Breakfast of Champions

Today's special includes (clockwise from the bottom) a delicious toasted sandwich roll with Laughing Cow light swiss spread, a delicious ripe Clementine, 1,000MG of Methylprednisolone (spread between four 250MG capsules), calcium chew with vitamin D, a multi-vitamin, 400MG of vitamin D, and my daily Copaxone injection. And to wash it all down, a sparkling bottle of pomegranite cherry flavored water (I have been warned that the Methylprednisolone has a rather unpleasant flavor, which may coat the capsules).

Here goes nothin'...

Cheers!

End of the Era of Invincibility

Yup, today was the big day--my first shot of Copaxone. I woke up way too early, made several futile attempts to get some work done before my appointment, and spent the drive from my house in Minneapolis to the Neurology clinic in St. Paul pondering the upcoming appointment. To be perfectly honest, it was a pretty sad car ride. I felt like by treating the MS, I was resigning myself to the disease, no matter how mild the diagnosis. My days of unquestioned and unchallenged invincibility were over. Denial was no longer a viable option. I was accepting the MS--three months after the diagnosis, and more than 4 years after the initial problems began.

I was shaking a little when I met with the Needle Advisor, a wonderful nurse practitioner who was very patient, understanding, and personable. She pulled out some practice materials--syringes filled with water, a "skin simulator" puffy square thing that you can attach to your leg to simulate a real injection, and the autoject injection device. She carefully walked me through the process, with her using the practice materials once, and then me using the practice materials once.

And then it was the moment I had been dreading. I made the decision to administer my first injection into my belly. For some reason it seemed like the easiest spot. I prepped the autoject--loaded the spring, snapped in the syringe, and carefully removed the cap. I placed the tip of the autoject against my stomach. All that was left to do was to push the button that snapped the plunger into action and released the medication.

And then I froze. I couldn't pull the proverbial trigger. I gave myself all sorts of advice--some in my head, and I'm pretty sure some out loud. Finally, after what felt like an hour and a half (which is virtually impossible, since i spent less than an hour in the room), I squeezed my eyes shut and got up the nerve to push the button. With a loud "snap," the needle punctured my skin and the medicine was slowly released into my body.

And then I'm all "That's IT? Damn, I could have done that three months ago!"

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?