Hey all. I’ve talked about it a couple of times, but today I want to break off from my usual type of posts and talk about the reason I’m posting this mostly using voice to text, and even that is difficult…
So, as I have said before, I have Multiple Sclerosis. More specifically, I have Secondary Progressive Multiple Sclerosis. What does this mean?
Well, imagine your fuse box. Now imagine that a chunk of the wires are frayed. Now imagine that your house is your body, and the fuse box is your brain and that the frayed wires are your nerves. Yeah, not too fun.
What’s specifically going on? My immune system is attacking the myelin coating on my nerves in my brain and brain stem. Then chaos ensues for me.
In my body, this signal disruption appears as my left side going numb. Sometimes all of it, sometimes parts that become numb then radiate outwards. Like this time, for example. This time, it’s my left hand, and it’s spread to my left arm. My first major episode was my left shoulder and arm and spread throughout my left side. Pretty screwy.
Additionally, mine comes with partial or full paralysis (no pattern or rhyme as to when it will come with one or another), painful back spasms (called muscle spasticity), a weird blind spot in my right eye (controlled by left side of brain), and facial numbness on about 60-70% of the right side of my face (relatively new). I also have balance issues with walking (thus my powered wheelchair, or at minimum, my cane), depression (this one is pretty bad and messes with my military service induced PTSD in a way that REALLY screws with me) and cognitive issues, where I get confused as to where I am, aphasia (problems with word finding or just finding any words when speaking) or dysphasia (same thing, just less severe?), and the FATIGUE.
OH MY GOODNESS, THE FATIGUE!
There are “morning birds”. Then there are “night owls.” I, my Dear Readers, am the “all day exhausted ostrich.”
It’s more than just being “tired.” It’s EXHAUSTED. Imagine taking a nap. Then imagine waking up and you are just as tired. Imagine being so wiped that you have zero energy to do anything. Now imagine it being all the time. It’s pretty intense. The worse part? You can “over do it” to bring on the fatigue worse than normal. Doing too much in too short a time (driving a chunk of the day did it to me more than once) is likely to do it.
Although I mentioned it before, the depression symptom that almost 15% of people get is really bad. I can’t stress that one enough. But you guys help me get through it. You have no idea what kind of joy it brings me to see people reading and following my blog, a labor of love, that I and my partner (yourdorkmaterials) put out.
In any case, that’s been my deal.
And unfortunately, it’s putting me back in the hospital.
You see, when my flare-ups (when my symptoms come back suddenly and I go into full relapse) get to where symptoms don’t go away after more than 3-4 days, I’m having a relapse. When I am having a relapse, it is generally good practice to go to the ER. I sent a secure message to my doctor and that’s what he wants: me to go to the ER.
And since I don’t know the Wi-Fi situation there, I’m not sure what my posting schedule will look like, frankly.
I have worked hard to bring you guys the content that I do. And although I’m going to a Roll20 format for my games (my players are excited, and so am I, for my monthly as well as both weekly games!), I’ll still be able to bring you the awesome content that I have, with the exception of miniature painting updates, as they won’t let me have my mini-painting stuff in the hospital.
I’m not sure what I will be doing for those days. Maybe yourdorkmaterials will be picking up a post, but he’s generally just as busy as I am. Maybe I’ll talk about my hospital visit? Who knows.
On the plus side, I’ll have tons of time to do nothing. On the minus side, the primary treatment for MS in the hospital is a veritable crap-ton of intravenous steroids, and I’m restless as all can be as well as one hungry-hungry hippo (they make you feel like you are starving).
Either way, I’ll be getting you what I can as I can.
On another note, there will not be a post on Thursday, as it’s America’s Thanksgiving Day (a national holiday), and I will hopefully be busy with Thanksgiving activities. They won’t feed me what I actually eat in the hospital so I’m waiting for Thursday to be over and hopefully going first thing on Friday (to the ER, that is).
There should be a post on Friday.
Until next time, Dear Readers…
PS – My Patreon site has a deal going on until the end of the month! Find the link under “Support Us” above!
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