Being funny...

I was at a MS support group the other day and joking in that graveyard way a lot of us with MS have about the changes in the disease, the weird things that go on, the humour in our everyday challenges. It seems to me that a lot of us with MS have that kind of humour - there isn't much that can be done for the disease, so we may as well laugh and get on with things. As we can, lurching merrily about and etc, dropping things, wobbling here and there...

But one lass took exception to our joking about.  She was seriously upset about MS and felt we weren't taking things with the right sense of gravitas. She was right.  We weren't. Right then.

MS is so often invisible because we don't get seen when we are down and out.  We go to ground, we hide at home, we don't answer the phone, we rarely speak.  We deal with our sorrows and losses privately, knowing that there is a limit on what we can expect friends to tolerate, that daily complaints just bring us down, that our private struggles don't make for good press.  The disease doesn't go away, it doesn't get better, we aren't "fighting" it like one does with cancer (because fight as we might, we can't beat it).  It becomes boring to share. Even a disease like MS that changes every day can become same old, same old.
This doesn't mean we don't spend several days of our lives destroyed by grief, or struggling to get anything done, or depressed to black.

When we get together, we share our challenges, but we also have a good laugh.  People who don't deal with this chimera of a disease don't understand what we go through, and it feels so good to laugh with those who can nod and add to the joking. It helps. Like this drawing by Bill Watterson, seeing others laugh can't help but make you smile.

So I say, let's laugh, giggle, snort, guffaw, and hoot this disease into the corner as often as we can.  It will creep out again, but let's enjoy our sorrow-free moments.  Let's wallow in them.

In a foul mood

Arggh.
I am spitting mad, and it's a general thing, non-specific, non-directed - the very worst kind of bad mood.
Maybe it's the lingering fatigue and confusion after the fantastic Erma Bombeck Conference. Maybe it's the dieting to try to deal with my newly acquired diabetes, when all I really crave is a large Rocky Road Ice Cream from Baskin Robbins.
Maybe its a newish friend of mine who suggests it's time for me to attend a workshop on how to deal with the bad relationships in my life.
Maybe it's the bad relationships in my life.
Or maybe it's this CCSVI thing. I'm a sceptic, it's true. I don't like the smell of anything that talks of being a miracle cure - it makes me think of the snake healers in the South West, or Carter's Little Liver Pills. Talk to me of a miracle cure and I'll just betcha there's someone making big buckeroonies off of it somewhere. And I really hate the anti-neurologist and anti-MS Society garbage that is being put on the web about it.
That said, I'm none too fond of my neurologist, who resorted to way too many "supposedely"s in my report of examination and made me feel all that old feeling of "maybe I'm crazy" stuff that I lived for years before diagnosis. (See bad relationships, above)
And it's so tempting. There's a clinic in Montreal that could scan me for a mere $900. Once I got scanned?  Aye, there's the rub. Here in Ottawa, all the folks who could do the procedure to widen the veins have been told not to, and all the clients who ask for it are then sent to my neurologist, who then bounces them off his caseload, leaving me with no care.
Which seems rather rude, I think. And frightening.
So, I'm caught in a nogozone.  I am curious, yes, suspicious, yes, wary, yes. I suppose I have time to wait, given that my disabilities are relatively scant - would like to say I can't do much mentally these days, but that's not so noticeable. I can still walk, and that's what matters to the neuro. But I'm not good with waiting (see bad relationships, above).
And my time is running out. I'm still technically employed until July, and could return to my job if I felt I could do it.  After that it's a whole new job search, which is terrifying. If I could be "cured" before the end of that time - how wondrous, how exciting - but it ain't going to happen.
So I'm in a baaaaad mood.

Wheezing and wobbling in worn out shoes

Took my newly stabbed buttocks for a walk today - my first since my dear doggums went to another family who could play with him (as vs lie about and look at him). It was raining, so I had my Kansas City Star umbrella with me - it has all sorts of comic strips printed on it, including the ever-wonderful Calvin and Hobbes . It was a good thing, too, as the umbrella is tall enough to act as a light cane. It swings with a sufficient swagger to make the use of it as this less disabling than it appears.

So off I went, sauntering down to the post office, Queen's Radio Gah Gah playing in my headphones. It was the perfect pace down to the post office...

On the way back, I needed a slower pace - and I had stopped for coffee and a sit down downtown....The umbrella swung with more effect now, and my old running shoes developed a gasp to match mine - each step one shoe says "eeee", then "ahhh". Quite apropos.

Tomorrow, I'm wearing more cheerful shoes, to go with the cane I'm buying. It's all part of the new DA look - cheerful but deteriorating.