Our Second Adolescence

When you get MS, you prepare yourself for the typical MS symptoms. Not that I'm disappointed, but I've had MS for almost ten years now and there has been no disability. (And I'm all prepared!) Instead, I am plagued by the quirky little aberrations that occur when one loses chunks of ones brain to ones immune system.

For example, one night several years ago I woke up and found a little spinning wheel directly in the line of vision of my right eye. It was a beautiful bright green. The G in the RGB. Radioactive Cat green (http://www.allposters.com/-sp/Radioactive-Cats-Posters_i837903_c19914_.htm). Before you ask, it does not talk to me. Yes, it's not my only friend, but it's a little glowing friend. I imagine my immune system just took a chunk out of some key area. It only appears at night, and only if I've been sleeping a few hours and I'm woken up.

Usually I'm woken up by the dogs demanding to go out. That provoked another MS quirk about two years ago. One night I woke up and let Doug and Mac out. Mac came back in after moving his bowels and was so delighted with himself he rolled on his back and split into two dogs.

"Cool," I thought, "Now I have three dogs."

I went back to bed and told a very confused Gary what had happened. (Eventually he just said, "Shut up and go to sleep.") I lay there, so so pleased Mac had learned this new trick. And then, somehow without opening my still-open eyes, I woke up. My eyes had been open, I had been tromping around the house and yard, and I had conversed with Gary - and evidently I did it all in my sleep. I checked - only one version of Mac.

A month or so later I woke and was disgusted because Doug had relieved himself all over the house. At least ten times. I got wads of toilet paper and soaked all of it up, then I went back to bed. I was thinking about it the next morning, trying to determine if it was a dream, when I rolled over and saw a wad of toilet paper on the floor in the bedroom. And another in the hall...and the kitchen... about ten in all.

When I mentioned this to the neurologist, he said it was REM Behavioral Sleep Disorder, and some "normals" have it too. The part of your brain stem responsible for keeping you still as you sleep just stops working. I don't think it's happened since then, so it must have just been a temporary exacerbation and my brain rebuilt itself. But see what I mean? I prepared myself for not walking, not for sleepwalking.

My most recent brain aberration happened about two months ago. I started with a paresthesia (abnormal nerve sensation). This one felt as if the soles of my feet were size eight and the bones and muscles had shrunk to size seven. Then I began to get "into" music. I haven't ever listened to music just for entertainment. It's never affected me that much. Suddenly, I need the speakers in my ears glutting my head with my tunes. My brain has been spinning for two months with lyrics and licks and drum solos. I sit around and listen to music. And pine. And sigh. And fantasize about what I'm going to do with my life. I am fourteen. (Oh, and not to put too fine a point on it, my Celexa-stunted sex drive has returned to a daily fourteen year old level of interest.)

So I have gone from a content 43 year old who listens to NPR to a pining fourteen year old who listens to BNL. (Oh yes, Barenaked Ladies. I am SO close to joining the fan club.) I haven't read poetry since I threw my Norton Anthology across the room in college. (Dover Beach. All I have to say.) I haven't written poetry since Mrs. Mulvaney asked what process I go through when I write a poem and I said "Well, first I make an outline - " and she laughed. And here I am sighing like a GIRL and thinking poetic thoughts. And writing in, if not a diary, a blog.

The neurologist asks me every year if my handwriting has changed. I fully expect to start dotting my i's with little hearts and smiley faces if this keeps up.

Comments

[Autumn]

So...did you join the fanclub?

[TheQueen]

Yup, but I only joined after it didn't require a phonecall (I could do it anonymously over the internet) and after it was free. So I am on the bottom of the fanlist foodchain.