemed like a really good idea changed when we basically had NO people come in to do business at the credit union. I spent the entire day trading candy with the other tellers and eating the candy that was in my window. I remember that in my absent minded pregnancy brain, I forgot my lunch. I just ate more candy!

I clearly remember standing in the hallway at my son’s dad‘s house and I put my hands on my hips as his mom was handing out chips to the kids and I exclaimed, “ I can’t carry this baby anymore!“ He told me that I had to and I remember telling him that I knew that but I didn’t want to. I went into labor at about two in the morning that night. I didn’t realize that’s what was happening. I was extremely uncomfortable and restless and I couldn’t fall asleep.

I thought that if I went to the bathroom that I would feel better. My mom came out of her room and told me that I should call the hospital. I thought that was kind of dumb because I was only seven months pregnant. I called them and told them what was happening and that I was 32 weeks pregnant. They told me that I need to go downtown because they did not have the capability to handle a premature baby if that was the case.

I will never forget that my Mom wheeled me into the foyer area where there was a guard sitting there and then she left to park the car. The man looked at me and said, “You look like you’re too young to have a baby.” I was so shocked at that statement and I had no response so I said nothing. What I didn’t realize is that I was in labor when that man told that to me.

I was admitted into the hospital and I spent November 1 in and out of coherency and remember that a nurse asked me if I knew what day it was because I looked so bad. A doctor came in the morning of the second and looked at my monitor and the readout of the monitor. He looked at the door where there was another doctor standing there and said, ” Labor and delivery STAT.”

I had Sean at 9:38 AM on November 2 via Emergency C-section and he stayed in the hospital in the NICU for 31 days. It was the longest month of my life! It was after I had my Halloween baby that I started to like Halloween more. It just seems different now that I’ve had this memory for 20 years and now I will have a 20-year-old child come November 2nd?! Now I have a Halloween movie to watch for the last time this year!