Good Days/Bad Days

Press "Play" on Led Zeppelin's "Good Times, Bad Times"...NOW.

So another frustrating aspect of MS is that there are good days and bad days. Actually, this simplifies things a bit too much. By "good days" I mean days that pass without any noticeable difficulties. More accurately, I notice these complications, but not to a piercing extent, and quietly endure them. I don't keep picking at the figurative itch. I see it, acknowledge it, and deal with it.

On other days, though, I might as well be inhabiting another body. The Tin Man's, to be more specific, when he needs to be oiled. My legs halt without any impetus to do so, my balance suddenly vanishes, I become irrevocably exhausted in the afternoon, and so on.

Yesterday was one of the bad days, or, should I say, "worse" days. This was unlucky, because it happened to fall on the date of my good friends Katie and Terry's wedding. Not that I was the proverbial "stick in the mud." I socialized, conversed, and integrated myself quite well into my surroundings. The pre-dinner mingle was predictably arduous, mostly because I hate mingling. Now, because of my limited mobility, I cannot swing from coterie to coterie and interject with a humorous comment here and there.

At the dinner itself, though, I was able to converse and engage (pardon the pun) quite well. You could say I was preternaturally gregarious, which is sort of how I am anyway when I don't feel like a wet blanket. However, when I stood up and walked around, you could clearly see that my movements were not exactly fluid. Rusty, or hesitating, would be more like it.

Remember, this was a bad day. Prior to the ceremony, I had trouble fumbling with buttons while I was getting dressed, although oddly I masterfully pulled off a Windsor knot with my tie. Thankfully, my shoes had no laces, so I dodged that whole prospective display of ineptitude. Also, my balance was particularly bad all day, and I wobbled and barely made it down the steps of my apartment and then, when I was leaving, down those of the club where the wedding was held. (Strangely, going down is much more of a pain in the ass than going up.)

After dinner, I decided to skip dessert because it was being served in the ballroom. I simply didn't want to maintain my upright posture, and only wanted to lie down. So I missed out on the cake, which was bittersweet (pardon the pun again) because it was, after all, cake, and I don't much care for cake.

To illustrate further the bizarre fickleness and unpredictability of MS, here I am writing this at 5 am, and I feel fine.

Weird, right?

R