Triumph, and sorrow

Some triumph today, simply in amount of walking (with the walker, of course).

I made it on some amazingly long (by today's standards) walks, but very, very slowly... all made possible through the magic of "@$#@ it, I am going to do this!" determination. I managed to visit a nursery which I used to visit many times a year in bygone days, but haven't been there since the onset of The Disease and my "accessorization" with the walker. I bought a new yellow rose for my wife—her favorite color rose! Then I survived the very long trip to and through the very large 99 Ranch Market, for supplies for a Thai yellow curry, which I hope to actually cook on Wednesday.

We're going to have to have our gardeners plant the rose for us. On one level, that's one of the things that we have gardeners for, but I have planted so many things myself over so many years, and now to be unable to do it... it's sad. And quietly, but persistently, hard to deal with.

Did more cleaning up of my office today... started marking some shelves; the first collection to be the "we probably need to recycle these, but [specific person, named on the tag] gets to decide." Going to be doing a lot of this kind of labeling... "Person X needs to decide what to do with these... person Y needs to decide what to do with these..." Even if Things Weren't Changing As They Are, that would still need to be done, but with things being As They Are... sigh.

I'm sure you've read in many stories the phrase "putting his affairs in order;" this is it. Every once and a while, I find something that makes me smile or laugh, but by and large, as I'm putting things in place for what may be The Last Time... It's sad. And quietly, but persistently, hard to deal with.

My legs are spasm-ing quite nastily tonight. And aching mightily. They don't do that a lot, but they've been doing that more than I like in recent days, especially when I'm in bed or otherwise trying to rest. I'm going to do some tote-renshu kyudo, then I'm going to try one of my magical herbal formulas, it often does a very reasonable job of calming down the twitches.

I am so looking forward to my acupuncturing tomorrow. Took me fifty-one years to get to the place of "I'm going to my doctor, he's gonna stick needles in me, and they're going to hurt, but then I'm going to feel better!"

How often do you get to say that en route to your caregivers?

You take what you can get, in the M.S. biz... right?