Um, Say What?

This is my 20th post on this blog. It's funny to me since I have 665 on my other one.
So, do you ever sit down and start thinking about life and your MS comes to mind and even though you already knew it, it hits you again:


Wow, this IS for the rest of my life. Holy S*%t!


Maybe it's still the fact that all of this is still new to me and, honestly, it's made my life really crappy for the last eight months, but I honestly do have those times when that thought comes to my head.
For instance, my oldest monkey came up to me the other night and said "Remember when we made those plans to go to Disney World in a year? That's still happening right?"
Without thinking, I said "Sure honey, why wouldn't we be going? We already have reservations and things. Why would you think we wouldn't go?"
"Um, well, because of your MS."
And I sat there for a second and it hit me, oh yeah, I'll still have "my MS" in a year, right. Cause it's here forever. Right.


I guess I'm still getting used to all of this.


But there could be perks to going to Disney now.


I'll have my scooter and by then I plan on switching out those wimpy wheels and horn for something more, how shall we put this? Substandstial?


Yeah, like that but only four more of those.

And the horn we've already discussed.

Oh, there will be danger, my friend. In fact, Danger is my middle name. (Actually it's not but I was on a roll of coolness.)

On a serious note, I've made myself a goal. I'm calling it the:

"No Weather Permitting Will Be Said Goal"

I know that doesn't make sense but I can help you. During the winter months, whenever my mother is making any plans to come and visit us, at the end of every conversation she will say "Of course, you know, this is all Weather Permitting, right?"

I don't want to tell my kids "Yeah, we'll go to Disney, As Long As Mommy Feels Good. It's the same difference, to me atleast. Because, just like snow in the winter, we all know that we can go from feeling great to poo in 2.4 seconds.

So, I am keeping our plans. If I need to add a nanny, I can handle that. In fact, we might do that anyway. But my children will see enormous rodents next spring!

How do you all manage family vacations?

It Appears That I've Been Brought Out Of Hiding

I don't usually get a lot of comments on this blog (although who am I kidding? I don't get more than 11 a day on my other blog either!) so imagine my surprise when I signed on to this one last night and saw that I had, like 10 comments for my last post! I just figured that maybe all of my blog buddies followed me over here and started commenting here too but to my even more surprise, all of the comments were from people that were new!

So, for all you new people visiting the zoo, I'd like to say

Welcome and Thanks For Comin'! Feel Free To Take Your Coat Off And Stay A While! But Don't Plan on Stayin' Too Long Cause' You Might Mess Up My Nap Time!

I've actually been stalking a lot of your all's blogs lately but I haven't been leaving a lot of comments out there in the blogosphere. I'm still new to this whole MS thing and I didn't want to intrude.

But today, when I went stalking, I found that Brain Cheese did a whole post on me and she welcomed me "Onto The Short Bus" (which for some reason cracks me up every time I hear or read that!).

I might have left a teeny tiny little comment about wanting my MS blog put on her blog roll but I totally wasn't expecting all of this! She even did a blog review, which she says she never does because she doesn't want anyone to review her blog.

So, as you can tell, I was feeling pretty happy. My ego was a little puffed up. Tracy was now welcomed onto the short bus. Rock on!

Then I read in the Brain Cheese Comments that one Miss Lisa Emrich wrote this:

" I was planning on announcing/welcoming Tracy tomorrow...but now.... well, humphf... I'll have to find something else"

What? Is there an almost fight going on over me? People, people, listen to me, there's totally enough Tracy to go around! Lisa, don't you go finding something else! Announce me anways! And as I said to you in my reply comment, if you need me to act all surprised, I totally can do that!

I started a blog list and have put some of the ones who commented up there. I'm almost certain that I missed some of you. Please don't take that personally, as I tend to have the attention span of a gnat most days (Ahh, the joys of MS). Plus, I kind of got sleepy and there was this whole thing with a chicken following me around but that's a story for another day. The point is, if I missed you or I didn't miss you and you just want your blog up there, leave me a comment!

And, seriously, thanks for the welcome. I'm still not exactly sure how I got to be on the short bus. I don't know if you grabbed me off the street and knocked me out and when I came to welcomed me, but all the same thanks!

I wanted to share with you all this kind of awesome comeback that I had the other day. (yeah, I'm kind of proud of myself, so what?)

Have you all noticed that when you have an illness or disease like, oh I don't know, MS and you tell someone and you see that moment when it hits them that they have no idea what to say to you now? Then this switch flips and it's like "I must throw as many analogies at her as possible" and then you're hit with all of these sentences that make no sense and half don't even pertain to you? Well, this is one I had the other day.

Random Mom at Kids School: Oh, MS huh? Wow. Well, I guess that Forrest Gump was right. Life really is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get.

Me: Well, I mean, I guess if the box of chocolates was the kind filled with the gross goo inside and you knew that every one you bit in to was going to be disgusting and you'll want to put it back in the box but you totally can't, then yeah it's a lot like what I'm going through with MS.

Welcome To The Zoo

Hi, My name is Tracy and I have MS {ahem, this is where you would all say "Hi Tracy" in your most somber AA voices...What? Nobody wants to play along? Fine.}



Well, I guess I'll try it again.

Hi, I'm Tracy. I have three kids who are insane monkeys most of the time. More often than not, I feel like the zoo keeper instead of the homemaker. No, seriously, I'm told they're great so that's good right? My oldest, who was probably the biggest surprise I've ever had in my entire life, will be 9 soon but she acts like a raging, pms-ing, 16 year old most of the time. My favorite thing that she says is "I want to be treated like an adult!" So I'll treat her like an adult and then she gets mad and stomps off to cry in her room. As I watch her go, I think "Gee, if only we could all choose when we want to be adults like she can."

My second child, also a girl, is 7. She was probably the second most biggest surprise of my life since my first baby wasn't even a year old yet when I found out she was on her way. She's an interesting kid. I'm pretty sure that she is a reincarnated 80 year old woman from Jersey who used to smoke a lot of Pall Malls. Actually, I'm pretty sure that Em has lived a lot of passed lives because there are times when she starts talking in a brittish accent, then suddenly she's southern sounding like Scarlett O'Hara. But the Jersey thing has lasted the longest. Plus, she always gives you the feeling that she's way smarter than you and she's just tolerating you until she can reach world domination.

Then there's the wee-man. My little two year old tazmanian devil. I swear, I thought I knew what I was doing with this whole mothering thing until I had a boy. Geesh. He never stops moving, what he can't climb, he eats, and he's more than happy to piss his sisters off. He also has times when he's cuddly and sweet. Usually he's sleeping during those times but they still count.

I'm not going to give you the long, detailed road of how I came to be diagnosed with MS. I'll just give you the important stuff and we'll build up from there.
Here's the low down. Around the age of 16 or so, I remember having a week when I had a horrible headache, a blind spot in my right eye, and it hurt just to move my eyes. I didn't really mention it to anyone and after a week it went away. Problem solved. I just assumed that I had taken some bad drugs or something. I know now that what I had was Optic Neuritis and that was probably my onset to MS.
Years went by, a marriage happened between myself and my wonderful husband, and lots of babies kept appearing out of nowhere (and by nowhere I mean my whooohaaaa!) and life went on.
Over the past ten years, I've had times when I was a little "extra clumsy" and I would trip over random things, like oh, say, air, but I always managed to explain these things away. It doesn't do for mother to get sick afterall.
Two years ago, after my son was born, I started having a lot of migraines. Like three to four crippling migraines a week. I had the blindspot, sensitivity to light, smell, noise, and people. I started seeking help from neurologists for these migraines and since none of them knew what to do with me but were to arrogant to admit it, they would just write me a prescription for some pill that would do nothing and then send me on my way.
About eight months ago, I had a migraine that was so bad I ended up in the E.R. The next day I followed up with my family doctor who was an elderly, smalltown doctor that I basically used for antibiotics. He said "Hey, you know, you've never had an MRI. We should maybe get one of those." So, I did.
Two hours after my first MRI, my family doctor called me to tell me that I needed to see a neurologist ASAP. That I had 19-20 lesions in the white matter of my brain, consistent with MS.
My life changed at that exact moment.
I do have another blog that I've had for about four years called Rambling Thoughts of The Neverending Mind but it's more of my funny, everything is peaches and cream and everyone is shitting snowcones kind of blog. I didn't want to weigh it down with MS stuff so I decided to start this one.
I'm hoping to find some people who also have MS. Right now I only have one person that I exchange emails with and I would really love to hear from more people, compare some notes, curse the illness, whatever hits our fancy.
So, Wecome to the Zoo!