Day 12 - Recovery from the Treatment (+3)

No one had sugar coated just how bad I might feel as a result of this treatment so I can not claim to be surprised...but still!   I guess I was hoping for the best while prepared for the worst!    I would basically say that all of the worst of any MS symptom that I have ever experienced I am now experiencing again but all at once.   This is getting better on a day by day basis but I am still incredibly weak which means that any amount of exertion brings those symptoms back to the forefront.   Something interesting about MS in that conduction of nerve impulses changes as fatigue (and body temperature) change your blood chemistry.   As the myelin that protects my nerves has eroded to a severe extent I am very susceptible to these changes.

This has effected most of my body but most noticeably in my legs and my need for two sticks to walk while staying up right (important for getting from point A to point B).   My arms are also impacted though to a lesser degree and manifested mostly in a lack of strength though dexterity remains reasonably high.   My eyesight, particularly my right eye, is also impacted with some vision disturbance coming and going.

Perhaps most frustrating has been my hands.   At the peak of the treatment I was experiencing quite a bit of tingling and numbness of both hands with my right worse than my left.   Again, I have experienced this before but this was at the worst level it had ever been.   At this point it would have been impossible to type as I am typing now though I was able to manipulate the key pad on my iPhone and iPad to post to this blog (though Siri actually took dictation for many entries!).  Day by day since my last treatment this has improved and while I still have a little impact they are coming back to normal.   Thankfully.

Hindsight is always 20-20 but I wish that I had thought about measuring the impact of the treatment before I went to hospital.   Over the past year I have been working pro-bono on a device for the NHS that is designed to measure the recovery of cardiac patients.   It measures the strength of a kick over a sustained one second period allowing for ten kicks with the best of those kicks being recorded.

It has not gone into production yet for a variety of reasons but I would have liked to have adapted it to measure a couple aspects of my condition.   I don't have a stress gauge like the one the NHS would use (expensive) but think I could have rigged something with a cheap distance sensor (maybe measuring the distance that I am able to raise my leg)?  Oh well.   Coulda done.