A Beautiful Sunny September Day.

Alfred Georges Regner

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred-Georges_Regner

My session with the physiotherapist, this afternoon,  was not easy because of the spasticity, the incredible stiffness in my right arm.

On Monday I could still touch my nose with my right arm, today I could only raise my hand as far as to my chin.

Not nice to feel and experience, this afternoon, I am going to try not to let it upset me; all I can do is stay cheerful and keep doing my stretching exercises with Richie’s help.

The new worry is that my left hand and forearm are also getting stiffer now, on the plus side,  I can still move my left arm freely and I can still type, although laboriously.

As long as I can write my posts, write and answer e-mails, read newspapers as well as surf the net and play free cell and solitaire I am happy.

Seetech software will allow me to do everything I want to, so I am looking forward to seeing the package Herman is putting together for me.

I can hardly wait to get the software and start to use it to write my posts, it’s good to know that there is software available when my hands stop functioning.

Hopefully once I read and; agree with what Herman has suggested, it will not be long to wait, think that I am going to be optimistic.

Today is a beautiful very warm September day, sunny and dry, nice for friends returning from their holidays in warmer places.

A nice goodbye to summer today, as the forecast is for high winds as well as a lot of rain, all because of the tail end of a hurricane, shame a sunny autumn is nice, but who knows it maybe still lovely.

   

Sunny Intervals For Sunday

 

Unknown Artist.

Slept wonderfully well last night, even managed to fall asleep again this morning when I woke up sooner than I wanted to.

Asking Richie to shut the windows really helped, as soon as the cold air was no longer wafting into the bedroom it was easy to slip back off to sleep.

This is always such a big achievement that on the rare occasions it occurs I enjoy it tremendously.

Feel quite relaxed now after being able to do something as ordinary and simple as falling asleep again after waking up.

Never realised until MS that it would become such a rare event, did not realise before, that relaxing my body would also be a rare occurrence.

When I press the button on my bed that lowers the foot end and then the head end of the bed so that I can sleep, I can’t stretch out and relax myself.

I never thought that my body would not be able to relax very much or not at all, that thought never crossed my mind, certainly not when I was just diagnosed.

I can not move my legs or my torso, so just have to lie as Richie has organised me, can not straighten a leg or tense it up and relax.

My way of relaxing is to fall asleep and hope that waking up will not be by leaps and bounds, literally, as my fingers cramp and twist in jolts of movement.

Hands do the same ball up into tight fists and are difficult to straighten out, then the legs start drumming and gently vibrating and kicking up.

Relaxing only really happens in my mind as I try to override the sensations produced by the nerves transmitting the signals.

Scrambled messages, wrong messages, jumbled messages, nerves are all transmitting them at the same time, or so it feels like and no wonder it feels so awful and can’t be controlled.

If they could then I think that researchers would be well on their way to working out the causes for MS.

Controlling the nerve message would surely be able to change the w ay MS affects us all, what a wonderful fantasy one I can enjoy having many times.

Hoping For Sunshine This Afternoon.

Paula Modersohn-Becker
German Painter, 1876-1907


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paula_Modersohn-Becker


Slept well until we were both woken up at 02.00 by Spike, who is obviously feeling better as every day or so he starts to walk around again at night.

Richie took quick action and put him straight out of the room and we both slept once more which was good, could hear that Richie was asleep just before me.

Actually quite enjoyed waking today as my arms did not get as cramped and did not feel like they were as tightly folded.

Mind you it still felt like my arms were bound up in a straightjacket but without the cramps and feeling like the straps were getting tighter.

I could stretch them relatively easily by holding on to the trapeze handle over my bed; I pull my shoulder off the mattress 12 times x 3.

Then I get Richie to loop the trapeze over the metal bar it hangs from and hang the two handles on a plastic cord.

Holding onto each helps me stretch my arms well, I do that at the beginning and end of each set of exercises by stretching my arms.

It feels really good to do these stretching exercises, now I have the handles on the plastic cord I feel my arms can stretch easier.

Much better to have the handles to hold onto, I did try and stretch my arms without any props but now it is more effective with the handles to assist me.

Sadly there is no sign of the sun yet today, all I can see is a dense grey cloud cover which
does not seem to be lifting right now.

But you never know what will happen as the day progresses, the cloud cover could lift and drift off very quickly.

Once this low weather front has passed over us a high is following behind which will bring sunshine and warm weather.

I am going to be optimistic and hope for a sunny afternoon today and pleasant warm weather.