In Stitches

Properly practiced, knitting soothes the troubled spirit, and it doesn't hurt the untroubled spirit, either. ~Elizabeth Zimmerman

Years ago, Al was diagnosed and successfully treated for testicular cancer. He has been cancer-free for almost 12 years, but I remember every minute of sitting in those cold waiting rooms while he went through more scans and while doctors reviewed the results before talking to us. “The Price Is Right” was showing in every room, and to this day I can’t listen to the theme music for that show.

I always had a book with me, but I couldn’t concentrate long enough to read even a page. I tried crossword puzzles, but same problem. So, I mostly just sat there, tapping my foot. Near the end of his treatment, he had to have a long surgery to remove the scar tissue, and I knew that I would have to find something to do with my hands. I could hand-stitch quilt pieces together, but that would take a lot of prep work to cut out the pieces first. I decided to fall back on cross-stitch, an old favorite. During his over-6-hour surgery, I finished an old project and gave it to a friend for Christmas. Cross-stitch was the perfect thing for me at that time because it kept my hands busy and following a simple pattern was about all the concentration I could handle. Besides, the repetition of making those Xs was comforting some how. I haven’t done much cross-stitch since.

Flash forward some 6 years or so. After trying quilting again, honing my cooking/baking skills (gaining 40 pounds in the process), playing with paper and stamps making scrapbooks, and writing bits and pieces of a novel that wasn’t going any where, I took a good friend’s advice and tried knitting. My mother had tried to teach me when I was a teenager, but I didn’t like it, probably because I wasn’t good at it immediately and my pattern was to quit and move on to something else. I believe it was cross-stitch, actually. Anyway, I got the book Stitch and Bitch, some needles, and yarn and got started. Something my mother taught me must have been hiding in my subconscious because it came very easy to me. Not only that, I liked it! I felt I had found the craft for me, the one I could concentrate on and get really good at while still loving what I was doing.

As a bonus, learning to knit came at a time when I really needed something to keep me from cracking up. Yes, I say that flippantly, but for a couple of years there, I don’t know how I kept it all together. Actually I do know how, I knitted. I obsessively focused on learning how to knit, playing with yarn and learning how to follow a pattern. I won’t go so far as to say knitting saved my life, but it came damn close.

When I thought things were getting ready to turn around for me, I had an MRI done, expecting a migraine but finding lesions, the first step in diagnosing MS. Thus, I started spending a lot of time in waiting rooms again. The diagnosis process is a long one for MS, mostly because it is difficult to diagnose. One of these days, I’ll write more about why that is, but the point is that I now had something to do in the waiting rooms and at home while I waited for test results. As long as I followed simple patterns, I could easily sit and knit for as long as it took. Unfortunately, I couldn’t knit while in the MRI machine nor while getting a lumbar puncture.

It’s a testament to how much I love knitting that I haven’t turned away from it after my diagnosis and after things started to turn around for me. Whereas I can’t watch “The Price is Right” nor do I have any desire to cross-stitch, I happily continue to knit. I haven’t ignored the fact that I have a disease that could affect my dexterity, but luckily, my case is pretty mild and it hasn’t interfered too much. Actually, knitting is a pretty good gauge of how I’m doing. Sometimes, even on a bad day I can knit as long as it is a simple pattern not requiring a lot of concentration or the need to follow a chart. Then there are those days when I knit even a simple row over and over again and can’t get it right. We all have bad days, but I know that when I can’t complete a simple knit 2 purl 2 rib, something else might be going on and I should pay attention. But even on a bad day, I can listen to a knitting podcast (yes, there is such a thing) or look at a magazine to plan my next project. Sometimes, it’s just a bad day.

And now, knitting will help Join the Movement by raising money for MS research. At both of The Knitting Guild of America’s (TKGA) 2009 Knit & Crochet Shows in Portland, OR and Buffalo, NY, a silent auction will be held, featuring socks by various designers. Socks are a favorite project and an obsession with many knitters, so this is a wonderful idea. Proceeds will go to The National MS Society (NMSS). In their statement, the NMSS said, “The mission of the National Multiple Sclerosis Society is to end the devastating effects of MS. Support from organizations like CGOA (Crochet Guild of America), TKGA and the Knit & Crochet Shows helps us to pursue new treatments so that no one will have to forgo the pleasure of being able to participate in activities that are so rewarding.”

Maybe knitting really is a life saver.

Another little life saver who wants to take a nap with Al.



My latest project--a market bag

Some Random Thoughts

Well, I have some photos of Yorktown Battlefield that I toured with Al and his class, but I haven't typed up any info yet. I've been staying really busy so I haven't had a chance; oh OK, so I haven't been exactly busy--I've been driving around looking for different shops and walking the dog in our favorite park. She has a little Beagle friend named Gracie, who is always as excited as Cosette to be there. Actually, Gracie and Cosette couldn't care less, but I'm enjoying having Gracie's mom to talk to.

We've also toured the naval museum and the Wisconsin battleship that is docked in Norfolk. I'll post about that, too, later. This tourist attraction is free! But if you want to see it, better do it soon because the Navy has told the city they are not going to keep putting money into the upkeep, so Norfolk is going to buy it. A good guess is that it will no longer be free when the city gets it.

I love museums, so we also went to the Ocean View (the neighborhood we're living in) Museum. It was a little sad because you wouldn't believe how much used to be here. It was called "The Atlantic City of the South" because of the roller coasters, the pier, the restaurants, the salt water taffy shops, the ice cream shops, and so many community activities. It's all gone now, except for the pier, where they, I kid you not, charge you a dollar to look around and $8 to fish off the pier. There is a bandstand and they have live music on Friday nights in July, which is cool, though.

It's wonderful renting a totally furnished condo to stay in so we didn't have to bring anything but our clothes. Hell, there's even a crockpot and a blender. But I wish I had brought my iron skillet. Is that a true Southerner, or what? I also like to think it's a true cook, because the cheap pots and pans are driving me crazy. They're usable, though, and I can work with it. I do, however, have to put aluminum foil in all the baking pans because they are so rusty. Ew. It's also been a long time since I've used a gas stove and I'm kind of afraid of that sucker. It won't turn on, it won't turn on, it won't turn on, just click click click, then Whoosh! We have flames!

Cosette had a trip to the groomer and they cut her pretty short. That's what I wanted, so it's OK. She's much easier to keep clean and to get those stickers off her. We left her head and tail fuzzy, so when she lifts her ears and cocks her head, she looks like one of those dinosaurs whose skin fans around it before it spits acid at you. I'll try to capture it in a photo.

Al has to play softball with his seminar group (there are 14 groups of 18 people in each seminar group). The military always feels obliged to have some kind of team sports requirement. He played volleyball when he first got in, then he played some version of flag football, then group runs and racquetball. Now softball. I was more than a little concerned because men his age are usually retired from these sports. He's played ultimate frisbee with people from work, and everyone has ended up injured--Al with a broken thumb, one guy with a broken nose, one with a broken arm, another with a pulled tendon, and one who almost broke his ankle. So, I went to the first softball game so that I could drive anyone to the emergency room. But I needn't worry. This is politically correct softball. A game lasts only an hour or 7 innings, whichever comes first. You get 3 pitches and someone from your team pitches to you while the opposing team is on the bases, in the field, and as catcher. There are 4 practice games, then everyone is in the tournament. Luckily, Al's group isn't gung ho and they really don't care--just having fun. Their first game was against the high ranking officers who are shooting for general and admiral, so they are even older than Al's group. One of the guys said to his team member, "What was that sound? Was that war cry or a did you pull a muscle?" So, they're having a good time with it.

I went to the first game, but I'm going to sit out the next one. Unfortunately, the heat has arrived. I can do anything up to the low 90s, then I have to be careful, and it's getting close to 100. So, I'll be enjoying the comforts of air conditioning. It's pretty weird and a little frustrating. I was outside at Yorktown all day and got pretty hot, but never really felt too bad--I mean MS bad. None of the MS symptoms bothered me. But today? Lordy. I was out walking Cosette and I had to get her back in so I could sit down. My left leg is tingling, the pain in my cheek is back, and there are muscle spasms in my left arm and leg, with spasticity (where the muscles tighten up to the point I'm afraid they are going to snap). It could be so much worse. I have a friend with MS who looses her ability to walk when she gets overheated. She has to be carried somewhere to cool off and rest. Once she cools off, she starts getting feeling in her legs again. So, I'm thankful that my little piddlin' tingles are all I have to get through.

My goodness but I've just rambled on and on. I sat down with nothing to say, then look what happened.

Oh, one more thing. We have a dog with gourmet taste. I made gnocchi with gorgonzola sauce, and as we were cleaning up the kitchen, Cosette licked the sauce off the plate. She likes smelly cheese. Who would've thunk it. Al and I weren't real wild about it.

Speaking of Cosette, she has her head near my lap and is whimpering in soft, high pitch. I'm not sure what she wants, but I'm going to close this and find out. I'll tell her "Show me!" and she'll lead me to what she wants, either to the kitchen for a treat or downstairs to go out. She's got me trained real well.

Partly Cloudy

When I started this blog, I planned to write deep and philosophical thoughts, to find that honest part of me that wrote without thinking of the consequences. But then I realized that people might actually be reading it and I didn’t want to bum everyone out, or worse bore anyone. So, the self-censoring started and the majority of light-hearted topics.

But I’m tired people, and I need to talk some stuff out before I explode.

These bouts of depression every other week are really frustrating and they are getting worse. The demons came out again last week and were flying all over the place. I couldn’t catch them to put them away, back in that little dark place of my brain. Instead, all I wanted to do was go down to a dark corner of the basement, wrap up in a blanket and watch Law and Order reruns.

In these times, every disappointing or upsetting thing that has ever happened in my life flickers on a loop, so I’m forced to relive those moments over and over again. Sometimes, I think of a time that I hurt someone and I think about what a horrible person I am and of all the things I should have done differently. Then there are the times that I think about when I was hurt and what a loser I am that I didn’t say something or do something about it. Mixed in are the old fashioned feelings of uselessness and sadness and being an utter failure.

Some how I pull it together enough to be standing upright by the time Al gets home and actually cook some dinner (or order pizza, depending on how bad the day had been). But some days, like this last Monday, was a crying day, and he knew that it was a bad day for me. The first clue was me sitting in the middle of the couch with a Kleenex in my hand and tears streaming down my face.


“What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know.”

He’s used to this answer, so he just sits with me. I know he wants to help but just doesn’t know what to do, and I have no idea what to tell him. There’s not much he can do. The fact that he’s still here, living through this with me, is the best thing he can do.

I can explain it away, however. I’ve been having bouts like this for the last 5 or 6 years to varying degrees of intensity. And I honestly think that about that time, I also went through a personality change and pulled away from everything and everyone. I’m not sure family members or friends would admit that out loud, but I think they would agree. I thought it was because of hormones and that I wasn’t getting enough exercise.

Then I was diagnosed with MS, and a lot of things started to fall into place. When I went in for my first visit with the MS Nurse Practioner, I was looking at a poster about lesions and their locations. I realized and showed Al how one of the lesions looked like mine and was in the exact place that my largest one was. The little explanatory bubble said something about how that area affected vocabulary, some other things I don’t remember, and personality. Personality? Damn. I’m not crazy and it’s not just in my head. Well, it is my head, it’s a dead spot in my head, but there’s a reason for what I had been going through.

Then, joy of joys, the medication causes depression. I think that is what I’m dealing with most of the time, since the worst days are Monday after my shot on Sunday night. There are those weeks when it lasts three or more days, then there are the weeks when I’m fine by Tuesday. The pattern is every other week. Coincidentally (or maybe not) it’s the week I take my shot in my left leg, the one that is more affected by the MS. Weird, huh?

Hormones could have something to do with it because as I’m reminded constantly, I am “into my 40s.” That age seems to be some kind of friggin’ threshold and now everything I feel is because my hormones are changing. It’s very easy to throw away emotions with the excuse that your just hormonal. Doesn’t help me, but it makes it easier for others to explain it away.

As a result of my weakness, the demons take over. I take Wellbutrin and it evens things out a bit, but I can’t help but wonder if it is no longer as affective. The MS message boards recommend therapy, but the doctors others recommend don’t take my insurance and my insurance just gives me a list of doctors in my area. I just don’t have the energy to start seeing these people until I find one I think I can talk to.

So I talk to you, dear readers! You lucky people. I wish I could say I feel better, but there’s a really good chance I will end up deleting this post. But it’s out there. Maybe talking out loud and releasing those demons is better than putting them back in.

Damn Cold Weather

These below freezing temperatures are playing havoc with my MS symptoms. It's supposed to warm up over the weekend, so that's good and I should be feeling much much better.

Until then, I'm going to get some rest and I'll be back when I'm not in such a depressed and whiney state.

BTW, you know how people talk about how intuitive their pets are and know when they're feeling bad and need comfort. Meet the dog who doesn't:



I actually took her for a short walk because she kept staring at me and sighing because she wanted to go for her morning walk. She has a fur coat so she doesn't care that it's -2. Then she brought the stuffed duck to me so we could play tug-a-duck. Oh well. She really has me trained well.

Lost and Lost

Remember that optimistic woman who was here last week? The one looking forward to 2008? Well, she’s disappeared, and I can’t find her anywhere.

She didn’t even give me a head’s up. Just pfffft—gone. And she left this moody, crying, wimpy woman in her place. That’s just rude.

Some weeks are just worse than others. As the medication wears off, I feel better. So, it’s Wednesday. I should be feeling better as the day goes on, then a little better each day. Until Sunday, when I take my shot, and it starts all over again. I thought about changing medications, but after reading the MS boards, I realized that this is common and it’s not much better with the other medications. And since I know that this one is working, I think I’ll just hang in there.

Unfortunately, that means the loved ones have to hang in there, too. It seems unfair to keep asking those around me to keep putting up with these swings. But that’s what you do, right? You hang in there, get through the rough spots, enjoy the high spots, and live through everything in between.

Hmm, how many more clichés can I state before I want to puke? There’s always a silver lining? Things will get better, they always do? It could be worse?

OK, that’s enough of that. More than enough. Enough is enough! Eight is enough! Wait, let’s not carried away here. When I start channeling 70s TV shows, I know I’ve got nothing left to say.

I think I’ll go surf some expensive yarn shops online. Unlike the huge bag of peanut butter M&Ms, that won’t add pounds to my thighs, just thin out my wallet. I can’t decide which is the lesser evil.

A Day in the Life

One of the frustrating things about having a chronic disease that can/might/probably will progress is that I start to question every little pain I have. A twinge in the thigh can have me searching through my memories, trying to decide if I have ever had a pain like that before. Then I spend the rest of the day trying to pay attention to see if that pain continues because a new pain lasting more than a day and interfering with daily life is when I have to call the doc. The new pain in question, however, is not in my thigh, it's in my face. A dull ache on my lower left jaw, to be exact.

Face pain of varying degrees of intensity is pretty much constant for me. That's the pain that sent me to the doctor in the first place. For years I've had a pain running along my left cheek, down the side of my nose, and into my teeth. When the pain is really intense, my eye also hurts and I'm sensitive to light, then eventually the whole left upper quarter of my head hurts. That's only if I don't catch it in time; usually I pop some ibuprofen and that takes the edge off for a while. For years I went back and forth between the dentist, telling me my teeth were fine and the doctor, telling me I had a sinus infection. Then the pain just stopped, and I lived happily pain-free for years. Then a few years ago, the pain came back with a vengeance. I made the rounds to the optometrist, the dentist, and finally the doctor, who ordered the MRI and found the lesion that led to the lumbar puncture that led to the MS diagnosis. (Sounds a little like the old woman who swallowed a fly, doesn't it--who swallowed the cat to catch bird, to catch the the spider, to catch the fly . . .)

Anyway, turns out that this pain is an early sign of MS. Go figure. And it actually has a name--trigemenal neuralgia. I'm kind of a classic case, in my humble opinion, and it only affects that middle left portion of my face. When the ibuprofen doesn't work and if I start getting small shocks through my cheek, I head into the doctor's office because now I'm probably having an exacerbation of the MS. That's when the steroid treatments start, and I really, really, really, let me say that again, really don't want to go through that again.

Now I'm having this pain in my lower jaw, parallel to the pain in my cheek and that's not my usual TN symptoms. So, it's gotta be my teeth, right? And even though I fear and loathe going to the dentist, who's actually a very nice guy, I called to have them checked. We've been through this before, he and I. Last February I went in because I thought that maybe this time the pain in my cheek really was my teeth, but they were fine and I ended up getting really sick and had to have the dreaded steroid treatment for the exacerbation. So, guess what happened this time. Yep. Teeth are fine. Maybe the gum has receded a little from the tooth, but everything looks fine and I had no reaction to any poking, prodding, tapping, or scrapping.

I feel so stupid. I'm like the little boy who cried wolf, but I'm the girl who cried cavity or root canal. They are very understanding and didn't charge me to check my teeth, but I'm just so embarrassed for wasting their time, yet again. My file probably has a little asterisk on it now for "here we go again." But at least I don't have to have a root canal or anything like that.

I also feel silly because I have been having little flare ups of my symptoms, but nothing that I can't live with, and my allergies have been driving me crazy and that can make my whole head hurt (plus trigger MS symptoms), but I still went to the dentist. I know that it's better to know for sure, and even the dentist said he'd much rather I come in and it be nothing than not come in and it be something. But still.

I don't want to blame everything on the MS and just ignore something as another aspect of the disease. I, also, don't want to be one of these people who's always complaining about some pain. So, when I finally decide to have something checked out, why am I embarrassed rather than relieved that it's nothing? How weird is that? Is there a special kind of neurosis for people who aren't relieved when they're told they don't need a root canal? Well, actually there is I guess. It's the fear that it has nothing to do with fixing something and all to do with a disease getting worse. That's not to say I'm getting worse! The MS nurse has told me repeatedly that new symptoms will show up, but that doesn't mean the disease is progressing. And many times I think I must have been misdiagnosed because I feel fine. Actually, most of the time--I feel good (thank you James Brown, heh!).

Well, now I can move on. My teeth are fine. Oh, he also asked me if I had been clinching my teeth. Um, yeah. I spend a lot of time clinching my teeth and biting my tongue so that I don't snap at people (usually the hubby), but I think that's just hormones, which is a post for another day.

Enough venting for one day. It's going to be gorgeous this weekend, with highs in the low 70s and sunny skies. I think that calls for a road trip in the Miata and a picnic.