32 Weeks-New Worries

Its week 32 of symptoms. I have added arthritis and loss of mobility in my right hand to my MS bag of tricks. The loss of my hands is almost unbearable. I mean crafting is my therapy when my body decides to be stupid with everything else I could sit and create beautiful things and feel better. Now that ability comes and goes. My therapy is now painful at times. I am trying to see this as a temporary thing just another hurdle I have to jump. My medication to prolong remissions makes me so sick. I am told this is temporary they said my symptoms wouldn’t all that that long too but I think 32 weeks is a long time. And now on top of my body failing me I have to worry about our new president and what that will mean to me and many like me who have pre-existing conditions. I have worked since I was 9 years old I served my country. I have never been unemployed for more than 30 days in the past twenty years. I have a disease that cannot be prevented. There is no cure and the cure that is being looked at is one that Republicans and conservatives will not even consider. There is a chance that myself and millions like me will be without health insurance. Trump has said he will see that doesn’t happen but he has said a lot of things to get elected and he and many like him were quick to jump on getting ACA repealed. Make America Great Again but only for those who aren’t sick, who aren’t poor, who don’t disagree with the views of the office. I guess the his America isn’t the same America we advertise on the Statue of Liberty: “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!” Instead of fixing a flawed healthcare he will build walls between people and the necessities they need for a good life. This isn’t progress this is regression. A multitude of steps back in time pulling us further and further away from greatness. And it will not stop with healthcare. I really hope I am wrong but his actions over the past year should give us an indication of what we have to look forward to for the next four years. Buckle up buttercups we may be in for a bumpy ride.

Week 30-Never ask Why Me.

Week 30 of symptoms starts today and it is a hum dinger. My hands are not really cooperating and I could barely talk by the time I got to work. I couldn’t remember the word pallet today as I was trying to talk to a co-worker about a safety issue. I called it a wood thingy you stacked stuff on. He patted my shoulder and smiled not to mock me but to let me know he knew what was going on and then he told me he would take care of it and I shouldn’t worry. Losing words is a worry. Sometimes I think I will lose them for good. But I know that worry right now is why I lost my words today. Stress has caused what I am going through right now and the past week has been very stressful. It started with a phone call at the end of last year. I was just sitting there thinking to myself that I had survived 2016 the year that could be known as the worse year in my life but 2016 wasn’t done with me yet. The phone rang and the woman on the other end said she was from the woman’s center at our hospital. I had had my annual mammogram so I just thought she was going to tell me how fibrous my breasts were like they did every year. She said there had been a change in my breast and they needed to do another mammogram and an ultra sound. I had had a small lump over the summer but the doc said it was probably a cyst. I told the woman that and she said she would call my doctor after she got off the phone with me. My doctor called the next morning I went in for an examination and the lump had grown. She said it was probably nothing but I would have another mammogram, an ultra sound and biopsy. I go in this Saturday. I went home and I sat and for a moment I felt so overwhelmed that I let self-pity take over. I asked why? Why me? What was it that I did to deserve all this? I know I say I am a bad ass did that piss off the power that be so much they had to test that theory to see what all I can take? Well they should know I can take a lot. And with that that moment of self-pity left me. Because like self-pity this lump in my breast is more than likely nothing more than a benign useless thing that just causes irritation and pain that isn’t needed in my life. I may lose my words now and then and the use of my hands but I will never lose my ability to face whatever challenge I am faced with. I have too much to live for and I plan on living it happy with my head held high.