Arthritis update and we're becoming an animal household

It's been almost a month since I posted about my arthritis and in that month, my knees have hurt 1 other time. So as bad as it hurt for that few days, if it's even arthritis, it's apparently not that bad. If I had to be honest, as much as my body aches, when I've played softball, my legs have felt pretty good. As a matter of fact, last week I was 3 for 3 with a single and 2 doubles. Even stretching out the doubles my legs didn't hurt. Last year, I could barely run to 1st without being in pain. This year, I sprinted out a triple and my legs felt good. I certainly don't think I'm in better shape, I'm still pretty round, but my legs seem to be doing a lot better. I get really achy, for the most part, when I've been sitting on my ass for to long and then get up. The cat loves to sit on my lap because I will sit for a good 3 or 4 hours without getting up but oh my god, can I feel it when I do. I'm guessing since I'm a homeowner now that mowing the lawn every week is probably a good exercise that I wasn't doing before as well.

Speaking of the home, the really good news is Cheri has been getting out and about and doing the outside of the house. She has been planting flowers, painting, putting down bark, shoveling, ect. Except this week because it's been ungodly hot. The great news is even with all that activity, the only real soreness is muscle soreness and not her bad back or the Fibromyalgia. So it's been good exercise for her as well.

We are dogsitting our granddog this week and maybe longer. To be honest, we're not sure how long he'll be here as our daughter is between places for a few weeks but we also know how much she hates being without the dog so I have a feeling, she'll end up on our doorstep sooner or later.

Having a dog here reminds me why I'm a cat person or I should say, why my wife is a cat person because Milo (the dog) is up her ass. Every time she gets up to do something the dog follows. Right now, she's in the kitchen trying to cook supper and he tries to sit between her and the stove. So needy. Cats, they want nothing to do with you most of the time. You can get up and go to the bathroom, come back and the cat hasn't moved. Don't even get me started on getting up to let him out and let him back in. Milo loves to go outside at night and run around for an hour and then come in. You'll be cool because you think he probably wore himself out but no, 5 minutes later, he wants to go out again. He does this constantly once it gets dark. A pain in the ass.

Example. Right now my wife is cooking. Here's the dog.

and here's the cat.

I won't even get to the phone calls I get from my mom and brother, "Can you go let our dogs out?" Cats, leave them some food out and they are good all weekend.

Don't get me wrong, I love dogs. I love that you can rough house with them and they are truly mans best friend. More obedient, easier to train, ect. but I'm lazy, and I like my house not smelling like dog. Especially wet dog because they still have to use the potty even when it's bad weather.

To sleep, or not to zzzzzz

I haven’t talked about my wife’s MS in awhile so think of this as an update on her.

She’s been on Copaxone for a little while now.  The only issues she has with the drug itself is the shot site on her legs.  She doesn’t seem to have much problems with her arms or her stomach, but her legs always swell up and look really red.  There is no way to actually tell if the drug is doing what it’s supposed to since it’s job is to slow down the progression of MS.  So no real issues there.

One of the two issue’s that’s really been affecting her is all the heat we’ve had this summer.  Heat absolutely kicks her ass so she does what she can to not go out in it.  She’s missed a few gatherings with the family (birthdays, 4th of July, ect) because she can’t be outside and they are held outside.  Tomorrow we are celebrating the kids birthdays, outdoors.  It’s supposed to be 86° and sunny, she’s going to suffer through it as much as she can since it’s the kids birthday.  We have some shade so as long as it’s not majorly humid, she should be ok.

But it’s not the only heat that bothers her.  Today, she is baking everything for the party.  So it’s warm in here and she’s been sweating profusely.  Between being in the kitchen and laying on the floor to stretch out her back, she’s been at it for around 6 hours.  But in order to keep herself as cool as she can, the air is kicked way down.  Here I am.

It hasn’t been so bad most of the time because it’s been so hot outside that the AC hasn’t been able to keep up and keep it cool enough.  But we use hoodies around here all year long.  She’s always apologizing that she keeps it so cold, I keep telling her we can put more clothes on.  It doesn’t bother me at all.  I think it bothers her more that she’s freezing us out then it does me.

So now if we can do something to fix the arthritis in her back, she would be doing better.  With all the baking today and being on her feet as much as she has, she’s been hitting the meds to alleviate the pain.  Which brings us to the second issue she has to deal with.

It’s all about sleep.  Most nights, she can’t.  Some days, she can’t stay awake.  Right now she’s in a drug induced stuper and trying to stay awake because of the pain meds.  But come bed time, she’ll fall asleep, only to wake up a little while later.  Eventually fall asleep again, to wake up a little later.  Part of it is me, part of it is the cat, almost all of it is because she’s way too light of a sleeper.  During the day, if she does too much (which she tends to do) it exhausts her body and she’s tired.

If she could find a happy medium somewhere, to only be tired at night and be awake during the day, she’d be fine.  But until she finds it, or the right combination of meds to not put her to sleep, she’ll do like she does with all of her other symptoms.  She’ll keep pushing on through it.

Chiropractor

Before our disability hearing yesterday, Cheri and I went to her evaluation with her new chiropractor.  She really liked the place.  Very organized with everything.  I liked it because everything was very modern.  Everything is brought up on flatscreens, they email you info and give you links to youtube video’s about info on things you need to know.  Like I said, very modern.  Anyways, we left impressed with everything.  She went back this morning for a consult on what they found with the x-rays and evaluation the day before.  All that went normal as well.  Still very impressed with the organization of the whole office and staff.  Then they gave us a quick tour of the office and left us in the room where they actually do the chiropractic care.  Cheri was pumped because it had been so long since she had her back worked on.  He came in and worked on her, here’s a brief description in her words.  When she got up she started to twist and turn her body like she was amazed at how well she could move.  She started to cry and gave him a big hug.  I teared up a bit (told her I yawned, but I think she figured it out).  I was so happy that she was so happy.  Cheri’s not a crier or a hugger so that should tell you how happy she was, now it’s a waiting game to see how long it lasts.  She still has pain, but that was one of the areas that hasn’t had relief in years.

I hope this works out because seeing Cheri so happy, even if it was brief, was a great thing.  She has quite a few more appointments so hopefully he can do more.  I certainly don’t think she will ever be pain free, but at this point, any pain relief is cause for excitement.  He says that he can help relieve some of the pain because he believes her spine is pinching some of her nerves which makes it hard for her body to send signals to her brain, which is essentially what her lesions in her brain do.  So if he can prevent the other blockage of the nerves, it can only help.  It certainly isn’t a cure, but the fight with MS is all about management and not cure.  There is no cure.  You try to manage the pain.  You try to manage the disease from progressing.  You try to manage your life around the disease.  You try to manage the ongoing education about the disease.  It’s all about management of the disease.

So it seems to be a step in the right direction.

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Genetic Disaster

For those that don’t know, my wife has MS.  What most people don’t know about MS is it comes and goes, or at least the symptoms do.  She can go a long time without feeling anything and then BAM! it knocks her on her ass.  But what seems to be more of an issue, is my wife can’t just sit her ass down and take it easy until the symptoms pass.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad she doesn’t let the MS get the best of her.  And she doesn’t let it stop her.  But on the other hand, I see how much pain she’s in when she does decide to take it easy.  Of course, for her, taking it easy is only doing the laundry and straightening up instead of everybody else’s taking it easy of sitting on their ass and doing nothing.  I respect her for pushing it and giving the disease a big “FU” but I hate seeing her in pain.

If you don’t know what MS (Multiple Sclerosis) is, the best way I’ve had it described to me is that she has lesions on her brain, multiple, if I remember correctly 15 of them.  And for the most part, they are just there.  But what they do is block her brain from sending signals to the rest of her body.  For instance, when she takes a shower, the lesions block the signal to the rest of her body to cool down.  She comes out of the shower and starts to sweat where as the rest of us start to cool down.  That is a daily symptom that she deals with.  Actually take the time to think about that, think about how warm your body is when you get out of that hot shower.  Now think about staying that hot, while your trying to get dressed or doing your hair.  There’s days where she gets out of the shower, turns on the fan and lays in bed just to cool down.  So you can understand why she hates to take showers.

Her “flare up” that she is dealing with now is her legs.  They are just weak.  She explains it as her legs feel like the day after she just worked out for the first time.  Or for me that would be the way I felt a few months ago after my brother talked me into playing basketball again.  My legs were dead for the next week.  But at least I did it to myself.  She has no choice.  Yesterday she went shopping with her sister.  I love when she does things with her sisters because she has such a good time and for 20 years, she hardly saw them so she loves spending time with them and really enjoys seeing her niece’s and nephew’s.  But all the time away from just sitting and relaxing in her recliner has kicked her ass.  I don’t want her not to go because it’s a good time and she gets away from home for a day, but on the other hand, I don’t want her to be in more pain.

Of course, her being in pain is relative.  She’s always in pain.  Just because the MS flare’s up doesn’t mean she isn’t in pain all the time.  Along with the MS, she has fibromyalgia, hashimoto’s disease, diabete’s and arthritis in her lower spine.  I’ve linked all those to the symptoms of each disease.  Every one of those has fatigue listed.  Fibromyalgia is essentially pain everywhere.  There is no cure, there is only pain management.  So she is on a wide range of drugs to help with the pain.  Which all have their side effects, that she takes more drugs for.  So as you can see, it is a vicious circle.

So to break it all down, as her daughter calls her, she’s a genetic disaster.  But with all these issues, she still gets my kids up and to and from school, takes care of the housework and has supper on the table most days.  She is a marvel and is amazing.  She takes care of everyone through all of it.  Sure she has her issues, she can be moody and short.  But knowing all she does for everyone, I look past it.  I just wish the kids could see all she does for them and understand why she gets that way.  That includes her 16 year old who takes advantage of her on a daily basis.

I guess I kind of went off of what I was originally planning on talking about.  Hopefully you got something out of this.  I guess by posting this, when I bitch about her mood’s, you all can look down on me for it instead of her.

I know I promised some humor.  But I usually like to post 5 toons or pics and I only have 4.  I will look for another one today and maybe post them tomorrow.