On this fine day.....

I got out of bed this morning at about 6:00. Prior to getting the required eight hours of sleep that MS demands that I have before I start my day. When you're dealing with symptoms like mine which are for the most part: tremors (specifically rapidly shaking hands); numbness (of hands, legs, feet, and right arm of which I’m sure the left will follow suite soon enough). Of course, there are a plethora of visual problems ranging from a lack of depth perception, whited out portions of my field of vision which is similar to looking through a piece of Swiss cheese and finally, my eyes are shaking up and down and from side to side as my brain instructs them to look for the clearest view through that so-called Swiss cheese. Because I have such a considerate brain the view of my world is like that of an individual living inside a snow globe in the hands of a child that can't sit still. How important is it to get those eight hours of sleep you ask? Well, let me tell you how my day went.

First I had to adjust my Sleep Number bed from 35 to 95. Ninety-five being very firm which is necessary for someone with MS to ensure that one can sit up and slide on to the side of the bed. A soft mattress just means that as I attempt to sit up I will just fall backwards unable to support my torso and my legs and torso lockout straight. The tone and spasticity only becoming greater with each attempt to sit up, of course it's morning so I have to urinate and the more I flop around on the bed like a flounder the more urgent that need becomes. And we all know that as the situation becomes more dire it becomes more stressful resulting in greater tone in my legs. I manage to get into my motorized chair, my "POWER" chair Uurgh, Uurgh!. Sounds masculine doesn’t it? Well, I’m about to be emasculated. I shoot into my beautifully renovated handicapped accessible bathroom in my power chair with my legs locked straight out. At this point my legs could best be used to stake tomatoes, not get onto the toilet, which I need to do right NOW! Utilizing a jungle gym of grab bars I managed to sit myself onto the toilet with my legs locked tightly together straight out in front of me, toes pointing at the ceiling. A position not conducive for a guy to empty his bladder, what to do, what to do. Time has pretty much run out. We’re down to the buzzer as they say. So I grab a towel that just happens to be hanging from one of the grab bars and throw it on my lap. Sometimes you just got to do what you got to do.Time for a shower.
Most mornings showering is not an issue. Today however, no such luck. I have grab bars on all sides of the shower, which is wheelchair accessible if I someday progressed to the point where wheeling into the shower was necessary. At the present time I have a shower seat if my legs become weak. So I stand up from my wheelchair and step into the shower and the games begin. As I grab the bars for support, like dominoes the bottles of conditioner fall into the bottles of shampoo, which knock over the bottle of body cleanser The entire time I’m like a spasming clown trying to juggle all these bottles before they hit the shower floor. I should have just started by throwing everything in the bathroom on the shower floor, which is where I eventually ended up anyway. Yeah,. My legs just buckled and gravity took over from there. So I am lying on the floor of the shower and I figure as long as I’m already here with the soap and shampoo bottles all around me on the floor, I’ll just lather up . At this point I am safe from the earths gravitational pull.. This worked out great until it was time to get up. Getting up from the floor is tough enough, throw soap and shampoo into the mix and you have an X-rated episode of the Dick Vandyke show. Oh Roooob!

Now it’s lunchtime I choose to make a simple peanut butter and fluff sandwich. This will be easy because I don’t have to cook or stand and prepare anything. My plan was to sit at the dining room table which is off the kitchen overlooking the gardens. This is going to be relaxing and delicious. I lay out four slices of bread on the table and begin by spreading the peanut butter on two of the slices. Even with my numb hands that was pretty easy. I only dropped the knife twice. Once onto the table and once onto the floor which required that I get another knife free of peanut butter and cat hair from the kitchen. Now spreading the marshmellow fluff turned out to be a bit of struggle. When your hands are numb holding on to the knife while trying to spread the sticky fluff, believe it or not can be quite a workout. Dropped the knife several times as the bread got torn apart by the sticky fluff, but I was getting close. It was almost time, all I had to do now was put the slices together. So I stood at the end of the table, taking a slice of bread spread with peanut butter in my left-hand and another slice with fluff in my right. Somehow when I went to put the slices together my hands did not come together and the two slices of bread never met one another. The result? You guessed it. Both slices the one with peanut butter and the other with marshmallow fluff were facedown on the cat-hair covered carpet. It took more than an hour to clean up the mess and I never eat lunch. What a day! I had to laugh, otherwise I would’ve been crying, smile.

Has anyone out there ever had a day like this one?