Am I just a clutz?

I’ve always been clumsy. My family says I’m as graceful as a bull in a china shop. It’s funny because I danced my entire childhood – ballet, tap, jazz, hip hop. Yet I still find a way to trip over the slight bump in the sidewalk and spill water all over myself consistently. I am no ballerina.

It’s weird when you have MS, you start to question everything that happens in your life. What’s that tingling in my hand? Is my foot really asleep or am I just losing feeling? Today, it was “did I just drop my entire bag down the stairs at work because I’m clumsy or because I have MS?”.

Yeah, you heard that right. My entire bag. My Bluetooth headphones bounced out of their case and down two flights. There was a fork there and a pill case here. And the noise it made in the 15 story stairwell was deafening. You’d think that I had fallen down the stairs (not a far-fetched assumption). I gathered everything as quickly as possible, only one person walked in as I was crouched over in a panic trying to clean it all up. To say the least, it was very embarrassing.

As soon as I got everything gathered and made it to my destination I started thinking “wait, was that MS? Did I lose feeling in my hand and didn’t notice? Did my brain not send the right signals to my hands? Is this my future???”

The answer with all of these things is I don’t know. That’s my reality. My anxiety has been getting the best of me these past few months. I am trying to live in the moment, appreciate the life I have while I have it. It’s hard. Everything is hard. But now I am laughing every time I think about my headphones bouncing around a stairwell! It was pretty funny….

Please don’t get me sick!

Why I’m Terrified of Getting Sick

October is a tough month for me. The past two Octobers have involved emergency room visits, the last one resulting in my MS diagnosis. I’m not sure if it’s the germs floating around, the change in the weather, or simply bad luck, but I guess October is not my month. This really sucks for me because a) I love fall b) I am obsessed with Halloween and c) I have a November birthday.

So I am really afraid of getting sick. On top of all the normal reasons and the addition of having MS, I just really want to enjoy October. I’ll probably end up sick because I wrote this (see how anxious I am? HA). My entire office is sick, battling colds and fevers and everything else that their kids are bringing home from daycare. If I could hold my breath all day, I probably would. I use more hand sanitizer than is recommended. I’m eating clementines for that Vitamin C. And I am terrified.

I’m definitely more anxious about getting sick just based on my track record. I almost expect something terrible to happen this month. Maybe a cold that knocks me out for a week, or a fever that leads to a relapse that leads to legit brain damage (this sounds like exaggerating so the fact that it isn’t is so not comforting). There is so much to worry and stress about and lose sleep over. But losing sleep makes ya sick.

A lot of things are scarier when you have MS. Anytime I feel a pain behind my eye, even if it’s just from sinus pressure, I freak and do my own optic neuritis test. I role my eyes and look up down and sideways to make sure there’s no pain. I will close one eye and make sure I can still see clearly, then do the same with the other eye. Sometimes I will even press on my eyelid to see if there’s pain. I’m so lucky I have a cubicle at work, otherwise my coworkers would think I was insane.

I think a lot of us with MS get especially anxious as people start sniffling and coughing. Can you blame us? So, yeah, I probably take my temperature more than the average person and wash my hands more and think about germs more. But it’s just the cost of doing business with the multiple sclerosis monster.

Happy October!