Movin' On

7:22:36 PM CST My new blog is up and public for those of you who want to check it out.  It's nothing spectacular just yet.  We'll have to see how that goes.

By the way, thank you for the comments!  It's nice to know that people thought of, and missed, you.  And just so you know...I've been keeping up with you all more than you know.  I still receive alerts from J-land, and occaissionally remember to have a look see at the non AOL blogs as well.  I've just been unmotivated to write or comment much.

Anywho, here's the link (if I can remember how to link properly), and I look forward to seeing you there.  http://journals.aol.com/ladydriversammie/movinonwithms/

(Blah, I don't remember the code to link it as a word rather than a whole address.  Lots of things to re-learn for me I suppose.)


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4:29:41 AM CST

Wow.

Has it really been over a year since I've written in the faithful old journal?

Quite obviously it has.

Well I'd like to update it just to say that Movin' On is going into retirement.  However, it will be replaced by a new journal, Movin' On with MS.  I haven't made the new J public or added any entries yet but keep an eye out.  I've started working on it and will open it up and link to it soon.  I think it's time to make writing a habit again.

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6:57:33 AM CST
Feeling Hopeful

Yesterday may very well have contained one of the worst, if not THE worst experience I've ever had.  I went to my favorite hospital for the first of a series of a new type of treatments my neurologist thinks could get my MS more under control and by doing that could return some sense of normalcy, or at least survivability, to my shattered life.

Unfortunately, the longer this "exacerbation" has gone on with no remission in sight, the more and more weak I've become.  The most unfortunate part of this being that the treatment also has a temporary side effect of...weakness.  What do you get when you pair severe weakness with added weakness?  A former queen of the road who finds herself half in, half out of a pick up, more than ready to go home ,without the strength to finish getting IN, or come back OUT of the vehicle...or even to support herself on her own two legs. 

Pickle of a situation.  Hospital personnel, in the form of a nice young woman on her way to her own car and two security guards patrolling that entrance/exit, stopped to try and help.  However, the security guards were prohibited from physically helping me into the truck for obvious legal reasons and the (nurse?), while she tried her best just wasn't all that big to be trying to help a person into a tall vehicle when said person hadn't even the strength to hold her foot up straight when sitting with her leg extended in front of her, let alone the strength needed to actually be somewhat useful in her own assistance.

The security guards decided they should do as they were trained to do and call 911.  Sitting on a cold, concrete curb unable to move myself and barely able to sit upright, quite possibly the most embarrassing situation of my life...I couldn't help but start laughing.

Let me get this straight...I'm at a hospital and we have to call 911 for help?  Hahahahaha...

So they call for help and rather than the ambulance from that very hospital that I rather expected, a fire truck comes rumbling up with lights blazing.  And at this point all I could think was that I wanted to go drive the fire truck and I wondered if there was a way that would be possible...

Any of you that have read much of my journal at all should recognize this as typical Sammie nuttiness.  Yeah, it's still there.  Buried somewhere under the humiliated, dejected, beaten down exterior of the former lady driver, who has almost given up hope...it's still there.

Amazingly, I found it again in AOL Journals.  As much as I appreciate all the kind words I've gotten from my friends in J-Land and as much as I love you all that wasn't what did it.  Because after all, no matter how nice and how loving my friends are...there's one small thing we don't share...MS. I don't even understand this monstrosity that has barged into my life so how could anyone else know how it feels?

Unless...they have it too...

Enter Brain Cheese.  Here is someone who DOES understand MS, very well...after having lived with it for years. Not only that but with an attitude not so unlike the attitude I've approached so many tough times in my own life with.  It's going to be another journal that I go back to the very beginning of...already have in fact, just haven't caught up to the present yet.  Here is a humorous, informative, real sort of outlook on this horrible disease that has intruded upon my life...and it may just be the sort of thing I need to find hope again...the light on the horizon that I mistook for the sun burning down to it's last to leave me in darkness forever...might not be that at all.  Maybe...just maybe...

Now seriously, back to driving that fire truck...

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3:04:22 AM CST
Feeling Sad

I was looking back through my journal and realized how long it'd been since I made an entry so I thought I'd say hi and put up my Christmas sidebar. 

Not sure what else to say at the moment.  Things have gotten worse instead of better and it has the former lady driver pretty down. 

I suppose I don't really think this journal is who I am anymore either.  I read through it from the beginning and there are so many interesting stories that revolve around what they're supposed to: Life on the Road.  That's not where my life is now.  I considered starting a new journal but I'm not sure what it would be about.  Mostly my life isn't very interesting these days.  Maybe I'll think of something, I just don't know.

Hope everyone is having a happy holiday season.

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3:47:36 PM CDT

Thanks to everyone for being so concerned about me.  I realize my health is more important than my hobbies, but with nothing else much I can do at the moment, I'd be lost without my computer.  I suppose it's just frustrating for me that even something as small as editing some screenshots and posting them seems too tiring.  According to my neurologist, I'm improving and should continue to improve.  But it doesn't feel that way to me.  It feels like I'm getting worse.  Physical therapy is improving my strength (or at least I think that's what's improving my strength, or maybe it's just better period) so it's not quite as bad as when I went to the hospital.  But I'm definitely not as good as when I came home from the hospital either.  Every day it's a little harder to walk, though I don't seem to be more off balance, just my muscles stiffen up and the numbness is back in my feet and hands which makes things more difficult. 

I did get some good news though.  My short term disability was approved and set up so I don't have to worry about owing my company for my insurance anymore and I'll get a small check too.  It's not much but it's better than nothing, and at least covers the insurance and my share of the monthly prescription.  As far as disability pay goes, the SS people have done nothing but confuse me.  I guess I'm going to have to call them.  I filled out an application online and needed to fill out another form as well, but started having issues with their website.  It said to try again later so I waited til the next day and filled out the form, but again had problems halfway through, so I finally finished it the third day.  Meanwhie they sent me the form in the mail and now I don't know if I need to fill it out again or what lol.  I also have to make an appointment with them and take them some ID, medical records, and proof of income.  I don't seem to have a copy of my W2's from last year so I requested a fom from them that will work for proof of income...but instead of sending me the form I wanted they sent me a form to fill out requesting the form that I already requested.  *sigh*

I also called the neurologist to ask him about things getting worse again and was only able to leave a message with his physician's assistant, a voice mail since he wasn't thereeither.  He hasn't called me back yet so I dunno what's going to happen with that.  I wish this was something that I could just get over like a broken leg lol.  I had hopes of being able to get back to work eventually after the last doctor visit, when he told me that it was pretty bad and would take time, but that he believed eventually I would be able to walk without assisstance again and that if my eyes don't straighten out on their own they can fix them with surgery.  Minus the problems walking and double vision, there isn't much to keep me from doing my job, and my company already told me it is fine to drive with MS as long as I can safely do my job.  This getting worse instead of better is discouraging though.

Well, that's about all I can think of for now.  Need to get some good sleep tonight, we're making cookies as part of occupational therapy tomorrow.  (Occupational therapy involves building up your stamina for ordinary activities such as working and doing things around your house like cooking and laundry and such, whereas  Physical therapy is strictly building up your strength/endurance/balance etc.)  And when I say "we" I mean me mostly lol.  We made cookies one day and all the therapists enjoy them so much that Mom volunteered to bring ingredients for chocolate no bake cookies and that's what we're making tomorrow.  I just hope my regular occupational therapist is back tomorrow.  She's about 7-8 months pregnanat and her doctor put her on bedrest for a couple of days so she wasn't there on Wednesday.  The other girl was quite nice but I miss Holly.  Hope she's ok.

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8:58:09 PM CDT Still working on the screenshots from WoW.  You'd think with nothing to do but play on the computer I'd have them done by now.  I did take some, just not sure how I want to put them up, plus I haven't made them pretty (or a manageable size) yet.  Also, physical therapy three time a week in the mornings wears me out.  My hands are getting numb/tingly again and that makes typing difficult and tiring too.  I'll write more later though, no worries.

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2:30:47 PM CDT

So...WoW.  No not "wow" but W.o.W. as in World of Warcraft.  At least a couple of you expressed interest in what's been keeping me away from AOL Journals this past year or so and that's it, in a nutshell.

Now, the question would be...how can anyone become so involved in a silly video game that it takes up all of their free time for a year or more?  Well...there are two reasons mainly.  One is that it isn't "just" a game.  It's a community, much like AOL Journals is a community.  Millions of people play this particular game, with god knows how many being on each specific server, but it's always the same people on a server so you get to know people, some even on a more personal level, and become friends with those you like to play with.  The second reason is that with an online game it is possible for new content to be added as you go, something Blizzard Entertainment has done several times since I started playing, therefore you're never "done" with all the content.  In other words, despite the fact that I've been playing it for over a year, I'm far from having seen or done all that there is to do in the game.

That explains a bit of why I've been so addicted to it but doesn't tell much about what it is that you DO in the game.  I'm not sure exactly how to start explaining that so I'll just begin at...well, the beginning, not so much with an all about WoW but with a history of how I got involved with it.

Turtle bought this game for her brother for Christmas in 2004, and he started playing.  He enjoyed it so much that he brought Turtle over to his house one day when she was home to show her a bit of it.  She watched him for awhile and decided to buy the game for herself.  Back then we were both driving and tended to coordinate our driving shifts so that we could spend the majority of the day on the phone.  Well guess what?  Yup, she wanted to talk about WoW aaaaall the time.  To give her credit, she did try to talk about other things, since I had no clue about WoW and wasn't interested in playing.  I thought it was just some fighting game, something I've never been good at, and hoped that her interest in it would pass so that I could have my friend back, non-WoW.  That didn't happen as I'd hoped and after listening to her tell me some about it and checking out their website, I broke down and bought my own copy to try it out myself.

It took me some time to get it set up, as there was already a huge patch (new content and bug fixes) to download before I could play, and because my old laptop didn't like the game much.  It had all the proper minimum resources and then some, but it's cooling system was inadequate for the amount of heat produced by the laptop when playing the game.  I managed to remedy this by setting the laptop on something so as to allow more room for air to get underneath of it and went about learning to play.

You start the game as a level one character of your choice.  You can pick one of several classes.  Different classes have different abilities and therefore different roles when you're playing in a group.  These fall into three categories, tanks, damage dealers, and healers.  The tanks have abilities to hold the "aggro" or attention of the mob (bad guy)...in other words to keep it hitting them.  One of the tanks strong points is that he/she can take a beating by having more armor and usually more hit points or health than anyone else.  The damage dealers deal the most damage and kill the mob.  The healers try to keep everyone alive.  You also choose a race and faction.  There are two factions...horde and alliance.  Those are the two "sides" that are at war against one another so to speak.  Each one has four races within.  Turtle and her brother were both playing Alliance, so that's what I chose as well.  The four races within the Alliance are Nightelves, Dwarves, Humans, and Gnomes.  Each race looks different and has different racial abilities or strong points.  For instance, I started with a female nightelf hunter.  The night elves have the ability to "shadowmeld" which is like a stealth they can do when they're standing still.  If your class isn't a rogue or a druid, you can only do this while standing still and will become visible when you move.The nightelves also have a passive racial ability that makes them a small bit more resistant to nature damage, one of several types of magical damage that can be done, the others being fire, arcane, frost, and shadow.  There is also such a thing as holy damage but no one has the abiltiy to be more resistant to this and there is no gear that adds holy damage resistance.

The game is quite complex and extremely detailed, so watching someone at level 60, currently the highest attainable level, would be very confusing to someone who's never played, so let's go back to level one.

At level one, it starts out very simple.  You've picked a faction, a race, and a class (not all races can be each class, for instance, only night elves and dwarves can be hunters), and made several choices about how your character will look, from hair style and color to facial differences.  The game places you in the "starter" area for your race, which is Teldrassil for the Night Elves.  Teldrassil appears to be an island off the coast of Kalimdor, one of the two continents in the world of Azteroth.  In reality, it's a tree...and who wouldn't expect the homeland of the elves to be in a tree?  There is more than one area in the tree, but the starter area has only level 1-4 mobs and most of them will not attack you unless you attack them first, to make it easier for you to get started.  At level one you have only a few spells that you know how to do, and they are just powerful enough that you can easily kill something your level.  Each thing you kill gives you experience and that is how you level up, by gaining a certain amount of experience.  There is an experience bar on your screen to let you know just how much you've already gained in this level and how much more you need to reach the next level.  You can gain extra experience by doing quests.  Various people have quests for you to do, each with a little story behind them.  For instance, there is a quest giver nearby where you start, shown by a yellow exclamation point over his head, that explains how Teldrassil is being overrun by the boars and wild cats and asking you to kill a certain number of them for him.  To help you get started, the default setting is for tooltips to pop up and explain things to you such as the quest givers, why they're there, why you'd want to do quests, and how to tell if someone has a quest for you. (it just couln't get any easier, I swear).  You also have a toolbar at the bottom of the screen where you can use the mouse to click on things and there is further help down there, such as the spellbook which lists all your abilities and how to use them, and a character pane whick shows you more about your character, from level, health, and gear to reputation with various factions (while you can only play two there are several in the game and you have varying reputation with each of them).  So you talk to the quest giver by right clicking on him, click on accept for the quest, and then head off to start doing whatever he's asked you to do.  When you've finished the quest, you return to him (or go wherever he/she has told you to go, and complete the quest by talking to him again and clicking complete.  To make it easier to see if someone is expecting you to complete a quest with them, or to see if you have a completed quest to turn in to someone, they will have a question mark over their head, white for uncompleted quests, or yellow for completed quests.  Lower levels receive less experience for killing things and quests but take only a small amount of experience to reach the next level.  It only takes a few hours at most to fly through the first several levels and complete the starter area and other areas around there. 

Training becomes available to you at each second level, and costs money, which you have none of to start.  Most things that you kill drop something though, sometimes money, sometimes loot.  Some of the loot isn't valuable and is called "vendor trash", meaning you simply sell it to a vendor and receive a small amount of money for it.  Money in the game is Gold, Silver, and Copper.  At the lower levels you probably won't see gold, but can easily build up enough silver between levels to slowly start getting better gear and paying for your training, which doesn't cost much at that level.  Training teaches you new spells and abilities and higher ranks of spells or abilities you already know.  Better gear will give you more armor and stats, which will help you to fight better.  The main stats on gear are intellect (for a larger mana pool and spell critical chance, valuable to casters such as mages or priests who use spells to kill things with magical damage), stamina (something that gives you more health, good for everyone), strength (which allows melee classes such as rogues or warriors to hit harder and block attacks better in hand to hand combat), agility (which allows anyone to dodge more or have a higher chance to hit critically in hand to hand combat), and spirit (determines how fast you regain health and mana when not in combat).  You can get better gear by picking it up when it randomly drops off of something you kill, by trading another player for it, or by buying it from an Auction House or vendor.  Some gear can be made by players through professions.  Each player can have two main professions which range from being able to gather herbs, mining, and skinning, to engineering, blacksmithing, leatherworking, tailoring.  There's also a primary profession of enchanting which teaches you how to enchant gear with various enchants that will make it better.  Besides the primary professions you may also learn all of the secondary professions which are cooking that allows you to make food which will restore health or mana when eaten or possibly give you a buff that adds to your skills for a brief period of time, first aid which teaches you to make and use bandages to restore your health, and fishing which allows you to catch fist and occaisionally other things that might be in the water.  The fish can be cooked if you have learned cooking, or sold to a vendor or on the auction house.

By the time you've finished the quests on Teldrassil you will have a good idea of how to play and know some basics about what various types of creatures do, as well as some basic info about aggro and just which creatures you can approach and which ones want to hurt you.  You will have had plenty of time to explore and to find out tidbits like the fact that loggin out in an inn will slowly build up rest, which allows you to get double the experience for killing things as you normally do, for as long as you are rested, which will depend on how long you were in the inn. As you finish doing things in each area, or reach the proper level, you're directed by a quest giver to another appropriate area for your level.  For instance, when you get near to being ready for the next area, there is a quest giver on Teldrassil that will tell you how to ride the Gryffon (a large, cow/bird looking creature that provides transportation to the alliance) to the mainland.  There is also a boat that will take you to Kalimdor, and leave you at the docks in Darkshore, the next area you'll want to hit.  From there, you can pick up another boat that will take you to Menethil Harbor in the Wetlands on the other continent, the Eastern Kingdoms. 

As you progress through the levels, your character slowly learns more spells and abilities.  Learning as you go, it is quite easy to get a grasp on the game, though having never played this type of game myself, it took interaction with other players who knew what they were doing to get a grasp on the finer points.  It was quite easy to level and play alone without much help though, as Blizzard made the game extremely simple to learn. 

As you level up, you get into more and more fun things, from more extensive quests to chains of quests, to quests that lead you into dungeons or "instances" where you'll need a group to be successful.  Each instance is unique to your group.  Black Fathom Deeps for instance (excuse the pun) will be unique to your group in that no one else in the world will be there to see or help you besides your group.  It will however, always contain the same mobs and have the same mapping.  Each instance has bosses at various intervals, useful not only because killing them may be the object of a quest, but because they drop better loot than the average mob and it might be something that is useful to your class.  As you get higher in level, the instances will get harder, until at level 60 you are doing "end-game" dungeons that require up to 40 people (and a lot of practice) to make it through successfully.  As of now, there are 4 dungeons this large and difficult, Molten Core, Black Wing Lair, AQ40, and Naxxaramus.  In order to get 40 people together who know each other and each other's playstyles and can work together, players form guilds.  My characters are in a guild called Aequitas, which has about 60 main characters and a seperate guild for alt characters called Altquitas.  Of the 60 of us there are usually 35-45 on at our scheduled raid (dungeon trips) time.  If we have too many some of us in the overstrengthed classes will roll for spots in the raid but fortunately that doesn't happen too often. Ideally we take 5 of each of the 8 classes and that is considered a well-balanced raid.  Balance is good, because each class has unique contributions it can make to the success of the raid.  Mages for instance, can turn targets into sheep for a brief period of time for crowd control and conjure food and water that allows people to return to full health and mana after a fight more quickly, as well as dealing heavy damage to help kill mobs and bosses quickly.  Tanks, usually warriors are needed to keep themobs and bosses hitting them because in their plate armor and with skills to keep themselves from taking damage as quickly, they can last long enough for healers to keep them alive.  A boss wandering helter skelter though a raid of cloth wearing mages and priests and leather wearing druids and rogues would quickly kill the entire raid.  Healers, of course, are necessary because even well-geared tanks can't last the entirity of a boss fight with no heals. 

I'm not sure how well that explained things, but it's some of the basics.  Hopefully it wasn't so boring that you are all asleep by now and I'll try to explain more later, when I've had time to take some screen shots of various things in the game, because everything is easier to understand with pictures.  Besides that, the graphics in this game are outstanding, despite the fact that I have most of my settings turned down as far as they'll go to allow for faster communication with the game on my dial up connection.  If nothing else, I hope that made it easier to understand why it's more than just a game to me.  It's a community, much like AOL Journals, only where you can actually DO things (in a sense) with the other people in the community, if nothing more than sitting in one of the capitol cities or some safe place with pretty scenery and chatting through the in game chat.  (Yes we do get tired of playing sometimes and just sit and chat lol.)

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11:08:29 AM CDT

Ok, it's maintenance day in the World of Warcraft (my favorite online game/hobby) so there isn't much to do and it'd be an ideal time for a journal entry but I have a lack of anything to talk about.

Today has been much like every day of the past couple weeks.  I woke up, managed to walk from one room to another without falling over, and...well that's about it.  Life is pretty boring at the moment and there's the main reason I don't write in my journal now...unless I start describing what I've done in my game there really isn't anything to write ABOUT. 

I have to say I never thought I'd list getting up and making it to the other room without falling over as my big accomplishment for the day...

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2:00:02 PM CDT

Some of you know what's been going on with the lady driver (or former lady driver but we'll get to that in good time) from reading my mom's journal, but for those of you that don't I'll try to update you the best I can with the "big news" from the last few months.

My last entry was in September.  I went to work for Schneider National (the big orange trucks, I'm sure you've all seen them) in October.  Well...I went to work for an owner/operator there with Turtle.  I got sick while I was in orientation and blew it off as having eaten something bad until I got sick again shortly after heading out with Turtle on our first run. We couldn't find a doctor in PA that would see me in less than two weeks so Turtle drove us back to Dallas where our next load went and where my pick up truck was sitting and got me into a clinic, where the doctor talked with me for a few minutes and sent me straight to the hospital.  I spent a week in the hospital in Dallas and had my gall bladder removed, something that I thought only old people had problems with but have since learned can malfunction in people as young as teenagers.

That was a new experience for me, having only been in a hospital once and only for a few hours then.  Of course, the stubborn lady driver drove herself home to Oklahoma once released, though I regretted that later lol.  I had no idea it would be so tough, but I made it just fine and spent a couple months recovering from the surgery before I felt well enough to head back out on the road.

By then, Turtle had moved to PA to be with the new love of her life and our boss had no trucks available, so I hopped into one of the ultra slow orange company trucks at Schneider and got back to work.  They've been an awesome company to work for, despite their bad rap for the slowness.  They have wonderful benefits, don't push you to do anything illegal or unsafe, ever, and are generally very nice people who take excellent care of you anytime you need anything.  I've found this last part out the hard way, when things started going wrong this spring.

A few months ago, I started having some tingling and numbness in my feet.  It wasn't a huge concern.  I figured I had a pinched nerve or something and it would straighten itselfout.  When it didn't after a couple of weeks I went to my doctor who sent me for an MRI just to be safe and it came back just fine.  He said it was most likely just an inflammation of the muscles and tissue around my nerves pinching them and gave me some anti-inflammatory medicine which helped a great deal and things were fine.

Until a few weeks later when I woke up dizzy and off balance.  I had noticed this before but it had been so minor that I thought I could have been imagining it.  This time, however, it was definitely not my imagination.  It settled down after a few hours and I decided to wait and see what happened.  The rest of that day it was fine but the next day it was back and didn't calm down as it had the first time.  It kept getting worse so I went back to the doctor when I got home a few days later and he thought it might be something to do with my inner ear, as I also had ringing in one ear.  He gave me a small dose of a short term steroid and some anti-histamines.  Within a few days I felt much better and headed back out.

Unfortunately, once the steroids had run their course, I was having problems with dizziness and balance again, as well as having difficulty getting my eyes to work together.  Each one alone was fine but together they were seeing double...fun stuff.  The numbness and tingling were back in my feet too, and now in my hands as well.  I called the doctor again and he was concerned, wanting me to get home and have another MRI, this time of my head. 

Without telling them too much to worry them, I let the company know I needed to get home to the doctor asap and was working my way that direction, but it was getting too bad to deal with and after finishing out a load in PA I stopped and called them.  I explained exactly what was going on and found that I was at an excellent exit for being sick, as there was a clinic right there that took walkins all the time and where I could see a doctor.  A very nice lady doctor saw me and said she definitely recommended me getting home right away for an MRI, though her idea of what it was was quite different from my doctor's idea.  He thought it might be a tumor.  She was the first one to bring up something even scarier...Multiple Sclerosis.

I called Schneider to let them know what was going on, and they were very supportive.  I don't know what I would have done without them.  No company that I've ever worked for has been that great to me when I've had problems on the road.  They assured me they "would" get me home, if it meant my dispatcher had to drive to PA and take me home himself.  They were just as concerned about my things in the truck too, not wanting me to lose my stuff.  A local trucker chaplain contacted by the clinic helped me out too, bringing me some boxes to pack my things in, and shipping them off for me.  Schneider sent another driver, a very nice one to boot, to help me get things packed up and to take me to Pittsburgh, where they had booked a flight for me at their expense, to get me home the next day. 

Coming home alone was very difficult.  By that time I was having such a hard time with my balance it was difficult to walk, let alone navigate a crowded airport alone, and with the double vision it was even worse, having a hard time reading signs and such.  So I asked the cab driver who took me from the motel to the airport if they had services to assist people with physical problems and he was also extremely nice (only the second time I'd ever taken a cab and I wasn't expecting that as the first time was not so pleasant) and took me right to the place I needed to be for my airline and got the airline guy for me, who grabbed my electronic tickets, labeled my bags, and got someone with a wheelchair who whisked me off through the huge airport and security and got me to my gate in about 30min.  I don't think I've ever gotten through an airport so quickly to be honest.

I didn't ask for any assistance at the connecting airport in Cincinnati.  I had plenty of time and managed to do ok there (though I can't say I care for little commuter flights that dump you outside and leave you to walk INTO the airport after climbing down steps from the plane...another new experience for me).  I even found the smoking lounge and managed to have a couple cigarettes and make a couple of phone calls before grabbing a burger from McD's and catching the next flight.  I did, however, also manage to fall getting onto the next plane, right at the poor stewardesses feet.  It mostly only hurt my pride, and left a huge bump on my arm where it hit the wall, but otherwise itwas fine.

My awesome sister-in-law picked me up at the airport in Oklahoma City and drove me home, along with my step-sister and niece.  I think they were glad for the break in a long hot day of watching my other niece play ball.  It had to be like 100degrees or more outside that day and they were all starting to turn red.

That was a weekend and I called my doctor to arrange an MRI first thing Monday morning, but he didn't seem as concerned and took his sweet time setting it up.  It took until the next week before I had an appointment, and I swear he said Tuesday, but when we got there Tuesday we found it was actually scheduled for Wednesday.  At least we found out they are happy to come out with a wheelchair when you get there.  Too bad we found this out after I fell again and hit my back on the bench I was trying to make it to, to wait for mom to park the car. 

It took a few days to get the results back from the MRI, so it was Monday again before I knew anything, and that's when he told me that it did show indications of Multiple Sclerosis, and that I would need to see a neurologist to find out for sure.  He said he was going to refer me to the best one in the state and set up an appointment with him.  That didn't happen until the next day.  When they called I was sleeping and mom answered the phone.  They told her the appointment had been made for August 22nd...and she flipped out of course.  That was two months away and not acceptable.  She finally managed to get through to him just how bad things were and he called the neurologist back, who now said he wa to see me THAT day, whenever we could get there.

When we went in, he did some simple checks and went over my MRI films...and admitted me straight into the hospital.  I hated my hospital stay in Dallas in October/November and wasn't happy about this, but as I didn't seem to have a choice, off to the hospital room I went.  Mercy turned out to be a much nicer place to stay, in my opinion.  They only had private rooms, which was nice, and the staff were all very nice as well.  I was in a regular room for a few days and then they moved me to the rehab part, where I started to feel more like I was in a resort than a hospital.  I didn't need an IV any longer, and was on a regular diet, so could ask for whatever I wanted to eat.  The room was nice and cool and anytimeI wanted or needed anything I could just push a button and have it brought to me.  I swear if it weren't for all the medical looking things around the room and nurses coming to check my vital signs it would have felt just like a pricey resort. 

The neurologist put me on a high dosage of steroids to try and get my symptoms under control, and they seem to be helping a good deal.  Between those and the physical therapy I can walk with a minimum of assistance in keeping my balance (i.e. something to hang onto, like a rail or a cane).  My double vision hasn't cleared up any at all, I sincerely hope it does, it's driving me crazy.  The only way I can see well enough to read or look at things on the computer is by covering one eye with a patch, and the pirate look just isn't doing it for me.  My feet aren't horribly numb or tingly anymore, but my hands are still fairly bad.  I can type (obviously) but it's more difficult than it has ever been before, and it's slower than I'd prefer.  I get tired extremely easy...say walking around Wal-Mart for 10-15minutes, and need to rest often.  At this point that's about all I know.  They did several more tests at the hospital, blood tests and another MRI, and something called a lumbar puncture to get fluid from my spinal cord to test...and confirmed without a doubt that this IS MS. 

MS is an auto-immune disease where your body's own immune system mistakes you own nerves for foreign substances and attacks them, damaging their coating.  Basically, imagine that you're a robot and your nerves are your wiring...and that you have rats gnawing at them causing short circuits.  Fortunately, in the last 10yrs or so, they've found some great medicines for MS, that can help.  The unfortunate part is that they're very, VERY expensive.  The one that my doctor prescribed is called Rebif, and is injected 3 times a week.  It costs $1700 for a month's supply.  I have excellent insurance with Schneider, that pays for 70% of this, and has an approximate yearly cap of $1,000 out of pocket prescription costs, after which they pay 100%.  The only thing I'm concerned about is that the doctors don't feel that my symptoms will ever clear up enough for me to drive.  I already confirmed with Schneider's Occupational Health Department that is IS ok to drive with MS, and that drivers who DO have it still drive.  The thing is that it depends on being able to get the symptoms under control well enough to not interfere with the job.  MS is very different for different people though, and quite unpredictable.  Most people have remissive/relapsing MS, meaning that their symptoms go partially or completely away for long periods of time, for years even, then show up again for brief periods, then go away again, etc.  Other people have slowly progressing MS, where they continually pick up more symptoms and they never go away.  I'm really not sure what to think of mine, and as it's so unpredictable, the doctors can't give me any definite answers either.  With me, as you can see, it's happened all at once, and seems to keep getting worse.  I don't know what to think about that, since it doesn't seem to fit into either of the normal types of MS.  The neurologist seems to think that I'll keep getting better, and that the high dosage of steroids that I've been on will have lingering effects for up to a year, keeping my symptoms somewhat away, as they have been.  He can't say if my vision will clear up or if the symptoms will completely go away though.  The rehab doctor was frank with me and said she didn't think they would clear up enough for me to go back to driving.  She advised me to apply for disability as soon as possible, and said that she did feel I'd be able to work again at some other kind of job.

I don't know quite what to do with all of this information.  I've never had a job other than trucking where I was happy, or at least somewhat happy, with my work environment and pay.  And now certainly isn't the best time to try and find something else.  After the hospitalization with no insurance and no income to keep up with my payments on credit card debt, I have quite enough money problems as is.  I was working with a debt consolidation agent to get that taken care of and was just about to start on a two year program to get completely out of that debt when all this started.  I obviously can't do that now, having no income at the moment.  And I have no idea what I could do to make anywhere near what I was making before this started.  I looked up social security disability online and found that I would, if approved, getroughly $700 a month from that...not even enough to cover my medication, let alone start paying off thousands of dollars of overdue debt, and let's not even start talking about living expenses.  Somehow or another, I have to make sure I don't lose my insurance that I've had with Schneider, which I'm assuming will be paying for it myself once we find out for sure if I'll be able to work as a driver again, something that is not very hopeful. 

At the moment, I've been told not to work or drive at all until the neurologist says it's ok, and I'm to be taking this medicine and going to physical/occupational therapy 3 times a week for the next 4 weeks to try and keep regaining my strength and balance.  They're hopeful that my vision will clear up to some extent.  He said that the process of your brain putting pictures from two eyes together into one single vision is very complex and can take time to straighten out but it is still possible, so we'll see.  It's hard to try and figure out what to do with all of this still going on, and not knowing just how much better it's going to get.

It's all a little overwhelming for the lady driver, someone who has been extremely independent since, well...birth I'd say.  I've never been someone to count on other people for things.  I've always wanted to be able to take care of myself entirely.  This entire business has made me feel very vulnerable and dependent on everyone around me.  I suppose I'll learn to deal with that, but at the moment it's not easy.

So...that's what's up with me...my big news.  I may write more now that I've nothing much to do except play on the computer, who knows.  As usual, no promises.  Writing is something I do when I feel like it, and I never know when I might feel like it lol.

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7:32:04 AM CDT

A lone, shadowy figure cautiously pokes her head around the corner of a journal and checks for signs of life before darting quickly across a street in J-Land and disappearing behind another journal.

Could it be...?  Is it...?

Yes.  It's Ladydriversammie.

No, she hasn't fallen off the face of the earth.

 

Some things she has done in the past six months:

- split up with her fiance, basically on mutual agreement, a thing that she feels will make the both of them happier in the long run

- spent many hours in the World of Warcraft, an extremely fun MMORPG (massively multi-player online role playing game) and her latest way of entertaining herself during her free time

- left the trucking company she was working for, in order to preserve her sanity, take a much needed hiatus, and find a company to work for that believes in drivers that have other hobbies aside from working (such as sleeping, eating, showering...)

- gotten an awesome new laptop, which had to undergo a major surgery to have a new hard drive implanted recently

 

Some things she is thinking, after a brief journey through J-Land:

- Andrea? Divorce? California???

- Viv?! A house?! That's great!

- What happened to SloMo?  *cries*

- Ah, Scalzi...same great sense of humor.

- Speaking of humor...Jeff, Mr. Comedy himself...finally came back after all those months?!

 

While six months can't be summed up in a brief entry, those things hit on her foremost thoughts.  She'd also like to say she still loves and misses all of her friends in J-Land, though she refuses to feel guilty for the lack of writing over the last six months and makes no promises to resume writing on a regular basis.

She might pop in from time to time though, you just never know.

And yes...she is still speaking in the third person.  We're not sure why that is.  =)

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