Patient Surviving Patience

Ok, a little exagerated, but my lungs really ache and its seems compressed from quitting. Hopefully that goes away sooner than later because its annoying. Kind of make me want to go run or something.

Side note, last night after my softball game me and most my team went to Applebees. My brother and girlfriend went to the bar to smoke. I followed just to smell it. Well, my brother blew smoke at my face, and honestly it smelled like shit. The stale, nasty cigarette smell you can smell on people and in smoker’s houses, it was that. Nasty. Then today my buddy at work is outside and I’m telling him this story about last night. Well, he is smoking, and I ask to take a hit to see if it tasted different. OMG how gross. How it smelled yesterday it tastes worse. I think I am past the point of craving getting cured by smoking. I just have to figure out how to surpress that “need” and I’ll be set.

Ok, no cigarettes since Friday. Just when I need one so bad and I’m determined to cheat, I get distracted by something. Thank God for horrible short term memories. Now that I have quit for like 5 days, I’m bored. I smoked alot when I was bored, now I have nothing to fill that slot. Hmm, I’ll figure it out.

Ok, my wife and I can’t afford cigarettes anymore, so I either a) start buying them internationally or b) try quitting again.

I’m going to go with option B. We will see how that all goes. My stomach pains are still prominent after 1 year of having them, and with 8 months of Nexium, Pepsid, and Prilosec. Time for a new GI doctor, eh?

The MS…no developments. I guess thats good news. MRI came back with less legions than the last, so less is better than more. I suffered some numbness in my right hand earlier in the year, but that has since passed.

I also finished my deck last weekend!! All thats left is a bit of sanding and some lattice or something at the base and the project from hell is complete. Now I can maybe start on my front ggrass landscaping. Sigh…

Anyway, thats it for now. I need to get back into the habbit of writing here more, I’ve been real lazy with it.

I had an MRI on my neck last week, and my doctor left a message on my machine at home about how these results turned out better than my MRI a couple years ago. So I suppose thats good news, or at least tells me that my meds are working.

Tonight, I’m going to attend a webcast through MS Active Source about progression, how to detect and how to slow. Should be interesting.

If you haven’t checked out that site, do so because they archive the webcasts they perform once a month.

So, for the last 2 months, I have had an issue with my right hand in terms of numbness. Sometime my entire arm will feel freezing, sometimes just like my figers are asleep. Well, went in today for my 3-4 month checkup, and let me doctor know what was going on, along with the feet numbness that came and went. He asked me how it was affecting me. I told him in terms of daily funtion, no effect. Annoyance? 100%

He proceeded to tell me that he knows me as a patient enough to know if I tell him something is annoying, he knows it really is annoying. I’m not the type that calls him everytime something goes numb or whatever. He gave me an option; 1- Take SoluMederol drip and prednisone to aleviate it. I took option #2, let it go and save my ‘roids for when I REALLY need it. He agreed.

“So, Doc, when will this go away?”
“Well, it may not.”

Not the answer I was hoping to hear. This all is a mild relapse. Another comment I didn’t want to hear.

I need to take another MRI next week to see how the progression (or remission) is comming.

Being in that office today really made me realize how differnt my life is from your “normal” person. Kind of depressing that I may never have my life back to where it was. Plus I have to pay lots of $$$ for this “life of luxury”. I never signed up for this.