Stumblr: Life with MS

This morning I rose promptly at 7 instead of asking Alexa to perform all of her tricks -- news, Jeopardy!, jokes -- as I usually do to delay facing the day. I showered last night to speed my morning routine in the name of arriving at my infusion center at 8am, thus minimizing the amount of time I have to make up at the end of the day now that I am out of paid leave. #newjobproblems I'm back to the infusion center I like. It's a part of Arthritis and Rheumatism Associates, which ensures I think of Uncle Wiggily every four weeks. I go in, fill out a form about my abilities/sense of well-being (today I'm a six on the zero to ten/best to worst scale), and then settle in for 90 minutes of screen time and the drip, drip, drip of the drug that's helped my disease steady for the past three and a half years. "Uncle Wiggily wants to be cured of his rheumatism.  On the way to Dr. Possum’s office, he has many adventures.” – The Uncle Wiggily Game , © 1967 Parker Broth...

I often whine about working in a corporate office building. After years in a beautiful library sharing an office space with two colleagues, sitting in a cubicle farm with an outward-facing monitor is a hardship. Every now and again there’s a bonus to traditional office life. Like today, when the building managers threw an ice cream social. I went downstairs at 2 to collect my share, a scoop of toffee crunch in a sugar cone cup. What a novel presentation! I gripped my cane with my left hand, holding the cone-cup as gingerly as possible as I made my way to the toppings table. One step. Two steps. Crunch! My poor motor skills caused a wobble followed by an overcompensating grasp to steady things, leading to a “Hulk smash!” moment. Half of the cone-cup crumbled to the floor as I cradled the remaining cone bits and ice cream in my hands. A colleague called for a regular bowl, but, alas, they had run out. Another colleague rushed over napkins, on which we placed a fresh cone-bowl, in wh...

Neal and I have always enjoyed live music, but we have stepped up our concert game recently to make up for the fact that we aren’t vacationing this summer. This is the first in a series of posts about our live music adventures. FedEx Field – After much deliberation, Neal decided that he could not let longtime favorite U2 come to the DMV (playing The Joshua Tree, no less) without being there. Being a dutiful wife, I agreed to join him. My only other visit to FedEx Field was for a football game back when I was able-bodied enough to walk into the stadium, and still the press of drunken fans and ensuing chaos then left me in tears. You’d think that would prepare me for the ordeal to come. (Spoiler: it did not.) Everything about FedEx Field is a hassle starting with figuring out how/where to park. After several false starts, we were waved into the main lot and ended up quite close to the stadium. The entrance for folks on wheels was not one of the four closest entrances, however, ...

Shortly after my tiny goiter was rediscovered, I went to the gynecologist for my annual ladybits check. A week later, Dr. Safran called to say that my pap smear had come back abnormal, which wasn’t necessarily cause for alarm. Because it was my second abnormal smear in as many years, he wanted to take a closer look. Literally. So we scheduled a colposcopy , which is essentially an extra invasive and aggressive pap smear involving a speculum, a specialized microscope, a vinegar solution (I shit you not), and a biopsy instrument. The vinegar helps “highlight areas of suspicious cells” (thanks Mayo Clinic), which are then sampled and sent off to the lab. Pre-procedure, the mild-mannered Dr. Safran sighed and said, “I’m sorry. Everything I do is so uncomfortable.” “For you or for me?!” I asked, knowing the answer. The procedure itself was indeed uncomfortable, as was recovery. The worst of it was having something orange-ish, papery, and alien emerge from my body a couple of days after...