munch munch munch

Ok so, I am stressed. Stressed probably does not sum up my current state of being because I must be five stages past stressed, but alas thinking of a term to define that stage is stressful in itself. I had my accounting final this afternoon and it went well. I have my consumer behavior final tomorrow at 10am. 

So I was supposed to have my CB-consumer behavior- final this morning at 8am. I didn't go, I had talked to my professor last week or so about postponing it to the day after. Some of the people I know took this a a cop out I guess, because they gave me crap about not following the "schedule." Well people, if my body followed my schedule I would not have even came across this lil itty bitty thing called MS. Both my professor and myself decided that it was best for me not to stress and having two finals in one day would very well likely put me over the edge. Well, I am sure that's not what happened line by line, but I expressed my concern about being overwhelmed and tired and he agreed. He has always said right along that number one priority is health.

Anyways, I have been studying now all  afternoon and most of the night. I used to be able to read a definition a few times and just know it. My brain and I do not get along, it refuses to play nicely and I find myself reciting definitions till the cows come home, and still I can not seem to recall them five minutes later. Of course, I don't live near the cows, so maybe I just don't know when they are coming home, or maybe they are never coming home...Either way, I am left frustrated about my brains unwillingness to soak up definitions that I need to know. I did bad on my last test which I will give some credit to the fact that I had the flu and my body and mind was not cooperating. Anywho, I will stop blogging for now and return to definitions...but since tomorrow is my last real final, expect some real blog action happening in the near future...

p.s- I forgot to mention the title- crunch crunch crunch. Well, when I am stressed I tend to munch on crunchy food or actually anything that is tasty and digestible...finals week usually results in me gaining five pounds...

welcome to hell. *cough cough* I mean finals week...

Finals week. My least favorite week of the semester. The stress is overwhelming and all I can seem to do is study. I studied for like six hours today. I have a final at 1:20 tomorrow, it is in accounting and it has me stressed. I am not sure if it is the two finals themselves that I have in the next two days or if it is the fact the word "final" has been engrained into my brain to result in fear and absolute terror? Who knows really, but what I do know is that finals test you on way to much. 

( sorry I get off topic here...feel free to sick down two paragraphs to finish the week from hell blog... but the story below is a bit weird too...)

I went to the Roost tonight. It is the place I passed out in last week, but I had a craving for mozzarella sticks so I trucked my way over. When I walked into it, there was just three workers standing and talking,  their backs turned towards me. Well, one of them turned around and as she said "hello" she started to stare. A full on intent, worried stare that actually made me feel very uncomfortable. She then started going on and on about how she was so worried about me and blah blah...well I replied saying that I was fine, but I had no idea who she was. Well apparently she was one of the workers who was there when I passed out and tried to keep me awake... I feel bad because I came off like a jerk, but honestly this woman that I didn't know starts saying all these things about me, well yeah I was going t be a bit freaked out. When I got back to the room I told Steph what had happened and she thought it was funny. I just wonder how many people know...

There was also a email circulated today that I found to be rather amusing. Our school has a team for the upcoming MS walk on Sunday. I found out about this after we had already formed a team of my suite mates. The emails were always vague, such as MS affects so many people each year, but nothing ever about our campus. Well, today the email said how MS affects many people- even this year one of our own students was diagnosed. At first I was a bit surprised, I thought that someone else had been diagnosed. Well then I realised that the person writing the email was my former boss...so basically the one diagnosed was me. I had to stop working because of my flair-ups. Someday I would be very curious as to how many people MS really affects...not the bullshit number of 400,000 each year, because no offense National MS society, I do not believe you. Your numbers have not changed and I am sure they should change. There are more accurate numbers for a vast number of other things, why isn't there for MS?

Anyways back to my finals week from hell blog...

My two suite mates do not have tests tomorrow so their willingness not to be loud has truly shown through. Steph has a big test tomorrow, but instead of quiet, all we hear is laughter and yelling. It is hard to concentrate, and I have given up, I know I will be studying in the morning so I do feel OK about giving it a rest for tonight. However, Steph has more finals than I could imagine and it is weird but my suite mates utter disregard for being quiet leaves me quite upset. It must be the mood or the stress, but I just feel as thought their should be some level of respect. I am quit when they study, I only ask the same for when I study. Seems fair...

I was supposed to have a final tomorrow morning as well at 8am, but I talked with my professor and made some "reasonable accommodations," meaning that he is going to allow me to take it on Thursday because he, like me is afraid that if you stress me out too much there is a great likelihood that I will collapse during one of my tests. I realize that the goals of my professors is not to corner me into the worst possible situations but I always had a hard time that they are really there to help. I always used to view my professors as this forces not to be reckon  with. I was wrong, the past months have shown me that they do care, they are there to help, to listen and to help you succeed. I feel blessed to say that my professors truly care about me.

Last night was the first night that I actually slept amazingly well. I fell asleep to the song 12:59 Lullaby and for some reason that song brings me into this mindset that I just feel at ease in. I am surprised at my own blogs lately, it seems as though taking a few days off has fueled my fire to get back into writing. I noticed that when I neglected blogging I just felt jumpy and my thoughts were off track. When I blog, it gives me a chance to re-visit the days events and make sense out of things that I didn't really have a chance to investigate. I can actually say I enjoy blogging and I enjoy the sense of calm I get after I hit the publish post button. When I press it, it is as if my thoughts and fears go away for awhile, they take a much needed break and I love that feeling.

umm time flew by

Today was my last day of classes. I still have two finals and of course my ambition to study has flown out the window. Tomorrow I have the whole day to study for accounting and then another couple of hours on Wednesday before my test to get some more review in so I am not too worried. Tonight we have Midnight Breakfast, it luckily starts at 11PM, because I don't think I would last much past 12.

Now for my ever so elegant blog...Today there was a high of 86, you know that heat that makes it feel like you are suffocating. Luckily my classes were short so I didn't pass out or anything. Some things I did notice thought with the hotter than hot heat is that by mid afternoon my body definitely wanted to shut down. I came up with this formula during accounting and then simplified it my consumer behavior class: heat + humidity = MS Nightmare

I am rather tired and have chills and my legs kill. So I am just crossing my fingers it is my body just not agreeing with the heat and nothing serious. I need to make it through the next week and then my body can take a break. 

I was trying to think of some super cool topic to talk about so that I don't just ramble, but I guess I will talk about how in life things are thrown at us, and you have to learn to roll with the punches. So obviously I never expected to get diagnosed with MS. I guess no one really assumes they have it until a doctor tells them. Some people I have met talk about how they had a inclination that they had MS before they were truly diagnosed, but I know for me, I was in utter and complete shock.

I will never forget the day in my hospital room, mid afternoon, with two neurologists confirming what I had been told in the ER that I did in fact truly have MS. From their everything really was a blur, apparently my parents and doctors decided that it was best to drug me. They pumped my views full of Ativan to treat the anxiety, well it treated more than anxiety. I was a happy camper and was so out of it. I found everything to be funny and to be amusing. I never really had to deal with the fact that I was just diagnosed with this life changing thing.

The three weeks where I was out of the hospital and the in between time between flair-ups I was left to think and to become completely depressed in my dorm. It was a awful feeling to be dumped back at school, not knowing what your body is going to do next and not knowing what MS really was. During my second flair-up and my two and a half week hospital stay I guess I became more aware of what was going on. While I had my ups and downs, I realised that the more downs I had the better.

I am not going to lie, having four rounds of plasmapheresis, two which were back to back, knocked my down father than I ever though possible. I guess it should, because technically it is kinda a weird procedure. 

"Plasmapheresis is a process in which the fluid part of the blood, called plasma, is removed from blood cells by a device known as a cell separator. The separator works either by spinning the blood at high speed to separate the cells from the fluid or by passing the blood through a membrane with pores so small that only the fluid part of the blood can pass through. The cells are returned to the person undergoing treatment, while the plasma, which contains the antibodies, is discarded and replaced with other fluids. "

But yeah I will never forgot those treatments. After the first one, I felt like someone just beat me up but I told myself, it cant get any worse. I guess some people react poorly...i.e- me. Then I had the second treatment the next day, my doctors were trying hard to  get me in fast because my relapse was so bad. I remember that afternoon was a nightmare, that night I could barley get out of bed, I couldn't lift my fork. My doctors played with all the levels of stuff like calcium, potassium...ect in my body, but the next day I woke up in horrible shape. I could barely get out of bed. My doctors gave me like 4 days to recover from that, and then I started to get bad spasms... I was plagued by them for the longest time and really the whole ordeal was a mess. The plasma people didn't want to do anything cause they thought they were causing my spasms...but they were not, my body just felt like attacking itself a bit more. 

So yeah I had some rough days...fears of what was happening, what would happen next, the future is scary.  Unpredictability is scary. The future is scary. The bad part is that you have to learn to accept and deal with what life gives you. You can choose to live in some fairytale where happiness can be faked or you can choose to deal with anything that life throws at you.

I know that if I can deal with my whole hospital ordeal, I can definitely deal with anything life decides to throw at me. Gathering up strength from past experiences can definitely help you conquer things that you once thought were impossible. 

And that is enough blog for tonight...we are heading over to the breakfast soon but I will leave you with some song lyrics. The band is Bedouin Soundclash and the song is 12:59 Lullaby. 

 it's silent in the early morning the only sound is my breathing 

as i lay awake not knowing where it will be i'm going. 

but i know, time moves slow at 12:59, i sing lullaby 

and if you want me to sing you a song, i know that theres a 12:59 lullaby tonight. 

(Hoy es domingo) (Today is Sunday)

So today was a boring Sunday, which was great, I needed it. Slept in a bit, did nothing all morning and headed to my roommates home town for her brothers Boy Scouts Spaghetti Dinner. It was fun, ate some good food and hung out with her family- all of whom are awesome. We then drove to her house and hung out there, messed around on the Wii and just relaxed. 

I realize that I go through periods of time lately where my emotions are very much like a rollercosters path. They go up and down and around and back again. I wake up in the morning and I experience one out of the following three emotions- thrilled - depressed - numb. Thrilled- like I woke up this morning, so excited for the day, ready and willing to conquer the world. Depressed- I wake up many mornings just with a uneagerness to start the day, its those days that I would rather not ever get out of bed...I guess if you are curious as to what it feels like, I can describe it as the feeling you get when you wake up and its raining and dark and gloomy outside- all you want to do is curl up in bed and watch a movie. Lastly- numb - these mornings I just wake up, no emotion...just get out of bed, put on sweats and head to class or stare at my computer. 

It is weird because this morning I was thrilled to get up, feel so alive. It is funny because on the ride back to school with Steph, she mentioned the fact that when I am so excited in the morning that it rubs off on her...I mean that is kinda cool...my positive energy can be passed on a bit to someone else...I guess it is kinda contagious. Though I worry that when I wake numb or depressed does that rub off on other people. I guess I would rather pass along the happiness rather than be a downer in someone else's day. 

I realize that I sometimes control my moods, I let things get me down and I try to remind myself how lucky I am that I am not in worse shape...things could always be worse kinda attitude. However I find myself responding to my own - things could be worse - mantra with something like - yeah but come on other people can find a cure. Yes, I know that is horrible but I do know that I am not the only person who considers that thought. Its not that I would rather take some other sickness for the chance to be cured but some days I just give up. 

Another point that my roommate brought up was the fact that when I have no plans for the day, or no classes, I tend to be the most miserable. Her and I were talking it over and I came up with the justification that when I don not have any plans, I have nothing to think about- or nothing to distract myself with- and that leaves my mind to wander- and not wander to the positives in my life, but it wanders to ever dark, negative thought that is someone in the spotted area that doctors call my brain. 

I think alot, probably more than I should but never-the-less I do and it often leads towards a negative place. However, sometimes, once in a great moon, I figure out something about myself that I didn't realize. It never dawned on me how upset I get when I go to sleep. I work myself up when I go to sleep...its bad because my roommate is asleep as soon as she hits the pillow and I lie awake for a good 1-2 hours after either staring at the ceiling, watching tv or listening to music, all awhile thoughts race through my head.

I hate unpredictability. The reason why I dont want to go to sleep is not because I am afraid of the upcoming day- I know I can deal with it all...but I worry that I will wake up and not have feeling throughout my body, wake up with no ability to talk, wake up unable to walk, wake up unable to _(fill in the blank)_ my worries are endless. The weird thing is that I am 20 and I feel like I worry more than my grandparents or my parents. I worry about my body failing me. That worry consumes my thoughts at night because unlike during the day when I can push it out and away, at night everything I pushed away resurfaces stronger and more intense. At night my day catches up with me and I tend to joke with people that I will most likely end up a insomniac or addicted to sleeping pills because when I sleep my mind is quieted. People just think I cant sleep because it is MS related. Its funny how people can blame everything on MS. The other day I was complaining that my hip hurt- I dislocated it once during my many years of soccer and it has yet to be fixed- I even put off my surgery to fix it last December because of the whole MS flare up- but as I was complaining to a suite mate she said, "oh it must be your MS." 

Maybe people don't know alot about MS, but I guess I can only blame so much on MS. I mean previous soccer injuries I will not blame on MS, but I will blame my poor coordination and balance on MS. There is a fine line of what I can blame and what I cant blame.

I was just in the laundry room with my roommate and I was walking around barefoot. Last year I would never, ever walk around barefoot anywhere.. I wouldn't even get off my bed without at least socks, but as I danced around the laundry room Steph said "I would never imagine you doing this..." I was too busy laughing but she in all seriousness said that my personality before everything happened would never allow me to a) dance in any public place or b) walk around barefoot...I guess things change- and I guess that I don't care about alot of things I used to be so concerned over. 

Well, this may be the longest blog, my fingers are tired and I have been typing for a while. Guess its time to end for a while...