MS Awareness Month – Post Two

I probably should've included this in yesterday's post about MS. I described the lesions but what I didn't describe is the main effect they have. What they do is break down the signals from the brain and that causes a lack of function in the associated area of the body that these nerves control. That is one reason why all MS people have different symptoms out of the same large group of symptoms. It's very strange to have a limb that just ignores the command from my brain. I found as I was losing function I could concentrate very hard and get a little extra movement. I think this is part of what leads to the MS fatigue is associated with every form of MS. Now it seems very strange to me to be 2 feet from my bed and I cannot get into it. Now the my right hand is losing and has lost most function very strange to look at it and try to get it to move to wages up and 6 inches over to run my chair.
One other fact that is rarely mentioned is that your body sends signals back to the brain so that the brain knows where the limb is and what is happening. I believe this called proprioception or something like that. So now different things affect my limbs strangely. If someone changes my body position my legs and arms may spasm. Usually the spasming makes the limb go straight. Sometimes the limb does the opposite because the receptors signals are confused while going through the lesion. So far the spasming is not painful and I think at up to keep up some muscle tone. I did have one night where the spasming became uncontrollable in my legs arms and neck. After a trip to the ER I have now on a medication that reduces the spasm. When my arms spasm they do all sorts of unfortunate things like press against the joystick of my wheelchair and away I go. After twice is that I had the wheelchair people (Unity Point home health) move my joystick over so that I can no longer hit it when I spasm. Unfortunately this puts his out of my reach when I want to control my chair. Occasionally in the mornings when I'm fresh I'm able to drive my chair from the bedroom to the living room. Some days I can get my hand off the control and I go around in circles until my wife can tear my hand off the joystick. Never a dull moment in our house!