Spirits are down tonight...

I seem to be having an emotional and physically not too good day.
Let's face it I awoke with stiffer arms and legs than usual.
Even with my usual movements that have helped in the past, today they did not seem to do that for me this time.
Although, I take nearly half my old dosage of the Baclofen still, at 40 MG. daily; when originally months ago it was 70 MG. and although back on the Gabapentin it too is less but back up to 1200 MG., it had been at 1800 MG. prior to my first time weaning myself off last winter.
I am beginning to wonder if I had made a mistake, with weaning then completely and then going back and weaning again and having to go back, twice prescribed by my old neuro, but this last going back was  my own decision, albeit approved by this new neuro when told my reasoning and the fact that I had not been told to wean myself off again, actually both times were my idea, not the doctor's.

Sometimes we make mistakes, and all I am asking for is guidance from someone I respect that is more knowledgeable than myself.  So I hope this new neuro who has been in practice nearly forty years will be able to help me figure it all out...even my fingers are double hitting this keyboard without me making that decision, it is scary uncontrollable when it happens daily, when I am overtired I think

This will be done shortly, due to how I am feeling, and that is poorly.
I am writing from bed now and even while here it is not too comfortable, with my laptop on my chest.

Moving on...

The opening of the 9/11 Museum was today and was a sad remembrance of that horrific devastation of so many lives lost. We had indirectly known people lost at all three crash sites and perhaps that may have added to my personal sadness of frustration of this disease and it being affected by the slightest thing, such as weather changes outside... as well as major sad historical events.

I am a wimp!
On that note of trying to find some hope, allow me to be the very first to wish all of you a very happy good night and may I ask you to kindly count all your blessings and share all your overages and we will too!

And next time please be here or be square, ya hear?

A full moon means...?

YES! It means half price Jersey style 18 "thin crust coal fired pizzas from our Jersey Guy, from Toms River NJ, now right here in Port Charlotte the owner of  Bocca Lupo and two other different types of restaurants! Hubby went on the run for our half priced ones, $7.50 each, due to a full moon tonight, that means two, one for us to eat tonight and whatever is leftover goes into the fridge for lunch and the other is separated and put into freezer containers to be accessed when we feel the desire for such a treat!
Sometimes we might forget, but not often!

Moving on...

I will be going in to see my new neuro for a plan of attack on how to handle my MS and an in depth explanation of my test results next week. My preliminary results were given to me without all the results back, but it does appear my brain MS lesions are stable, great, and my thoracic and lumbar showed my arthritis, even though my blood work was back she, the person who called me back, Cheryl, was unable to tell me for some reason those results; all info told was rather vague. The cervical report was being sent to them later today, and so by next week I guess I will be better informed.
All I know is this medication for pain, the Gabapentin at 1200 MG. and my Baclofen 40 MG. seems 
to be working less and less, and I hate having to take any of it! What might be next?
Well, at least I don't seem to be having an exacerbation of the MS, which would call for more IV Solu Medrol (steroid) at 1000 M.G. for days and at an additional 15-20 lbs. added to my body!
At least this doc got that; he mentioned the weight gain from the IV steroids before he ordered all my tests! I have been on those IV's five times, you do the math; pounds wise, not counting all those lbs. from quitting the cigs in July of 2006 too, thus my grandeur of size!

Any-who, at least I have some idea with what is going on, but still no resolve...
MS is so bizarre that unless you actually have it it is difficult to understand all the crazy daily symptoms from the parathesia to spasms to pain to falling, dropping things you are sure you have... and on and on with exhaustion, memory of words gone and frustration due to it all...and these are daily, not an exacerbation just a so-called 'normal' day with Multiple Sclerosis; welcome to my world!

Sadly, I was hoping they would find with the higher tesla of 3 MRI machine that my ole neuro had misdiagnosed the MS too and that it wasn't there, but alas it is, like she had done with my "dead optic nerve", causing the blindness in my right eye and that she kept saying that the cataract was not worth fixing due to that and that was NOT true! We would have had a heck of a case if she misdiagnosed the MS too! Since she was at least the one who did start me on the Copaxone back in 2010 and if nothing else she could be responsible for it being stable due to that, oh well... that was a very good thing; but my sight was important too and she goofed there!
And so did the other eye docs not checking my MRI's like Dr. Klein was willing to do and using a simple flashlight to check if anything was there with my pupil dilating and contracting.

On that note of trying to cope, allow me to be the very first to wish all of you a very happy good night and ask you kindly to count those blessings and share those overages and we will too!

And next time please be here or be square, ya hear? 

White rice pasta and scallops...

Got to go out today again!
This time with Hubby to the  grocery.
Dinner for tonight is my title.
Never had Asian white rice pasta before, I suppose it will be a bit of an adventure; it takes longer to cook at 17 minutes.
Even after it was done for the prescribed amount of time it was still al dente.
The scallops are sold behind the fishmonger's counter, in shells, breaded like the stuffed clams, but even so at a dollar a shell they are a bargain these days with all other fish at very high prices, although the Tilapia was priced very nicely at $6.99 a pound. Would you believe medium white shrimp was on sale for $7.99 a pound?
I can remember, a time, not that long ago, when jumbos were that price!

Wish I was well enough to go out in our boat and go get them.
We used to get all sorts of fish and blue claw crabs, you name it, swim a little, shell a little on the beaches down in the islands; lunch along the way...oh what fun we had...

Dinner tonight was fine, not great, we had picked up lunch at Subway, me seafood salad over a spinach salad with every veggie and pepper they have no dressing (I make my own with balsamic and extra virgin olive oil, a touch of honey and garlic, here, at home), and Hubby had a meatball sandwich.

We spent again $175 at the grocery and it looks like very little, this is at least three times a month at that amount, for two people, who eat out, often! Hubby just said he wonders how young couples can make it? PS no wine anymore for weeks for Hubby and me months with all  my meds and my taste for it has gotten sour, but the same amount of fruits and vegetables fresh and frozen! It had to be due to my Nova and herring desire... but not that often, really!
Quite a bit of those veggies and fruits fresh and frozen too and can goods now too, due to it getting closer to hurricane season in about two weeks, on June first,and it lasts till November 30th!

On that note of our addition to the my diary, allow me to be the very first to wish all of you a very happy good  night and may I ask you to kindly count all your blessings and share those overages and we will too!

And next time please be here or be square, ya hear?

Dallas Buyers Club

TV trays stationed appropriately as little soldiers with our chosen dinners of pizza with peperoni and Greek salad, and one lone calzone all from what Hubby had picked up from our favorite coal fired pizza place sans the full moon, Bocca Lupo!
Our lunch had been very tasty too at the Fish Market Restaurant at Fishville. I had had the Mother's Day special of rainbow trout healthy broiled, four ounce, with rice pilaf and cole slaw, unsweet iced tea with  extra lemons, Number One's gal had fried cod and mashed potatoes and cole slaw too with a Coke. Number One Son had fried cod sandwich with lettuce and tomato and fried onion rings and a Coke. Hubby had a seafood casserole, cole slaw and fried onion rings with a coffee back with sugar.

So two slices of the medium pie with peperoni and my club soda while watching that award winning movie was not too shabby or foolish an idea and we all had fun in spite of the movie's extremely serious content about the beginnings of the treatment mal and good of AIDS. Matthew McConaghey lost around fifty to play the gritty character of Ron Woodruff an electrician/rodeo rider, after being a straight guy diagnosed with AIDS he is treated with a preferred drug of the time AZT and told he has 30 days to live. Through a bunch of realizations that his coke snorting and alcohol abuse is magnifying his symptoms and killing him faster he ends up being cared for by an eventual sympathetic woman doctor, played by Jennifer Garner as Dr. Eve Saks and Jared Leto as the gay friend to both.

Below is another synopsis from Wikki:

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dallas_Buyers_Club

"In 1985, Dallas electrician and rodeo cowboy Ron Woodroof is diagnosed with AIDS and given 30 days to live. He initially refuses to accept the diagnosis, but remembers having unprotected sex with an intravenous drug-using prostitute. Ron quickly finds himself ostracized by family and friends, gets fired from his job, and is eventually evicted from his home. At the hospital, he is tended to by Dr. Eve Saks, who tells him that they are testing a drug called zidovudine (AZT), an antiretroviral drug which is thought to prolong the life of AIDS patients—and which is the only drug approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for testing on humans. Saks informs him that in the clinical trials, half the patients receive the drug and the other half are given a placebo, as this is the only way they can determine if the drug is working."

The link below is the true story in more detail:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/11/03/the-true-story-behind-dallas-buyers-club-meet-the-real-ron-woodruff.html

To me the story in spite of colorful expletive use and graphic sex scenes it told a story of how the beginnings of a killer virus was being handled by the patients wanting a better way to solve the mysteries of how to find natural and healthy logical nearly homeopathic ways working in tandem with changing the dosing of harsh FDA approved drugs like AZT and so the AIDS cocktail was born and people of every possible ways of contraction could realize that they now would no longer have a death sentence and hope could be had.

Many of the ideas of treating AIDS with vitamins and healthy eating non-processed foods are working for so many other autoimmune diseases today like Multiple Sclerosis, balances have been made with both old ideas and new methods in medicine and I personally find that there is hope for so many diseases that have no cure and that there is no written rhyme or reasoning documented yet  in medical volumes... 

On that note of much hope; I found that my cringe factor issues with most R rated movies I can look past some of my still prudish thinking and learn more. Allow me to be the first then to wish all of you a very happy good night and to kindly wish all of you a very happy good night and kindly count all your blessings and share all your overages and we will too!


And next time please be here or be square, ya hear?

PS Number One Son and his gal are both over forty, so they were old enough to see the movie.
No harm, no foul and if you are eating while watching a R rated movie with adult children less blushing ensues! LOL! Bottom line: a great flick, highly recommended to see with an open mind and a learning curve to boot! Wish I took notes; many useful logical ways to help many chronic ills!

Mother's Day!

Today it is wonderful seeing our two out of four children/adults, and we had an incredible visit.
They are still here and we will be enjoying another meal, but this time picked up and brought home!
Those Belgian chocolates were very select and selected by our son's girlfriend when on their last cruise to the Bahamas!
So far I had one and so did Hubby, they refused to take any, since they have their own at home and insist that these are mine! But I will share with Hubby.
They too are checking out their tablet (surface) while I write tonight, Hubby went to pick up dinner!
He should be back soon...
I hope all of you Moms out there are also enjoying your day...
Love and prayers to all...
Good night.

Posting pictures of your Moms and you is ...

...Absolutely so lovely, warm, touching and sad too for me...Hubby too if truth be told.

My Mom, as most know has been gone since February 15, 1982 due to a massive stroke in only eleven and half hours...my Dad passed away a little over four years later from his brain stem thrombosis, a stroke that most die within the first twenty-four to forty-eight hours, but he hung in for five and half weeks and lost his battle by succumbing to pneumonia, being allergic to penicillin, not much back then to give to him and so he passed away on May 11, 1986, and yes it was Mother's Day that year too.

And that is why tomorrow will be a bittersweet memory for me...
Oh Hubby, his Mom as far as we know is still alive, she was ninety-three in January if so, but she is up in Pennsylvania in a nursing home, that we have not been told where and even if we knew she has severe dementia. Hubby and his sister do not communicate and she is the one who put MOM into the nursing home; as well as her Mother-in-Law, amazingly she takes control of their finances and his brother has supposedly been left out of the loop too... This woman hasn't worked for years and her husband who was an executive, VP, has a lesser job, now somehow they make ends meet with their three adult/children living at home, with their two Moms warehoused in nursing homes, seems weird to me and very curious. 
I have no say in any of this I was informed by all involved, it seems ridiculous to me!
After all I am only a sister-in-law and daughter-in-law, for nearly forty-four years!And knew them nearly four years before that! They were both in our wedding party too!
But my in-laws are significantly anti-Semitic, in my opinion, as well as politically polarized from me, his sis is A-political, she could care less, and his brother is so far to the right, it is scary!

Though it makes me sad to know a parent is alive and not acknowledged, mainly due to so many adverse reasoning's by too many people arguing over the right way to handle things.

Hubby feels his hands are tied on this matter, and I very well may be  in  trouble for telling about this after all these years, four now, since we last saw his Mom, while she was here.

Any-who, allow me to wish all of you a very happy good night and ask you all to kindly count all your blessings and share those overages and we will too!

And next time please be here or be square, ya hear?

Pop ups slow you down.

Odd sentence/title ten twenty years ago it would seem more difficult to understand, true?
Now most anyone who is techno savvy gets it, I suspect.
Even if you're not, you would understand the ramifications of too many pop ups, hmm?
I sadly had to ask for help.
That is to stop the problem and fortunately this computer is still under warranty, till December.
And so I contacted them and within less than an hour my computer was refreshed!
Unfortunately, two programs were taken out of the mix, my current browser and my newest anti-virus, and so...
With this slight dilemma I had to contact my paid for anti-virus and that was reloaded and so was I able to self load my browser, whew!
All is well now.

And hopefully uneventful experiences will continue from now on or as long as those darn annoyances will not reoccur.
The reason they were so aggravating was not only due to them interfering in navigating and reading online interesting stories or just looking at before and after decorated rooms, which I love to do.
But also on this when trying to publish or to read my blog.

This whole process took less than two hours and I do believe it was worth it and it was free!

Our Number One Son called back today and said that they are bringing me special dark Belgian chocolate, most dark chocolate is loaded with anti-oxidants, and should be eaten every once in a while for if no other reason than that! Although, being a bit of a chocoholic it is something that is not safe in the home with me!
A little bit is healthy; too much is fattening!
And right now, with me at this overly generous size it sadly is not a too good of an idea to be too well supplied. I told number one to remind me to share when they are here, not just say thank you and put  it away in the fridge, ya know?

I learned years ago when guests, even family, bring edible gifts they should best be served when they are still there. And it's not a matter of proper etiquette, which I am not that sure about these days anymore, but I think it is better to not have certain foods, deserts, wines, or what have you that are perishable around too long, really. A matter of conservation would be more like it, since when you are large and your spouse or both have medical issues that are not supposed to eat or drink certain things than tasting and sharing are preferable to make sure that nothing is wasted.
Just my thought, and I asked Number One to remind me to share, a shame at my age to have to ask your first born to do that, but I shamelessly did.

On that note of whatever, allow me to be the very first to wish all of you a very happy good night and ask all of you to kindly count all your blessings and share those overages and we will too!

And next time please be here or be square, ya hear!