The Adventure... With Some Limitations

I'm back! I know you missed me and were just dying to read my next post! So I figured 5 hours was long enough to wait... okay, okay all jokes aside... here it is...

I was just working around the house... laundry, dishes, making beds, cleaning up the toys that I just cleaned up an hour ago, wiping noses, wiping bottoms, wiping up spills, refilling drinks, preparing snacks, cleaning up after the dog, and I looked out at our deck... there is so much snow on it and it is heavy. My wonderful husband needs to shovel that off! We have been so busy with everyday and it has been getting overlooked. So I thought it is our anniversary and I should help him out being the wonderful wife that I am and go shovel it for him...

So I put on my coat, my red and black checked mittens, and my wonderful winter boots that my husband got me last year for just this sort of occasion... I headed out and picked up the shovel and thought... "gee, this shovel is kinda heavy..." Well that was nothing compared to a load of snow on it! And then trying to throw it over the side of the deck... Apparently I forgot that shoveling is not something I can do anymore... I would love to be able to go outside and get something accomplished, but my body just won't let me!

My latest adventure has come and it has brought with it some major limitations! I do not really want to be on this adventure, but here I am... every day is a challenge and I am reminded every day that I now have limitations and I can't just do the things I want to do... I can't surprise my husband by shoveling off the deck for him so he doesn't have to when he gets home on our anniversary! Some days I can't get out of bed and on many occasions I have pushed it too hard and have fallen to the ground and can't get up... I am reminded of a certain commercial here... at any rate I am now on this new adventure that I am not excited about!

For those of you reading that do not know what I am talking about... here it is. In July of 2009, a week after my birthday, I was out on the boat with my family and I noticed that my hands were a bit tingly. I didn't really think anything about it because it went away. But unfortunately it came back... and it seemed like it was "spreading". I had numbness and tingling and pain! I had it in the hands and arms and in the feet and legs. I went to the doctor (not my normal doctor) and he started to run some tests. He ran tests for lymes disease and MS (multiple sclerosis) and some other big bad things... all negative.

The trouble got worse and I went back in a few days later, and this time I was told by a doctor (also not my regular doctor) that I must have some anxiety and depression... of course I have some anxiety! And I am a bit depressed that something terrible is wrong with me and what if I can't take care of my family..... something I have fought so hard for!?! But I did not have any of these issues before I came in and couldn't get any answers from this doctor and I wasn't taken seriously!

So I went to the computer and I started to research symptoms and diseases and syndromes and big bad horrible problems and I knew that this was not in my head and that something was definitely wrong with me... I called the ask a nurse line at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota and I told her what was up... her response, "I don't want to scare you, but you need to get to a big city ER as soon as possible!" Finally I was taken seriously and really scared!

At first they thought I may have a syndrome called Guillain-Barre and it causes the muscles in the extremities to cease up and stop working as it travels toward the core (lungs and heart)... death if not treated! So we decided to not mess around with this anymore and headed to Mayo Clinic! I was up all night explaining my symptoms over and over to neurologists..."and then what happened?" I think all neurologists are trained to ask the same questions in the same way... and they can make it frustrating by asking everything over and over... it certainly doesn't help when you don't feel well. I ended up in Rochester at the clinic for about a week. They ran all sorts of tests and didn't find much... my neurologist thought I must've had a virus that caused my problem and that it would be a couple of weeks before my nerves healed and got back to normal.

Well then I started falling down. My legs would just stop working... so I finally got to see my own doctor and she thought it sounded an awful lot like MS, but MS is sometimes hard to diagnose especially in the early stages. Apparently they can't diagnose it until there are lesions on the brain... great! So now I head to Madison to a new neurologist who runs all of the tests I have already had and a few new ones. He decides that I have some small fiber neuropathy and has no answer as to what is causing it... so here I am today frustrated with no real answers.

I am feeling better for the most part, but I have struggles every day! Like today, not being able to shovel, and not being able to lift the laundry basket to carry it to our room to put away, and the worst limitation is sometimes not being able to get out of bed at night when John is crying. I am so thankful for my wonderful husband who gets up with him at night so I don't have to. He is tired, overworked and underpaid, but not underappreciated! I just wish he could be home all of the time when I need him... but he can't, so I am slowly trying to adapt to this new adventure and trying to realize that I need to slow down sometimes and take it easy... oh and ask for help... but that is a whole other issue. I will continue to work with a neurologist and am praying for some concrete answers, but for now I am just taking everything in stride and trying to stay optomistic that this adventure will come to an end and I can get back to something more fun!