My New MS Doc & How I Accidentally Wrung the Neck Of A Trainer At Synaptic
While MS isn’t contagious, it can certainly affect others around me. Whoops.
Someone who watched my Instagram Story yesterday sent me a message, asking “What happened, it sounds like you beat up on a physiotherapist?”
Correct, but hear me out…
I am exhausted, as I might have complained about a time or six before. My brain doesn’t communicate well with my body when I’m tired. It was also really warm in clinic today, and my brain doesn’t communicate well with my body if there’s swings of temperature. If I’m in a warm environment, I get really stumbly and uncoordinated. If I’m cold, I get very stiff and jerky.
Good times.
So at the end of my session, fatigue reared its ugly head and you guessed it. My brain doesn’t communicate well with my body if I’m fatigued.
Basically, I’m now a delicate hothouse flower that needs a precise set of perfect conditions in which to function optimally. I’m like that diva that wants room temperature Evian and green M&Ms in my dressing room or I’m not singing.
Now you have some context: tired, hot, fatigued. Moon maybe in the seventh house.
It was a perfect storm of MS mess.
So sometimes, in a perfect storm, my left foot just flips over. It rolls to the outside and mayhem ensues. I can often catch myself, but today I tried to catch myself by grabbing the new trainer’s throat. (We shall call him New Eric. There’s already an Eric trainer at Synaptic whom I’ve dubbed ‘Eric with the great hair.’)
Grabbing New Eric by the throat was aggressive and uncalled for. He seemed like a very nice young man. I don’t know what it says about my psyche that I started to fall over and my reflexive action was to grab this poor guy’s neck.
I was standing there talking, and then I was falling. So New Eric tried to save me, which I really appreciated. In gratitude, I grab his trachea? When I realized what I’d done, I immediately let go, saying how sorry I was. As I kept falling.
I thought I’d caught myself at one point, but I over-corrected in my panic and I was still falling. I may actually have spun around on one foot at one point like some Bugs Bunny cartoon.
If you’re thinking that this was the longest fall in the world, you are correct. When I fall over, it’s much like felling a giant tree. It doesn’t happen quickly.
When you’re falling, occasionally you’ll reach a point where all is lost.
You’re falling, you’re going to end up on the ground, and there’s no saving yourself. At that point you should switch your focus from trying not to fall, to falling with mitigated damages.
New Eric, bless him, kept trying to save me despite the fact that I’d just tried to kill him on his very first day because it looked like I was going to strike my head on the bottom of a weight-bench.
I finally completed the falling process without striking my head. (Tucking your chin to your chest is key. That way, when you land you roll onto your upper back/shoulders without striking your occipital melon.) I ended up on the floor laughing hysterically because at that point, what else could I do? I’d grabbed a new trainer by the neck and then took three hours to fall down.
It felt like the entire clinic had screeched to a halt. Jill was laughing so hard she was crying, and I think Eric was laughing too but that might have been a trauma response.
Sorry, New Eric. Up until that point, I’d only threatened violence but didn’t actually have any plans to follow through. I swear it wasn’t you.
After the clinic debacle, I had an appointment with my neurologist, whom I’ve never spoken to before. We’ll call him Dr F, different from Dr Feel Good.
I really like him. Good sense of humour, straight-forward, actually listened as to why I didn’t want to go on immune-suppressing medications. First, I said I didn’t have $28,000 a year. The last year and a half has been a splendid mess.
He asked if I would be open to taking medications if money wasn’t an issue, if he could find someway to dramatically reduce the cost.
I said I’m open to medications, but the other concern is my husband is a two full-time job working front-line Paramedic during a pandemic so neither of us really love the idea of suppressing my immune system.
Lo and behold….
He said he could understand that, so he suggested a medication that costs less than a dollar a day that doesn’t suppress my immune system. It tinkers with the gut biome and is anti-inflammatory, neuroprotective, been around for decades, is quite safe, would give me great skin, AND clear up any syphilis or gonorrhea I might have.
I said, “I’m listening.”
He explained there’s an antibiotic that’s been used for decades for acne, respiratory infections, STDs, and other assorted infections but it’s been studied for MS too and it reduces the incidence of relapses. It has the added benefit of not causing antibiotic resistance, so I’m not going to breed any super bugs or die of MRSA if I’m exposed to it.
The only major caveat is it’ll cause damage to a baby if I get pregnant. Since I have zero plans for that to happen, we’re good to go! (I’m at that awkward stage; too old for babies but young enough I’m still theoretically fertile. Ugh.)
He said he’ll phone in a prescription to my pharmacy. All I have to do is go pick it up.
I like to think he hung up the phone and smugly told the other people I spoke to many, many times that he got me on meds after ten minutes, what’s their problem? (You can read about my previous experience with other healthcare folks here.)
His approach worked with me because when I told him my concerns, especially the suppressing of my immune system during a pandemic with a front-line worker spouse, he didn’t try to tell me there was nothing to be concerned about. Instead, he suggested a medication that isn’t a ‘big gun’ MS medication, but it’s affordable given my current financial challenges, and non-immunosuppressing. Sold!
I’ve had no new symptoms since my flare-up last year, but if I develop any new symptoms of course we’ll need to have a conversation about ‘bigger’ MS drugs but for now we’re good to take this antibiotic, get another MRI in the spring, and see where my disease is at then.
The other thing I liked about him was that he wasn’t all gloom and doom. He said the difficult part about MS is there’s just no way to know. I could have another relapse in two months, two years, ten years, or maybe even never. The problem is, if I have another relapse, I might not recover as well.
Those are all fair and accurate statements but it was nice to hear that delivery instead of, if you don’t take these very expensive medications you’re going to wake up blind one day. I know MS is unpredictable and everyone experiences it differently so I place more faith in the medical professionals who say they don’t know or they can’t be sure, but give me all the best options they know of.
I’m so happy there’s someone at the MS clinic that doesn’t make me want to run screaming off a cliff in frustration, and it seems like I’m going to be allowed back at the neuro rehab clinic despite wreaking havoc and mayhem on Friday so there’s much relief on both fronts.
When I return to clinic, I swear I’m going to keep my hands to myself.
