May 10, 2009

Numbness again...

After a festive few weeks with a sinus infection and a cold, I was prepared for a flare-up of some variety to show up. What would it be? Would I be unable to walk again? Would my balance be worse? Would I lose my ability to see? It's all such fun waiting to see what my MS trickster will do to me next....
So I pop up this morning, coughing and etc. only slightly, and head to the shower, where I take my loofa gloves and apply them so I can have a good scrub with my wonderfully sensuous Olay Body Ribbons Body Wash. I squirt a bit into my gloves and start to scrub. Or at least I think I start to scrub. I can't feel the gloves, anywhere. I scratch my arms, my bum, my legs - nothing, nada. Can't even feel the pressure of the scratchy things on my hands. Gradually I realize I am totally totally numb, everywhere. Nothing. I knew it was slipping away yesterday when I gave myself a Copaxone shot and felt nothing - not even the pressure of the autoinjector.
Well, I suppose I shouldn't complain - I can stand without falling while I wash my hair....
As I'm washing my face, with the gloves on (may as well go for a good exfoliation while it doesn't hurt), I realize the numbness isn't total. Laughing, I touch my one feeling place. The inside of my right eye, near my nose. It's like a final tee hee from the MS - here - "you get one spot," it says, gleefully. "But I get to choose."
Last time it was a spot under my right armpit. The time before that it was one space on my neck, which when kissed sent me into spirals of sensation. I'd forgotten how it felt to be touched, and almost swooned with the sudden thrill of it all.

My eye is totally numb now - even my one spot has shut off, leaving me feeling suspended in space, shut off from my world of sensation. Even my tongue is numb, my ears, the top of my head.
My only sensation is the small motor cramping of my hands as I type, and the motion of my ribcage as I breathe. And I can see, thank heavens, and hear. Eyes closed, I sense the room tilting slightly to the right, upending and twisting like I was doing a star bend hand to opposite ankle.
It's a novel sensation, this complete numbness - I still haven't got used to it although I seem to have it fairly consistently. If I concentrate, it feels like meditation does - that out of body sensation where one's head feels as if it is floating above reality, isolated from the rest of the body.
It's cool, in a way. But I miss feeling kisses.....

No comments: