Getting Back to it...

Well there is not a whole lot to say other than I've been terribly remiss in posting here. There has both been a lot and then again, not much at all going on in my life. That is how it is sometimes. Some things are crazy and others change very little.

I'll start with what has not changed much, and that / those are my symptoms. Thankfully I have not had a lot of change although it is progressive MS so I do not anticipate having many material events. That said, I do notice that I am fatiguing a little easier and the whole walking / balance thing is still a real struggle at times, especially at the end of the day. I have been consistently seeing my trainer, which helps my confidence as much as it helps my abilities.

So for what _has_ been going on. 1) Doctors, 2) Vacation plans!

1) I've seen three new doctors since my last posts. I saw a Sports medicine doctor 'Dr. S.' (osteopathic / surgery / etc) because Marsha (my trainer, but she is actually a Medical Exercise Specialist so trainer is woefully inadequate a description for what she does for helping me) and I noticed that during certain exercises my left knee would drift outside of the natural 'over the toes' alignment we would expect. In that vein, Dr. S said that it the angles my joints want to be in, that may be a normal issue but with my MS affecting my right side it is being exaggerated. Off to Dr. K, a physical therapy specialist for MS / balance and the like. He said 'Wow, you are very slow to react visually and balance...' once again verifying what I've known for a while :) At any rate, he gave me exercises to do three times a day but I've been remiss in doing them for numerous reasons, including laziness, feeling silly doing them, and the fact that the eye reaction speed stuff gives me a headache. For this discussion we'll stick to laziness as the culprit. The other thing Dr. K mentioned is energy conservation. I heard that and said "I don't want a cane at 35!" and he says, "not a cane, a staff". My immediate response was "But I'm not Gandalf either". We both had a good chuckle out of that and he went on to explain that hikers use a walking stick or staff all of the time to steady themselves and since it takes a lot of energy for me to maintain balance, it would greatly assist me if I am walking more than around the house. I recently purchased a Swiss Gear collapsing hiking stick form Walmart for about $15. It really made me feel decrepit the first time I used it. BUT, on a trip to Eureka Springs for my anniversary, it made an enormous difference as after walking around in the hilly country, I was able to maintain a lot of energy through the day. It had made a huge difference.

I switched primary care doctors form Dr. W to Dr. M (as you can see I'm trying to not name them directly, and also I've been blessed with not having all of my doctors named Smith). Dr. W was fantastic and really the reason for switching is that Dr. M is about 20 miles closer to home and he is personally interested in trying new things (non pharmaceuticals since I have an aversion to that).

Dr. M and I have been looking at something that may help and I'll be posting daily or thereabouts when I 'start'. What we have been looking at what Vitamin B12, specifically METHYLcobalamin (as there are multiple kinds of cobalamin (B12)). Methylcobalamin is what your body ands up producing via some liver processes that I don't understand. What I do understand is that Methylcobalamin is used in the myelin repair process (woohoo for a repair process there). We've no idea if it will help, but it is a reasonable shot. I will be documenting my experience(s) here. Already we have found that inject-able mc has a two week shelf-life and is going to be too expensive to put it to any material test. I have found a sublingual (under the tongue) tablet form that is stable and inexpensive. I will doing my testing with this product (links to Amazon page). I don't have it yet, but this is the place to read about it as it happens.

2) VACATION! We are going to take the kids (and my walking stick) to Florida this June for a week at Disney World. We are all very excited about it.

OK. That is it for catch-up. Hopefully my new trial will start in the next week or so!