I Am a Doofus

A big, clumsy doofus.

All day yesterday I was having a pretty bad MS day. Muscle
spasms & aches, trigeminal neuralgia acting up, terrible fatigue, the whole works. I was taking it in stride, however; since my pregnancy with Eden, such days are few and far between.

And then I had another Giant Clumsy MS Moment.

For those of you who don't know what a Giant Clumsy MS
Moment is, let me enlighten you....

These are moments when, due to one symptom or another, I actually end up rendering physical harm unto myself. For
example, when I was tending bar years ago and, when reaching
for a bottle of Full Sail Amber Ale that had rolled under the backroom fridge, most of my right side turned to Jell-O out of nowhere, causing me to collapse and dislocate my thumb. Or the time I was reaching for a can of tomato juice from a top shelf in my kitchen and dropped the huge thing right on my hand...breaking a bone. Or the time I was on an Amtrack train and had a horrible muscle spasm in my leg whilst walking to the bathroom...causing me to ram my foot
into a wall and severely stub my big toe and break two of the little ones. Those are just a few examples...the less embarassing ones. Hey, I may be a clutz...but I still have my pride...

Now, on to last night's Giant Clumsy MS Moment...

The very-grouchy baby (who did NOT want to go night-night and
made sure everyone in the house knew it) was finally asleep. The
two older kids had cleaned up the arts & crafts mess and were snug in bed. Jonathan and I decided to kick back, have a glass of wine and put in the DVD of "King of the Hill," Season Four. All was going well until I realized it was time to take my evening meds...and I hadn't yet eaten that day (some of my pills simply canNOT be taken on an empty stomach, which I have learned the hard way).

And so, I went into the kitchen to make a nice bowl of soup. I popped it into the microwave, waited two minutes, took it out and proceeded to carry it the two feet to the kitchen table.

And then...SNAP! My leg turned into rubber, and BOOM! I began to falter...

...then WHAMMO! My left hand broke the soup's fall.

Most of my hand is now swollen, red and blistering. The pain is UNREAL. Nothing I have done in the five hours since the Giant Clumsy MS Moment has curtailled the agony: not soaking my hand in cold water, not soaking it in milk, not applying a cold compress, not prescription pain meds, not topical lidocaine...nothing. The only thing that has even moderately been helpful has been wrapping my hand in wet, fresh-from-the-freezer washcloths. And that only works so long as the washcloth is freezing cold. I mean, at temperatures that would make a polar bear put on a sweater. I am basically using two of them: one in the freezer getting cold, and the other on my hand warming up. I switch them out every 15 minutes or so. Big fun.

I have tried to sleep, but it simply can't be done. So here I am, typing with one hand (this post has taken a silly long time to be typed up as a result) and having another glass of wine in the slim hopes that it will help...and if not, well, it's still pretty damned good wine. And it's been a LONG time since I've had wine, much less good wine. And dammit, after all this, I freaking deserve it.

Out of all the symptoms and general crap associated with this disease...the Giant Clumsy MS Moments are---for me, at
least---the most aggrivating and infuriating. They come out of nowhere---no amount of "being careful" can prevent them. Sometimes, they happen in public...which makes you look like either a drunk, or an idiot (or worse, both). Often, they have impeccable bad timing, happening right at a time when you really can't afford to cope with a badly-sprained ankle or broken wrist. Doctors (especially ER doctors) often think you've either taken too many painkillers (prescription or otherwise) or that your significant other is abusing you...both of which are pretty offensive assumptions when you get right down to it (and yes, I know that domestic violence is very real and doctors need to be proactive to protect the victims, and that drug/alcohol addiction is likewise very serious and doctors need to be proactive there as well...but come on, man. When you have a disease like MS, Giant Clumsy Moments are just that: Giant Clumsy Moments. Don't add insult to injury).

Giant Clumsy MS Moments also have a way of making you feel like a huge doofus. I mean, for the love of Pete...I couldn't carry a bowl of soup from the microwave to the table without getting second-degree burns!

I am a doofus with a burned hand wrapped up in a washcloth with two parrots doing the hula on it. But hey, every cloud has a silver lining...

...after all, the next time my mother-in-law insists that all I need to "cure" my MS symptoms is a good bowl of chicken soup, because it "cures everything," I can tell her that it most certainly does not...

Cluck, cluck.