how my shot ruined my body

When I was 17 and heard I was going to need to do a shot everyday for the rest of my life (unless trying to get pregnant, pregnant or nursing), they never told me all of the side effects. Sure they told me it would hurt, but not too much. They even told me I needed to rotate to seven different areas because it takes that long for the injection site to heal from the shot.

The big thing they didn't tell me what about atrophy. I was really good about sticking to my injection site and even have proof to show someone if they wish to see it... Yet, on all seven injection areas I have atrophy. I first started noticing it about 2 years after I started, and now I have to call either my sister-in-law (who's a nurse) or one of my sisters (she has RA and has to do shots too) to find a good place to do my shot (that won't make the atrophy any worse than it already is.)


Where are these sites? Both arms, both hips, both thighs, and below by belly button. So now, if you go and look at some of the pictures on my other blog about all the clothes I have, you'll see that it looks like I'm having some muffin top issues going on. I wish I was, because then there would be a way to fix it. That's actually where you can see some of what's going on.


Yes, I know there are commercials for pills for the type of MS that I have and I've been begging my doctor to put me on one. He then starts listing off why it's not the best fit for me, like the whole having to stay in a hospital for 48 hours under observation (I have two small boys and live about an hour and a half from my neurologists office), messes with the heart (both my grandpa's had heart problems), messes with the lungs (had a virus when I was 2 that made those not so wonderful), and he doesn't think there has been enough research on them.

Now, there are 3 other kinds of shots I could do (that you only have to do once a week), but their major side effect is depression. And since I haven't had a full blown attack from my MS for so long and I'm not depressed, my doctor would rather keep me on the same thing I've been once for more than 10 years.

Keeps me modest though. I don't wear short shorts, bikini's, tank tops without a shirt over them and no short shirts showing my belly. But since I'm a mother of two boys and my husband likes my t-shirts, I don't really feel the need to be all that girly anyways.

Gym time

My legs were feeling a bit strange, so I got up and went to the gym. What does that have to do with MS? The weather. It's supposed to snow tonight and tomorrow. Extreme temperature changes and I really don't get along.

Of course, it didn't help very much that after 6 machines, my left knee started hurting and I had to give up and just finish up on the bike for the night. I'm known pretty well for pushing myself too far, and even more so when I'm sick, told I can't or something hurts.

Since there's another doctor appointment that I have to take my boys to, I decided not to push myself too far and go at least somewhat easy on myself for the night. I'll still do my usual cool down, but I don't think I need to post pictures of that again.

stupid jet stream

So, the jet stream has made it so that it's still staying somewhat cold around here. In return, my MS has seen fit to make my wrist hurt so much that I spent my whole day only holding hands with my kids and making my husband change diapers, lift the kids, dress the kids and put them in their car seats. Now, that wouldn't be such a bad thing, except it really does make me feel like a bad/lazy mother and that also stresses me out a wee bit. So to make sure that things don't get out of hand, I may head out to the gym once both boys are asleep. I will probably add another post with pictures of my work out if I do go.

I may have done too much

Last night I went to the gym and really only intended to work out for around maybe an hour and a half. When I went up to the front desk to start my "cool down" (I'll post pictures of what that is), the lady at the desk said i deserved it for working out so long. Looked at my phone and it had been two and a half hours! I was a little shocked, but even more so that I didn't start feeling what all I had done to my muscles until tonight. They're telling me to take the night off and just get some sleep, but if I can't get to sleep I will be going back to the gym tonight. Tomorrow should be a fun day with how sore my muscles are starting to feel now. Maybe now I'll take up yoga or something. Probably not though. My "cool down" consists of a massage chair for 6 minutes, a hydro massage bed for 6 minutes and then a tanning bed for 5 minutes (mostly because I get to lay down and its warm in that bed). I honestly can't tan (even with cheating with a tanning bed) so it really is just to relax a little while longer before showering and driving home.

Finally back at the gym

I was told early on, after being diagnosed with MS, that stress will only make things worse for me. So I took that to heart. Then I was told I couldn't do anymore high impact sports. That included basketball (that I had played since I was 10 and loved it), volleyball, running, and pretty much every sport I played. Then, I was told that working out was really good for keeping my MS pretty quiet. So when I started college and took weight training, I found a way to deal with my stress and MS.

That's what I still do. It also helps with getting me back in shape to do the Bike MS with my brother. So, here's a look on pictures of what I do at the gym. Or, at least, what I did tonight. I'll post sets, reps and weight if anyone asks. And what all I did with the free weights.

A few days later

The lighting in my bathroom isn't great so the colors are off, but I can promise you that really is a bruise.

you mean thing

     Something that MS is really good at doing is screwing me over. For the past few weeks, I've felt like I had a sinus infection or allergies. So I brushed it off as just that and nothing to really complain about. Then cold things started to hurt. That's when I started thinking that maybe I should break down and take my temp. And there it was, 102.9... I was mad. I had already made plans for that night and they were done for.

Then, last night I finally broke down and sent a text to my sister-in-law that is a nurse, for tips on how to get rid of this fever that has had me house bound for 2 days. I did what she said and thought that, since I was feeling better today and had already been stuck inside for 2 and a half days, it would be alright for me to go out with my boys.

We did. We went to the mall, the Dollar Tree (LOVE that place) and out for dinner. Then, we get home, put the boys in bed and I stupidly thought, "Maybe I'll see how low my temp is now..." Should have just left it on the counter. My fever was still there, not has high, but still there. I had to make phone calls to reorganize things for tomorrow, that I'm going to miss, and it throws off my plan of going to the gym to get this stupid cold out of me. My coughing and sniffling is giving me a headache and I just want to curl up in bed next to the husband and not go anywhere.

       So what does MS have to do with any of this? EVERYTHING. MS (for me anyways) has always taken some harmless little illness I may have and blow it up into this huge thing that keeps me down. I'm really not one for being force to stay down at all, ask my husband or parents sometime... Ask them about my spinal tap, mono, having baby #1, being pregnant with either of the boys, or anytime I've been sick. I just don't like to stay still for very long.

       After I had baby #1, I noticed that anytime the temperature (yes I can spell that word and don't always use temp) my wrist would start hurting. They didn't just have an ache to them, they hurt so bad I had a hard time picking up my new born baby. Which was kind of bad because, of course, this didn't start being a problem until after I let my husband go back to work (I'm a needy wife.)

So, of course, now that I'm sick and even have a fever, what happens? My right wrist is killing me! It started on Wednesday, but I didn't think much of it because I saw that it was supposed to snow, but now that it's supposed to snow, yet again, (after a couple nice days in the 60's) my wrist is killing me even more. I asked my neurologist about it a few months after I first noticed it. He started to brush it off and blame my cell phone for it. Then, I told him that it only seems to happen when the temperature changes. That's when he acted as if I had said that magic word. He nodded and said, "that sounds more like it's MS related."

      Well, thanks for reading my rant. I will now get off my soap box and go do my shot. I'll post a picture of the shot I did on my leg a few nights ago. I forgot that they sometimes bruise.

Allergies my foot

So, after doing pretty good at remembering to do my shot (a whole 4 days in a row!), I forgot to do it last night. Tonight, I can't seem to move without my nose dripping and I think I actually have a fever now. The husband is already sleeping, so I don't want to wake him to warm my shot up (it's kept in my refrigerator.) I also don't want to warm it up myself because anything cold seriously is painful right now. I really should just get it anyways though, being able to do things myself is always better than trying to explain to other people how to do it.

A good stress reliever

One of the best things I've done lately was to take my family on a 4 hour ride to St. Louis to see a friend from high school that I hadn't seen in 10+ years. Throwing off the boys' sleeping schedules or not, it was well worth it!

Why I'm scared of my shot

Here's a picture of what the area looks like, about an hour after I do my shot. There are a few side effects that go with it: Fever at injection site (check), fever (check), redness and swelling at injection site (check, check).

While I do get almost all the side effects they warn about, they're still not what scares me the most. What they don't tell you is that, when you do your shot (or at least when I do mine), someone always randomly bumps that area, every time...

Since starting my shots again (I'll save that story for another time), my husband has squeezed both arms, boys have push my hip, and tonight my husband got my attention by (what he says) "lightly" tapping my leg to look at something. 

Maybe a little too much fresh air with the boys today

It's was finally 70 degrees outside, so the boys and I went outside to play. I think I may have over done it, though. On the plus side, I now know that the tanning bed wasn't helping at all with giving me a tan. The sunburn made it so I couldn't try riding my bike on the road. And the threat of thunderstorms (and then maybe snow) is also going to keep me from the gym tonight. Here's hoping the drop in temps doesn't screw me up too bad!!!

Sometimes I hate night time

It's bed time, which also means it's time to do my shot. Not excited but at least tonight is in my hip and not my arm.

The park

One of my boys enjoying the park with his OT while mommy gets some fresh air. 

Made it to a park for OT and the boys seems to love it!

Short walk

Short walk to the creek, at the bottom of the hill, and back up to our drive way. I hope the rocks don't make it back in the house.

Today's fun

I've read that vitamin D is really good at helping with MS. I usually do 5 minutes in a tanning bed at the gym, but since it's supposed to be in the low 60's (finally!!!) I'm either going for a walk or maybe taking my boys to a park for some extra running around time. We'll see how it goes and I'll post some pictures if the weather is as a nice as it's supposed to be.

Intro to my life with MS

Recently I started a blog about all the clothes I have (an didn't know I had). Then, a few days later, some friends talked me into starting one about sharing clothes between ladies who have curves. The second one hasn't had much on it, while the first one is updated daily. Both silly blogs, I know, but with the second one, I almost started using it as a way to somewhat verbally deal with my Multiple Sclerosis (MS) and then decided not to. After a week of thinking on it, I've decided to start this.

  I was diagnosed with MS during my senior year of high school. Not only was that hard, but all the things that led up to it were even worse. My parents, one of my sisters, and I had just moved to California a few weeks after I turned sixteen. We were in our other city for 10 years (most of my life at the time) and I was not happy about it. I was excited when I first found out. (What 16 year old girl wouldn't love to move to California?!) But then we got there... My parents were in shock about the price of a house and we needed a place quickly. So they found a cute little house for rent and we moved a week or so later. I wasn't too thrilled about the house. It was only a one story and no family room.

Then, I found out that I had somewhat of an in to the marching band. (I was in band and color guard at my last high school) I was pretty relieved. Then band camp started and I was thinking, ok this is going to be a lot of fun. I was wrong. They didn't march the same way, they didn't do field shows, only parades and they stuck me with girls that didn't even know how to spin a flag. I was a little upset things were starting to look kinda bad.

When school started, things really started to go downhill. About half of my high school credit couldn't be transfered from my last high school and I was basically going to do 2 and a half years of high school in the two I had left. I was in shock. I also found out that if i wanted to do color guard, I was going to need to actually take that as one of my classes (at my last one it was more of a night class type thing). So i dropped color guard and decided that, since I still played flute, I could just be in the band. Then I went to band class... lets just say I ended up dropping band too.

Long story short, in the first two weeks of school, I had 14 different class schedules trying to figure out what all I needed to take and what I could just let go. I was really not the happiest girl then. Around the beginning of the second semester, I found that every once in a while, I had a strange limp with my left leg and my speech would get very slurred. I didn't think much of it and thought I was either stressed, upset, or I needed more sleep. By the middle of summer, I turned 17 and my left arm, hand, and most of my left side were numb.

Such a great way to start my senior year... then even more happened. The school didn't believe me! They honestly thought since I had such a bad junior year, that I just didn't want to go to school. It wasn't until that December that my doctor finally found out what I had. Then, the school was more than willing to get me into independent study and help me get all my classes. I was short one semester, by the time my senior year was over.

I was mad, but I was also having to deal with the new crazy thing called MS that I honestly had not clue about. My parents tried to tell me about all of the research they did on it and help me understand, but I wouldn't hear any of it. I didn't even tell (or let my parents tell) my brothers and sisters (3 sisters and 2 brothers) what I had! I was going to be upset and that was it. But at the same time, I wasn't going to let the whole not graduating high school stop me from anything.

To top it off, I was told I would have to start doing a shot everyday! I had started passing out every time I was stuck with a needle around 11 years old. So when I heard this, I said "no," and basically walked out of the doctor's office. But did eventually give in (kinda had to when a lady came to my house just to teach me how to do the shot, myself).

I went and got my GED, but even that was stressful. The testing part was easy but the way the proctor treated me wasn't all that great. The testing was a 2 day thing and at the end of the first day she said, "you went through this pretty quick," in somewhat of a demeaning tone. Then, at the end of the second day she said the same thing, but added, "when you need to retake this it will most likely be the same stuff, so study that when you get home." The good news is that I passed, and not only did I pass, but above normal (but not above normal for math, I still suck at math even today).

I started college that fall, and started to feel a bit more grounded about my MS. So much so that I even gave a speech about it in my speech class. With my weight training class (I was very athletic when I was younger), I had a long list to tell my coach what all I could and couldn't do. He teased me about my limits but I inadvertently got back at him when he told his wife (she was an RN) about me. From what he told me, he got kind of an earful for teasing me. I ended up taking weight training and body conditioning with him 4 times, I think (I was allowed to repeat for credits twice per class). I loved college and I loved the new freedom I had with my schedule of classes.

Then the nerves set in and my memory was starting to get somewhat bad. I ended up dropping most classes I signed up for and ended up playing it off like I was just some dumb 20 something year old that was careless in life.

Now I'm 28 years old, married for almost 6 years, with two beautiful boys. I'm also training to do an MS Bike ride with one of my brothers, over in Washington state, for September. So here, I will post photos of my training and what all I've been doing with my MS and how I deal with it. I also promise no more books like this as a post.