Cold, Allergies, MS or Stress

Multiple Sclerosis helps move my mom

Cold, Allergies, MS or Stress

Cold, Allergies, MS or Stress

Repeat 2 times

Say it with me now

Yes, a move was doing me in. And don’t worry, you don’t have déjà vu.   My mom is moving, not me.

How is it that 3 months ago I moved into a lovely complex that’s 85% elderly folks, but my mom is moving into a hip, gorgeous one bedroom filled with young people?

My mom’s new place has a beautiful balcony overlooking a golf course where she can gussy herself up and maybe meet a wealthy, single golfer.

I’m lucky if I meet a male retiree on the b-bus.  Extra points if he’s human as pets are allowed in my complex.  Maybe I should get a dog?  They can’t be that much work, right?

But I digress.

I’d had three months of non- moving rest so I could handle this.  What’s so bad about boxes and  newspaper and tape?  I was going to make this happen, especially since it was my idea for my mom to move in the first place.

Her apt was nice but I hated the fact that it came with a flight of stairs to get into and then another flight once inside if you wanted to wash yourself or your clothes- the main bathroom and washer/dryer being on the second floor of her second-floor apt.

If you’re counting, that’s 3 floors.

For a long time I’d been bugging her to leave.

“These stairs are too much for you. One day you’re going to have trouble getting up them,” I huffed up at her from one of the bottom steps as she passed me to unlock her door.

My mom is a morning person and I am too.  I start my day in the morning, right when I get out of bed.

Usually around 11.

I take my meds, have a cup of tea, eat breakfast and then spend half hour or so on FB delaying getting into the shower, an exhausting experience.

But being as my mom has already been up for a while and that’s when she gets her best energy, I tried to compromise.  I really did.

I showed up around 12, 12:30 raring to go.

“Don’t worry mom, I’ll take care of things.”

Is this knick knack going with you, going in the moving sale or the trash?

How bout these shoes?

Or this coat?

But my mom was so spent she barely answered me.  What the heck?  Sure, I have trouble making decisions when I’m fatigued but that’s because of MS.  My mom is not allowed to do that.

And it’s not my fault that she started packing at the ungodly hour of 8:30. Who exerts themselves at 8:30 for crying out loud?

It shouldn’t have been stressful- we had movers.  Both professional and some unprofessionals with a truck who had the misfortune of offering to give us a hand, never thinking we would call them on it.

We also had a dear friend who was helping a ton too and was volunteering her poor, unsuspecting husband to help as well, all because he had a van and muscles and a loving wife who said to us, “don’t worry, I’ll get Jay over…”

But it was a little stressful.

Two nights before the actual physical move I started to worry if I had given the professionals the wrong date.  What if I packed my mom up and set her outside only to have the movers not show?  She could be stuck outside forever!  Did I remember to poke holes in her box?

The moving company was closed at 10 PM and remained closed at 11 PM and 12 AM too.  I got out of bed to check our contract and there was no date listed.  I opened my email to check our confirmation email and there was no date listed there either.  I just had to hope they would show up when my MS brain expected them to show up, whether I had given them the wrong date or not.

What was difficult about all of this was that I was doing it with a vicious illness that was wearing down my already worn-down body.

I thought it was allergies at first- starting around 8 days before the move.  I’ve never even had allergies before I hit a certain age somewhere after 30……..

But now I had the sneezing, fuzzy allergy head on top of regular fuzzy MS head, runny nose and nasally cough.

The week of the move was when whatever this was exploded- the coughing becoming beyond ridiculous.  I wanted drugs.  Good drugs too, not the over the counter kind.

I went to a clinic and was told I had a cold that maybe or maybe not had morphed into bronchitis and antibiotics wouldn’t touch it but here was a prescription for antibiotics anyway.  I filled it and kept coughing.

With all of this going on guess who didn’t get any sleep?  If you said you, then I’m sorry, that’s too bad.  I slept pretty well, despite the coughing.  There are drugs for sleeping too you know and some of them you don’t even need a prescription for.

But everything was just so exhausting.  I kept reciting the phrasing in my mind cold, allergies, MS or stress.   At least until the doctor uttered the word bronchitis and then I changed the phrasing to bronchitis, allergies, MS or stress.

Bronchitis sounded much more serious and thus much more in keeping with how lousy I felt.  If I’m going to feel horrible I better have something that sounds horrible dammit!

The phrase stayed in my brain through the main moving day and through the days that followed when we tried to sell stuff.

It stayed with me during the week that followed that when we tried to give away stuff just so we’d never have to go up those particular sets of stairs again.

Why was it so important for me to get the answer to this question?  Who cares what the culprit of my misery was, it’s over.  I feel a lot better and am now only stressing about where I’ll get my exercise, my mom’s old apartment providing the little exercise I actually got.

In the aftermath, while I still sometimes think bronchitis, allergies, MS or stress, especially since I’m writing about it, I’ve decided that perhaps the timing of this particular bout of ickiness was the result of a combination of all 4.

Take June with all its allergens, throw a horrible cough at it, mix with just a little bit of stress whether or not that little bit of stress should even be stressful, and sprinkle in some multiple sclerosis just for good measure.

What do you get?

A whiny girl who’s psyched for some rest and plans on not moving from her sofa for a quite a while.

No boxes needed.

Happy start of summer my friends!