Category Archives: MS symptoms

MS, MS medication, MS Medications, MS symptoms, MS treatment, Uncategorized

Base 10, MS Style

Truth
Truth

All of our numbers are base 10, and evidently my perspective is too. There are just times when 10 seems a world bigger than 9. I never feel like I am sick and take a lot of medicine. I know my MS meds cost a lot, but I never think of myself as taking a lot of drugs every day. My system is simple. Only one bottle moves to tell me the last pill I took, and I chuckle every time the nurse asks if I miss doses. No, I don’t forget doses. The pain is a good reminder system. See? It is simple, so I can not be that sick, right?

Then this week, I started a new medication which pushed my daily count to 10. I never count pills taken for unusually high levels of pain because I rarely take them, and it kept the daily med count to the single digits. I find it humorous I should have such a hang-up about the 10th pill. I thought my hang-up would be over it being an anti-depressant, but my self image is more at odds with the 10th pill than depression. I don’t feel sad or melancholy, at least not beyond reason for what life throws.

Don’t get me wrong. I still take all 10 pills. How could I not take them and still look A in the eye when I tell her she has to take her meds. She takes 15, and it’s not like that is the highest number she has had to take per day. I continue to use my kids as role models even if traditionally it is the other way around. None the less, I still cringe as the new drug plays havoc with my stomach while I get used to it. It is all part of the evil of the tenth drug.

I wonder if 10 is a big number for an MS patient of eight plus years? It feels like a big number to me.

Share
kids' perspective, MS symptoms, Multiple Sclerosis, Uncategorized

These Are the Days of Miracle and Wonder

Young chemist at work
Young chemist at work

 

This week, I read about a learning pill which is supposed to allow people to regain their ability to hear different pitches.  In the same week, I see a story about an MS author whose books I have enjoyed since I was diagnosed with MS beginning stem cell treatments in an effort to reverse the course of his MS.  Since many of my symptoms these days are cognitive, I began to think about what a treatment to revert or reboot my ability to learn might actually mean for me.

As I thought more on the issue, I came to suspect a drug which allowed for greater plasticity would disappoint many.  I suspect a lot of what keeps us from learning new things is our acceptance of what we already “know.”

When we say kids are like sponges, I think of how many “why” questions I answer daily from A (age 8) and O (age 7).  They are trying to model the world in their minds to gain the ability to predict and impact what is going on around them.  As we get older, we think we know, and we stop asking.  We develop our lives around the world as we perceive it.

The ability for our minds to take in new information is only one part of the equation.  We have to be actively trying to learn.  I think about the book Crashing Through,  and in the book, the author tells how most blind people who suddenly get their sight back at an older age are depressed.  The world of sight is not as they thought, and their ability to use their sight to help them is less than they predicted.  It is only when the author goes back to using his cane as if blind that he is able to rejoin society at large.  Sight had to be relegated to additional information, not a primary source.

Would a more nimble brain be a more open brain, questioning everything, or would it be little more than a faster,bigger hard drive for our existing thought patterns?  For which would you hope?  I note with sight the latter approach was the author’s only way to prevent the common side effect of depression.  New unknowns are only rarely as we think and hope they will be.  Still, it is only through our willingness to explore the unknowns that we are able to learn.  In some ways the choice to embark upon such a treatment course would be a reversion to the younger thought patterns before any chemical entered the blood stream.

 

 

Share