Sorry there has been no blog for a couple of days, I decided to do absolutely nothing over the weekend!
I spoke about how my legs are affected by my MS in the last blog, so I hope it gave you an insight into how I am doing now.
I have been noticing for a while now that my arms are starting to have a lot of the problems I get with my legs. They are weaker than they were, never been particularly strong but I wasn’t totally weak either. They don’t really ache like my legs do, but they do ache some if I overdo things.
I get quite a bit of numbness in them, particularly my hands. I have quite often had to have a break from the keyboard when I have been typing my blogs, when I knew that I was not hitting the right keys. As I said before, re-reading and spell check have been used a lot!
The numbness is similar to the numbness you get when you have been laid on your arm and it has gone to sleep. You get pins and needles and your arm feels numb and heavy. That is how my arms are quite a bit, except I don’t get the pins and needles very much.
I have not been too bad over the weekend. I was at work Saturday morning, and then just chilled out in the afternoon. We went out for a meal Saturday night with Jack & Heather at La Cultura Del Gusto. It was a very nice meal and we came back to ours after and sat outside having a drink and a good chinwag till nearly midnight.
I had a disturbed night Saturday night, up for a wee 4 tines before I decided to just get up at about 7:15am. Not too sure why I was up so much as I hadn’t had a huge amount to drink, just one of them nights I guess. My legs were aching quite a bit, probably from not sleeping great. So I just chilled out Sunday, and had a bit of a snooze on one of the sunbeds outside in the shade.
We had a fry-up brunch at about 11am and that pretty much kept me going for the rest of the day. I put MotoGP on in the afternoon, sat and watched that and just relaxed. That’s about it really, a nice relaxing weekend with just Hales and me.
I have been thinking I might start doing some of my future blogs about my life before MS. Not sure how far back I will go, possibly back to childhood! I am also going to go into more detail on some of the things I condensed in previous blogs.
Well think I will finish waffling for today and publish this for today. Hopefully not too boring today and you will return for more.
Rob :o)
I have been asked a couple of questions, so I will answer them first.
Will pushing your self actually slow/reduce the rate of the MS, or will it just increase the achiness etc? What medication do you take, and what does it do?
I am not sure if pushing myself will do anything to help my MS, I very much doubt it. I guess it is just my way of not surrendering to the MS and fighting it as much as I can. It is inevitable that it will slowly beat me, but I will not go down quietly!
I am not on a lot of medication, I don’t think there is much out there that really helps. I take Baclofen which is to limit the severity of the Spasticity, and Ibuprofen when I need to take the edge off the aching. I take Omnic which slows down the frequency of going to the loo, doesn’t seem to work at night though lol!
I do take some supplements as well. I take fish oils and Glucosamine Sulphate to help with my joints. I take Gingko Biloba which is good for Tinnitus, and I take Calcium tablets as well. I have just started taking Turmeric tablets too, so waiting to see if they help at all.
I guess my bladder problems are probably the most annoying part of my MS. I get frequency, which as I have just said is limited a bit by the Omnic. I get urgency quite bad, which means that as soon as I feel a slight twinge I have to go straight away.
The annoying part of that is the hesitancy, so even though I feel like I really need to go I then take a while to actually go. I have to sit there and make sure I have gone as fully as possible, or I will be back in the loo in minutes. I have found a way of pushing on the bottom of my belly and gently massaging my bladder which makes it easier to pass more.
I also occasionally get night-time incontinence. I have tried to discover if there are any factors that particularly cause it, but it seems to be very random. I now have a pad on the bed at night just in case. I can go weeks without it happening, and it can also happen several nights on the trot. It was very embarrassing at first, but Hales persuaded me that it wasn’t my fault and there was not a lot I could do about it.
I have tried seeing a Urologist but I don’t think he knew what to try me on so I gave up with him after a while. I had to see him private and then pay for the medication he did try me on, so that was partly why I stopped seeing him. Plus twice he tried me on the same tablets for over 2 months, and then when they weren’t working tried to say they could take up to 6 months to start working!
So now I just take the Omnic which does help and try to get on with life as normal as I can. At least now if I do wet the bed it is only the pad I need to change and not have to wake Hales to change the sheets! We do still have a mattress protector on just in case.
Anyway I think that’s as honest as I can be about that problem, tried to tell it like it is without being mega embarrassed. It is still a bit embarrassing but like I have said, there is not a lot I can do about it.
That will do for today, stay tuned for more Burty waffling lol
Rob :o)
My Life and My MS 