Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Drinking; "good" fatigue; now, that's comedy

Let's get the "drinking" business over with first, shall we?

New regimen from my doctor: Sufficient hydration. Divide your weight by two: drink that many ounces.

Well, I'm down to 175-ish (down from 205 or so, beginning of the century, before I went back to work at the high school; about, or maybe a little less than, my high-school-senior-year weight). Oh, let's make it 176, to make the math easy... divided by two, that's 88. Eleven eight-ounce glasses of water, per day. Or, a little less than three 7/11 "big gulp" cups.

And actually, that's easy. I can, and have, done more (I was up to four or more big-gulps per day, couple of summers ago). Doing the drinking is simple. Remembering to do the drinking, that's hard. But I just chugged down ounce number 88 and I'm still kinda cotton-mouthed, so I guess I do need to hydrate better.

I've been enjoying my P/T. It's making me a different kind of tired, "physical" tired rather than just "out of energy for no reason" tired. I do feel like I'm on the edge of pushing too hard, but there's a different quality to it... it's actually in my body, rather than just a fog that perfuses my mind and my soul.

I've never been a "I like getting exhausted by exercise" kinda guy. But this exercise is so gentle, and so thorough, and it's restorative, rather than just bulking me up. Or at least, trying to be restorative, as best it can.

If I had run into this kind of exercise earlier in my life, I might have done more of it. Who knows?

It's funny, the gentle, subtle things that MS introduces us to. It's funnier when we realize that without the MS, we might never have found them.

Reminds me of an exchange we had with one of my favorite teachers in my doctoral program. "The only reason we give you tests is so you'll review."

"Oh, we'll review," we said. "We'll review, you can save your time and skip the test."

She smiled. "Doesn't work that way," she said.

And thus it is with MS, it seems.

You've gotta admit... that's comedy.

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