Improvement? Yeah, right...

Well, those moments of improvement were glorious, but sadly, not long-lived.

Started the day unloading the truck; the first of the "things coming home from the office for the last time" trips. After hauling things home yesterday afternoon, I had left stuff in the car for a planned unloading this morning. Accomplished the unloading, but not particularly well. Almost fell over, several times. Didn't, fortunately.

Next, a quick trip to the store to pick up a few supplies. Was able to do the "touch the walker" walking with no problem. Had fun, even!

Made it home with no problem. Had a horribly difficult time carrying that one, not particularly heavy, bag of groceries up the front stairs (took longer than usual just to ascend the stairs, insignificant-bag-weight notwithstanding) into the house. Then, the struggle began.

Did a load of laundry. What a wonderful day, I'm thinking, wouldn't it be energy efficient and all that to hang my shirts on the line? Well, that was nearly impossible. Somehow I managed to hang stuff on the line and not fall over, but barely. Great... operating a clothes line is now on my list of "you can't do that any more." Your Typical I-hate-doing-chores Guy might be perfectly happy to be unable to hang laundry on the line, but dammit! Hanging things in the sun to dry—I can't even do that without falling over! That just plain sucks.

Got ready to bake the quiche I had been planning for days to make for tonight's dinner. Ah, cooking the other day was so easy, this was gonna be no problem! Or so I thought. But when it came time to do the actual cooking... Improvement, still?

Nope. Quite the opposite. Couldn't do anything standing. Had to cut the onions from a seated position (when the cutting board isn't at do-it-from-a-chair height, that's less easy than it sounds). Cooked all the veggies from a seated position (fortunately, occasionally stirring the stuff in the pan didn't need to be done standing up). Had to crack, and then whip, the eggs from the same seated position. Fortunately, I had decided to whip the eggs in a tall, cylindrical pasta-cooking pot (a trick I learned from a Japanese chef, he used that instead of a bowl), which was very easy to just leave on the ground while I whipped the bejeesus out of the eggs. Did have to stand up to  pour the eggs into the pan and put the pan into the oven, but I succeeded. Quiche is done and cooling, and it looks good! I even managed to do all the cooking-the-quiche dishes from the same seated position, which I count as a victory, but...

There haven't been many times when I've wished for a big-wheel I-can-push-myself-around wheelchair. And never have I wished for one at home. Until today. This, by me, is not a victory.

Who knows? Tomorrow may be completely different.

Again.

The saying goes: The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away. Whoever invented that phrase probably wasn't thinking about M.S., but man... we M.S.ers know what that's all about. And we relearn it, every day.

Again. And again. And again.