Atypical Multiple Sclerosis

In June 2007 was my first chemo treatment. You can read about that experience in my Cytoxan post. I just wanted to note a few things about how I prepped for the idea of cytoxan and continued to prepare each month.

First, anytime you hear the word chemo, you know you are in for a bumpy ride. Nausea, weakness, hair loss, poison. Yep, thats right, poison. More times than I care to even remember, people in the past year have referred to cytoxan as poison. I know it is poison, but I didn’t really want to hear that word while have it was pouring into my body.  Its kinda like having the sad eyes of a cow looking through the restaurant window at you while you’re eating prime rib. You know what it is, but your mind rationalizes it, making it acceptable to eat cow.

That is what I needed to do. Understanding some of the possible side effects was pretty easy. I knew others who have gone through chemo, seen it before. I needed to wrap my mind around it. Also, and this is a biggie, I was not dying, I do not have a deadly disease. This works for and against chemo for ms.

Firstly, because I have ms I got a smaller dose than a cancer patient does. Great, hooray, less poison! Yet, when you are in the throes of being sick from cytoxan, your heart says, “hey is this worth it, I mean we’re not dying here.”  My brain responded with “oh yes, it is so worth it to feel better, and have a huge quality of life boost. Think of your son and hubby.”  If steroids made me feel better for a very short period of time, than why not try something that could make you feel better for a much longer period of time.

So, now it was a choice I was willing to make. Yes, I could be very sick for a few weeks every month for a year, but have a big payoff in the end. Isn’t that what we teach our kids. Work hard now and you’ll see a payoff in the end. Nothing just comes your way, you must work for it. And really isn’t that the joy of life-the journey. I mean we all, WE ALL, sacrifice and suffer in hopes of a payout.  You can insert anything in place of cytoxan and get the same result. Being a woman, I went through nine months of pregnancy then labor and delivery to have a child. Was the sacrifice worth it? ABSOLUTELY!

Keeping a positive outlook was also important for me. My hubby and I spoke those few days before my first dose. He told me not think of the cytoxan as poison, but as good medicine like it is. I did that. We also had a vision going in each treatment and throughout the year of us hiking a mountain. Actually, no, the mountain was not a metaphor of trying to get through the year, but I guess in retrospect that works too. It was what I loved to do. My son and I and sometimes hubby would hike up some of the local mountains. I love the outdoors, love hiking.

So this is what got me through the the year. Or rather a few months shy of a year as I also needed the baclofen pump. I learned to accept where I am. By that I mean I stopped thinking that I shouldn’t be doing this, I shouldn’t have ms, this wasn’t in my plans, etc. Instead, I thought okay, I’m here doing cytoxan right now, that is it. When I began thinking like that, I realized life is pretty good. Seems wierd, but it is the ‘thinking too much about it’ that creates problems. We ourselves put labels or beliefs or conditions on things that make us look at our situation as good or bad. Really it is just where we find ourselves at that moment, nothing more.