Multiple Sclerosis... You are one weird disease

Multiple Sclerosis is not always painful and debilitating. For me, the majority of the time it is just... weird.

Before I was officially diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis I would wake up in the middle of the night not being able to breathe. Every time I tried to inhale, my the muscles would turn into rubber bands tightening around my lungs. Again and again, I could feel my lungs pushing themselves futilely against the brick wall that was my chest, never being able to get large enough to properly inhale. I am just glad that I am the type of person who does not panic when I wake up not being able to breathe. But I am the type of person that freaks the hell out,and then convinces herself, and attempts to convince her husband, that she only has six months to live... at 4AM...

Not only did I have COPD, I had COPD coupled with complete congestive heart failure. Diagnosis: Imminent Death. COPD explained the inability to breathe and the heart failure was diagnosed as breathing was made more difficult when I was laying flat. Of course: This diagnosis was brought to you by the expert medical opinion of the database search engine of WebMD. WebMD really should be blocked to all users after midnight. Anyone who is accessing that webpage at 2AM is not a sane user and a message should just pop up telling them that the only thing wrong with them is that they are not asleep.

I now know that I have a lesion in the dead center of my upper back. I do not know if this lesion is the exact cause of this tightness, I just know that this lesion cannot be helping. This condition is common in with people who have MS; and is referred to in the MS Community the MS Hug. I am so special that even my disease wants to hug me... yay...

I can handle the occasional chest tightening episodes. I have some pretty killer muscle relaxers that can nip that in the bud very quickly. And as long as I am not operating heavy machinery or being asked complex questions like, "Why is the milk in the cabinet?" I am only a drain on my lovely husband and not on society. (In case you are wondering my answer was, "If you can think of a better place to put it... Go for it..." but that was on a day that included both muscle relaxers and pain killers.) It is the weird tricks that a slightly damaged mind plays on you that makes this disease a constant presence in your life.

Here are some of my favorites:

-Pins and Needles/Numbness just on the bottom of my feet. When I have the numbness, I feel like I am trying to walk in the middle of a giant bouncy castle. If it is really bad, then it is a bouncy castle being used by small children all hyped up on pixie sticks. And if I am really lucky it is accompanied by a strong episode of pins and needles. So in a bouncy castle on two feet that are in a a perpetual state of waking up from being asleep... Does that spell party to anyone else?

-Electric shock that ends with a twitch. The weirdest part of this is feeling the shock and having to wait for the twitch. The twitch does not always happen right away. You know it is coming... you just don't ever know when...but it is coming...

-Imaginary Old Man Pants. By far this is the weirdest thing that is going on in my holey mind. I first noticed this a couple of months ago. I was laying in bed, reading, and by reading I mean watching TV, and it felt like my pants had ridden to high up on my waist. I only noticed this because I loathe the feeling, and I mean loathe the feeling, of anything bunched up around my waist. But when I went to adjust them, but there was nothing there. I was still feeling the old man pants, but I was not seeing them. I am fortunate that this feeling comes and goes and I am not in a perpetual state of wearing old man pants. Because that would be really annoying...

This hugging disease has me twitching, stuck in a bouncy castle wearing a pair of old man pants. And I am left trying to figure out whether it is God or this disease that has the sense of humor; all the while knowing that the important thing is that I keep mine.