Thursday, July 30, 2009

How do you tell a toddler you have MS?


Well I don't have the answer to this yet.....


When I first got the news I had MS I started crying, my son Korvin comes up to me and asks "Mommy what's wrong"

I said "mommy's upset"

he replies "Are you upset with Korvin?"

I say "no, honey"

he asks "Are you upset with the babies?"

I reply "no, honey"

he continues....."are you upset with Daddy?"

and once again I say"no honey"

Then finally he asks "Are you upset with yourself?"

I say "I guess I am"


That conversation with Korvin really made me realize that there was no one to be mad at and I needed to take control of how I see my illness and I do have the power to turn my attitude around.


It was a genuine conversation but he is still too little for the facts to "stick" all the time and he has made it clear in his peak of madness that there's no MS card for mom to play, he's still a toddler and I'm the mom.

Wednesday, July 29, 2009

Not as graceful as I use to be :P


Another common symptom for me is I am off balance.....sometimes I feel that its very obvious and wonder if I just look tipsy/drunk when I'm out walking with my boys but little do onlookers know...this mom isn't gonna wake up with a hangover its just MS LOL. That feeling is one of my "new normals" that I am getting use to, my mind is completely there and not spacey unlike someone who might actually be drunk, sorry I love that comparison, it cracks me up :)
Also before I knew it was MS I'd sometimes get dizzy when doing my pilates, that really bugged me because I really enjoyed doing them and it brought me comfort but I didn't know what was going on; I didn't know if maybe I was about to pass out, so I started not exercising as much. Its a lot more reassuring now cause I DO know what I have and whats going on with me. I am able to continue doing what I do and I just take my time now and I'm more aware of my body. My pilates will continue because I have done research that yoga and pilates are GREAT for MS, its very important to keep exercising and those types of exercises keep the mind and body in check and the controlled stretches are great for muscles; some people even keep their symptom at bay with pilates and yoga.

Tuesday, July 28, 2009

my plan and diet changes

Now I plan to hit this at multiple angles (there's that mulitples word again LOL) I feel that successful managment of my MS will come from a good balence of a healthy lifestyle and medicine. I'm not taking any medicine as of yet because it has yet to be determined what the best would be for my situation AND breastfeeding would need to be considered as well for Blake and Barrett (it would have to be safe for my babies too :)

I have done TONS of research on natural approaches to managing MS and alot of people make very big and strict diet changes. Now the connection of "you are what you eat" makes a lot of sense to me, I've always been a very healthy eater but I do have a sweet tooth because of my passion for baking. So I've started experimenting on what I eat to see what may causes my MS to flare up and what diet makes me feel the best; right now I am cutting out dairy because of reading some interesting research connecting dairy products to MS. Now that may not be for everybody that has MS because the illness is very complex and everyone has different cases. So far I am thinking my recent diet change is doing me some good, I am also trying to eat as basic and natural as I can, who says you need to add a bunch of stuff to your fruits and veggies....call it going back to a stone age style diet :)

NOW this doesn't mean I'm gonna stop baking, I am just going to be creative and lean to the healthier side. I am determined to make a good cheesecake that I can still enjoy.

The begining...

Is it really the begining who knows? Yes I was recently diagnosed but who knows how long I've actually had it, I can recall before my first pregnancy having tingling in my finger tips but that went away and they say that MS goes into remission often durring pregnancy and well I've had my fair share of that cause when my 1st son was just over 1yr we became pregnant with twins.

What led to me digging deeper was random symptoms that I was experiencing. For awhile I was feeling numb and tingling on the bottoms of my feet, which led me to a chiropractor who showed me I was EXTREMELY out of allignment...OK I can deal with that and it made lots of sense to me cause durring motherhood, I beat my body up pretty bad. After a few adjustments my feet were doing great BUT then along came the tingling sensation in my mouth which then spread to the lower left portion of my face; was this the reaction from the rest of my body being realligned? The adjustments continued and they did nothing for my new problems so back to my Dr I went for more blood tests to see if something more serious was going on. The blood tests all came back normal BUT I was feeling far from normal. I had an MRI done and you can figure out the conclusion of that.

Now I know that MS is serious and you may think I sound like it hasn't hit me, but it has, I've done my crying and now I'm moving on. What good is it going to do me to stay in a "the glass is half empty" state, that would do more bad than anything.