Orange Story: The Last of the Medicine

I made it through my first full day of school on Friday.  I was diagnosed with MS on Monday and had gone home early each day since then.  I was beginning to feel tired at lunch, but food and rest gave me enough energy to finish the day.  It felt good to finish a day even if it beat me up a bit.

I had my last dose of steroids.  The cold saline I have to inject first gave me terrible chills.  Once the saline is complete, the medicine begins.  I spent time warming up the medicine so it isn't as cold.  The last 45 minutes of it were painful.  I felt like my veins were already worn out and agitated.  I had to finish with one more dose of saline, which was the most painful. It brought tears to my eyes.  Nothing could relieve the pain until it was over.

We carefully unstuck the tape surrounding the IV and my husband pulled it out without me feeling a thing.  I was worried about pulling the IV out, it turned out to be the easy part.  The relief in having a permanent tube, always waiting for more medicine, out of my arm was wonderful.  It still hurt, but I knew the pain would eventually subside.  It has been over 2 years since the IV was in my arm for those 3 days.  Sometimes, I will randomly have a bruise show up where it was located.  It is a reminder of what was and, I am thankful, is no more.

At this point, after all the medicine and the time to heal, I still had limited mobility.  I could almost guarantee anything held in my left hand would fall.  I was trying to move it and use it, but I didn't know if all the movement in the world would help until my brain released it.  I felt like my brain had decided to ignore my left arm and focus its attention elsewhere.  Until my brain decided that it would talk to my arm again, I would forever be dropping things and running into things.

I celebrated the freedom from the IV with some chocolate ice cream.  I slept a full 7 hours without waking and worrying about my arm.

Today, it is unnoticeable.  I know I'm a little slower and a little weaker on that side, but no one else would notice unless they were looking closely.  Either the inflammation around my nerves went down so that my brain and my arm could communicate again or my brain found a new way to communicate with my arm.  Either way, I am much improved from those days.