Maybe I'm Just Lazy: One Woman's Journey Through MS and Life: Rabbit, Rabbit

Monday, October 01, 2007

Rabbit, Rabbit

It's 6:33 a.m. on Monday, October 1. My friend Jill used to say "Rabbit, Rabbit" on the first day of a new month. Do people still do that?

My eyes shot open at 5:55 a.m. and I was out of bed by 6. So weird, this new morning person energy. I mean, I've been one way for 43 years, having my parents/roommates drag my butt out of bed from elementary school through college and even work! I did have a couple years of my 4am radio job and I was almost never late. Maybe this is temporary. I'm not sure if I want it to be...?

I started my day with a racing mind which I tried to give to my higher power, but eventually I just decided to get up and start doing other stuff so my mind wouldn't have some much leash. Hence this posting. I might as well let my mind race in writing for this blog/draft of my book. Lucky, lucky you. :-)

I bought another Volvo yesterday...well, I ARRANGED to buy another Volvo yesterday. I am afraid to post a picture or discuss it as a done deal since I have not handed the guy a check or driven the car away yet. I am turning it over. If it is meant to be, it will be. If it's not, I will probably swear and carry on and eventually find the right car or pimp out the Buick.

I am starting to worry that my MS and my focus on all things MS (in other words, my complete and total self-absorbed obsession with my body, mind, emotions, and spirit) could be making my friendships one-sided. I try to listen and ask about others but, depending on the person and the time and what's going on with me, sometimes I'm more successful than others.

I want to get new glasses, but I don't know what to do about the prescription. Mine are wicked scratched but do I go with my current prescription? I have a "new" prescription around the house somewhere from before the optic neuritis/MS started affecting my vision. Do I get my eyes tested again knowing that my vision is a result of MS lesions on my optic nerve and could be temporary? Too bad you couldn't change lenses daily. Wouldn't that be cool? I'd get up, take a shower and look into a machine that would read my brain, optic nerve, and vision, and then push a button to select thecolor-coordianted frames for the day. Then, zoom, beep, beep, click, like one of Jane Jetson's beauty machines, out would pop my glasses for the day. Maybe I should invent it. Hmmm. There are 400,000 people in the US with MS. I wonder how many have optic neuritis? How many wear glasses, I wonder....?

I need to clean my house before the maid comes. My lovely friend Christina gave me a gift of Merry Maids to come clean my house every other week while I am in this exacerbation/episode of MS. (This fact embarrasses me greatly because I am sure people--including you--will think I am lazy and milking the MS). The first visit was wonderful and horrific. Two women showed up and I immediately felt uncomfortable. They were way too much like me--single moms living on the South Shore. I had planned to stay home and do work but I couldn't handle it. I chattered endlessly and inappropriately ("My friend did this for me because I was diagnosed with an illness but don't worry, it's not catchy!" "Are other people's houses this messy on top of the refrigerator?" etc., etc., etc.) I was really fatigued that day (didn't help that I stayed up ALL NIGHT cleaning so I wasn't functioning at full steam and kept going into a room, forgetting why I was there, etc. Eventually, I left, carrying my homemade ice coffee in my leftover DD cup, out to the car. I got to the car and spilled THE ENTIRE LARGE ice coffee with extra Lactaid skim milk with 2 Splenda down my beige pant leg and into my black leather, slip-on shoe. I got in my car anyway, because how could I possibly go back in while these two women were cleaning my house, and called a couple friends who listening and laughed with me. Eventually, I went to DD, got a new iced coffee, got napkins to dry my feet and pants, and went to Walmart and bought new pants--two pair of different being pants because I didn't have time to try them on. I was gong to meet my new neurologist that day I think. Or maybe it was the 2nd MRI...?

So, this is Merry Maid visit #2 and I will DEFINITELY not be here. I am writing this post and NOT cleaning my house like a mad woman (although I should PROBABLY load the dirty, smelly dishes overflowing from the sink into the dishwasher) so I guess that's progress!

Gotta go get ready for work. Have a nice day. Peace.

4 comments:

KristinaOctober 1, 2007 at 10:07 AM
You are so like me! I would have frantically cleaned my house before the maid service came too. Troy has suggested it however - I just can't do it. I would have a nutter!

Fingers are crossed for the potential KGB car...
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wandererOctober 1, 2007 at 9:07 PM
Rabbit!
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AnonymousOctober 3, 2007 at 12:07 AM
Don't leave us hanging.......did you get the Volvo??? DW
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AnonymousOctober 4, 2007 at 1:30 PM
Julie, Are you kidding, one sided friendships?! You need us now, we want to be there for you and there's so little we can do, so listening when you need it? ...CAKE! Any time! And, when there is news on my side I need to share or when you need to try escaping the world of MS, I'll do my best to entertain you with the latest drama... like are we attending our 25th high school reunion? Just got the invitation yesterday. Could be interesting with the recent changes in some of those relationships.

Have a sparkling day Sparky!! -Laura
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MS is Lazy!

I just read this on an MS support group site and it made me feel better about feeling "lazy."

When the myelin covering on the nerves is lost/disappears/whatever it does, the nerves don't conduct brain messages nearly as effectively. It's kind of like the nerves have to find new pathways for the messages from the brain. So the messages are much slower in reaching their destination and it takes more energy, trying to find the right paths. This made a lot of sense to me and helped my not feel so 'lazy'.

The Spoon Story

I would love to give the proper attribution for this story but I have no idea where I found it! I think it may have been posted to an MS community site.

My best friend and I were in the diner, talking. As usual, it was very late and we were eating French fries with gravy. Like normal girls our age, we spent a lot of time in the diner while in college, and most of the time we spent talking about boys, music or trivial things, that seemed very important at the time. We never got serious about anything in particular and spent most of our time laughing.

As I went to take some of my medicine with a snack as I usually did, she watched me with an awkward kind of stare, instead of continuing the conversation. She then asked me out of the blue what it felt like to have MS and be sick. I was shocked not only because she asked the random question, but also because I assumed she knew all there was to know about MS. She came to doctors with me and she saw me walk with a cane. She had seen me cry in pain, what else was there to know? I started to ramble on about pills, and aches and pains, but she kept pursuing, and didn't seem satisfied with my answers. I was a little surprised as being my roommate in college and friend for years; I thought she already knew the medical definition of MS. Then she looked at me with a face every sick person knows well, the face of pure curiosity about something no one healthy can truly understand. She asked what it felt like, not physically, but what it felt like to be me, to be sick.

As I tried to gain my composure, I glanced around the table for help or guidance, or at least stall for time to think. I was trying to find the right words. How do I answer a question I never was able to answer for myself? How do I explain every detail of every day being effected, and give the emotions a sick person goes through with clarity.

I could have given up, cracked a joke like I usually do, and changed the subject, but I remember thinking if I don’t try to explain this, how could I ever expect her to understand. If I can’t explain this to my best friend, how could I explain my world to anyone else? I had to at least try.

At that moment, the spoon theory was born. I quickly grabbed every spoon on the table; hell I grabbed spoons off of the other tables. I looked at her in the eyes and said “Here you go, you have MS”. She looked at me slightly confused, as anyone would when they are being handed a bouquet of spoons. The cold metal spoons clanked in my hands, as I grouped them together and shoved them into her hands. I explained that the difference in being sick and being healthy is having to make choices or to consciously think about things when the rest of the world doesn’t have to. The healthy have the luxury of a life without choices, a gift most people take for granted. Most people start the day with unlimited amount of possibilities, and energy to do whatever they desire, especially young people. For the most part, they do not need to worry about the effects of their actions.

So for my explanation, I used spoons to convey this point. I wanted something for her to actually hold, for me to then take away, since most people who get sick feel a “loss” of a life they once knew. If I was in control of taking away the spoons, then she would know what it feels like to have someone or something else, in this case MS, being in control. She grabbed the spoons with excitement. She didn’t understand what I was doing, but she is always up for a good time, so I guess she thought I was cracking a joke of some kind like I usually do when talking about touchy topics. Little did she know how serious I would become?

I asked her to count her spoons. She asked why, and I explained that when you are healthy you expect to have a never-ending supply of "spoons". But when you have to now plan your day, you need to know exactly how many “spoons” you are starting with, which you wont know until you wake up. To answer your question we’ll start your day with twelve. It doesn’t guarantee that you might not lose some along the way, but at least it helps to know where you are starting. She counted out the12 spoons. She laughed and said she wanted more. I said no, and I knew right away that this little game would work, when she looked disappointed, and we hadn't even started yet. I’ve wanted more "spoons" for years and haven’t found a way yet to get more, why should she? I also told her to always be conscious of how many she had, and not to drop them because she can never forget she has MS. I asked her to list off the tasks of her day, including the most simple. As, she rattled off daily chores, or just fun things to do; I explained how each one would cost her a spoon. When she jumped right into getting ready for work as her first task of the morning, I cut her off and took away a spoon. I practically jumped down her throat. I said " No! You don’t just get up. You have to crack open your eyes, and then realize you are late. You didn’t sleep well the night before. You have to crawl out of bed, and then you have to make your self something to eat before you can do anything else, because if you don’t, you can't take your medicine, and if you don’t take your medicine you might as well give up all your spoons for today and tomorrow too." I quickly took away a spoon and she realized she hasn’t even gotten dressed yet. Showering cost her a spoon, just for washing her hair and shaving her legs. Reaching high and low that early in the morning could actually cost more than one spoon, but I figured I would give her a break; I didn’t want to scare her right away. Getting dressed was worth another spoon.

I stopped her and broke down every task to show her how every little detail needs to be thought about. You cannot simply just throw clothes on when you are sick. I explained that I have to see what clothes I can physically put on, if my hands hurt that day buttons are out of the question. If my shoulders and back hurt I wont be able to put on a bra. If my hair is falling out I need to spend more time to look presentable, and then you need to factor in another 5 minutes for feeling badly that it took you 2 hours to do all this. I think she was starting to understand when she theoretically didn’t even get to work, and she was left with 6 spoons.

I then explained to her that she needed to choose the rest of her day wisely, since when your “spoons” are gone, they are gone. Sometimes you can borrow against tomorrow’s "spoons", but just think how hard tomorrow will be with less "spoons". I also needed to explain that a person who is sick always lives with the looming thought that tomorrow may be the day that a virus comes, or a treatment reaction, or any number of things that could be very dangerous. So you do not want to run low on "spoons", because you never know when you truly will need them. I didn’t want to depress her, but I needed to be realistic, and unfortunately being prepared for the worst is part of a real day for me.

We went through the rest of the day, and she slowly learned that skipping lunch would cost her a spoon, as well as standing on a train, or even typing at her computer too long. She was forced to make choices and think about things differently. Hypothetically, she had to choose not to run errands, so that she could eat dinner that night. When we got to the end of her pretend day, she said she was hungry. I summarized that she had to eat dinner but she only had one spoon left. If she cooked, she wouldn’t have enough energy to clean the pots. If she went out for dinner, she might be too tired to drive home safely. Then I also explained, that I didn’t even bother to add into this game, that she was so dizzy, that cooking was probably out of the question anyway. So she decided to make soup, it was easy. I then said it is only 7pm, you have the rest of the night but maybe end up with one spoon, so you can do something fun, or clean your apartment, or do chores, but you can’t do it all.

I rarely see her emotional, so when I saw her upset I knew maybe I was getting through to her. I didn’t want my friend to be upset, but at the same time I was happy to think finally maybe someone understood me a little bit. She had tears in her eyes and asked quietly “How do you do it? Do you really do this everyday?” I explained that some days were worse then others; some days I have more spoons then most. But I can never make it go away and I can’t forget about it, I always have to think about it.

I handed her a spoon I had been holding in reserve. I said simply, “I have learned to live life with an extra spoon in my pocket, in reserve. You need to always be prepared” It’s hard, the hardest thing I ever had to learn is to slow down, and not do everything. I fight this to this day. I hate feeling left out, having to choose to stay home, or to not get things done that I want to.

I wanted her to feel that frustration. I wanted her to understand, that everything everyone else does comes so easy, but for me it is one hundred little jobs in one. I need to think about the weather, my temperature that day, and the whole day's plans before I can attack any one given thing. When other people can simply do things, I have to attack it and make a plan like I am strategizing a war. It is in that lifestyle, the difference between being sick and healthy. It is the beautiful ability to not think and just do. I miss that freedom. I miss never having to count "spoons."

After we were emotional and talked about this for a little while longer, I sensed she was sad. Maybe she finally understood. Maybe she realized that she never could truly and honestly say that she understands. But at least now she might not complain so much when I can't go out for dinner some nights, or when I never seem to make it to her house and she always has to drive to mine. I gave her a hug when we walked out of the diner. I had the one spoon in my hand and I said, “Don’t worry. I see this as a blessing. I have been forced to think about everything I do. Do you know how many spoons people waste everyday? I don’t have room for wasted time, or wasted “spoons” and I chose to spend this time with you.”

Ever since this night, I have used the spoon theory to explain my life to many people. In fact, my family and friends refer to spoons all the time. It has been a code word for what I can and cannot do. Once people understand the spoon theory they seem to understand me better, but I also think they live their life a little differently too. I think it isn’t just good for understanding MS, but anyone dealing with any disability or illness. Hopefully, they don’t take so much for granted or their life in general. I give a piece of myself, in every sense of the word when I do anything. It has become an inside joke. I have become famous for saying to people jokingly that they should feel special when I spend time with them, because they have one of my "spoons".

Maybe I'm Just Lazy: One Woman's Journey Through MS and Life

Monday, October 01, 2007

Rabbit, Rabbit

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Maybe I'm Just Lazy: One Woman's Journey Through MS and Life

Monday, October 01, 2007

Rabbit, Rabbit

4 comments:

Sharing is Nice

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Where are you?

MS Books and Related Titles

MS Blogs

The Facts of MS

Info About MS

Who Gets MS?

MS is Lazy!

Blog Archive

The Spoon Story