Tuesday was a long day.

I have seen several studies, including this one, that give Tuesdays the illustrious designation of Most Productive Day of the Week. For the most part, I have to say that I agree. Take this Tuesday, for example.

I went into my office in the morning, where I had several meetings to determine marketing material needs for an internal client. Then I had lunch. Then I went to my Neurologist’s office, where my diagnosis for Multiple Sclerosis was clinically confirmed. Then, on my way home, I stopped and got myself a lovely tattoo.

To be fair, I don’t know if this example technically supports the theory that Tuesdays are the Most Productive Day of the Week. Generally speaking, I rarely get disease diagnoses OR tattoos on Tuesdays. But meetings—THOSE I have darn near every week!

I digress… and realize there may be some questions the previous paragraphs may have generated. So I’ll expand a bit (in the order I anticipate the questions would arise)…

Diagnosis
The MS diagnosis came on the heels of several years of symptoms, a well-intentioned-but-not-entirely-on-the-mark diagnosis of chronic maxillary sinusitis, a change in healthcare providers, and much medical testing. Specifically, my symptoms started as sharp shooting pains behind my eyes (the symptoms date back to sometime in 2004-2005), and evolved over the past few months into partial vision loss in my left eye during intense physical activity (soccer games, for example). Finally, over the past few days, the vision issues have evolved further to general pandemonium (physical activity or no physical activity) in my left eye. I can see alright, but it looks like someone has been seriously messing with my brightness and contrast knobs.

Of course, nothing is as simple as saying “here’s why you have these issues with your peepers, and here’s what you can do to fix them.” So a day that I envisioned bringing me closure and solutions really just opened a floodgate of new questions. More on that in a later post…

Tattoo
I have known for a couple of weeks that there was a good chance this diagnosis was coming. So I made plans for myself for DxDay (diagnosis day) to keep it fun and exciting. I tried to think of something that I never would have done otherwise… and the obvious answer? Get a freakin’ tattoo. The image I chose was a Dwennimmen, a West African symbol representing strength and humility. Knowing that MS affects everyone differently, I have no idea what to expect—physically, visually, or otherwise. Because physical strength is inextricably woven into the fabric of who I am (I likes to stay active), I wanted to give myself a permanent reminder of how strong I am today, and that I also have the mental and emotional strength to integrate MS into my life—whatever that ends up looking like in the future.

Lunch
For lunch I had a delicious frozen entree (oxymoron?) of Thai Style Chicken & Rice Noodles. Delish.

Meetings
C'mon... really?