#ms update

So this isn’t an attention seeking post, and I am definitely not looking for sympathy right now. But on May 23rd, as I posted before, I was diagnosed with MS.

Well, almost immediately after my diagnoses, I started to experience one of the scary things that happens with this disease. It’s called the MS Hug. For people who don’t know, the hug is like  your body being squeezed by an invisible force. It’s caused by nerves misfiring in your brain.

I’m not in any medical danger, and I have a team of professionals who are working with me. But what’s going on in simple terms?

1. I can’t breathe! Not properly. My chest feels constricted, and the medical professionals have assessed that this is due to MS and not problems with my lungs. 

In Ms, when you experience a new symptom that persists for at LEAST 24-48  hours, it’s called a relapse. I’m having my second MS relapse in 2 years, which means I now qualify for disease altering treatment.

How does this affect my writing? Well

2. I’m exhausted. Because I can’t breathe, it’s difficult to relax enough to fall asleep. Besides this, the pressure on my abdomen presses on my bladder, so I have to pee every 45 minutes. I don’t get to sleep longer than 2 hours before my body is desperate to use the washroom. So I am tired.

3. Being this tired, I have very little muse to write. I can’t concentrate, and I mix up my words a lot. My sclerosis is mainly on the spinal cord, and the language centers of the brain. So when my neurological symptoms relapse like this, it’s difficult to process and portray a character! 

I’ve been posting a lot that I’m tired, and that I’m kind of on hiatus for medical reasons. But this post is a deeper look for people who are curious. I’m okay, I’ve got support, but I don’t know how long it’ll last. I’ll do my best to write when I can.