Regarding Ricky

In true ‘ricky’ fashion I have neglected to tend to these musings/thoughts in quite some time. For the longest time (about 3 years or so) I have been having the hardest time getting around, and feeling my legs**(my legs have had intermittent numbing). At the first on-set I just wrote it off as some weird fluke, perhaps some Floridian voodoo I wasn’t to familiar with. It started off as a minor numbing in one leg that seemed to coincide with the cold (November-march) and it would seem to fade or not be as noticable once the warm season started. I remember that first year I saw a G.P. who ran his tests and diagnosed me with a b-12 deficiency.

I guess it because I don’t like to trust doctors but I really didn’t put too much stock in that diagnosis. Well regardless I followed or semi-followed that doctors orders, once the warm season started again it seemed that everything was fine or just ‘fine enough’. As long as my foot didn’t plop off I was fine enough to work….

When the ‘cold’ season came back I immediately wrote it off as b-12 nonsense. With the end of the first spell and well into the second ‘go around’ I was really prone to loosing my balance and I mean REALLY loosing my balance. Thank God for the flea market, I ended up buying this nifty ergonomic cane (aside from someone making an occasional pimp joke – life was ok.)

Fast forward a bit to cold season ’09, at about the onset of winter I remember that it felt like my feet would sometimes be burning (at work) and not in a jock-itch burn but in an acetylene torch kind of burn. I was also having an exceptionally difficult time trying to get around. I waited for my wife to come home from a trip before I went back into the emergency room. (actually the second time I went I went in with the assistance of an ambulance since I couldn’t walk under my own volition).

Modesty is a luxury

on my first day, while people twirl all around my bed and disappear off to hidden corners I just lay there. While all this is going down there are other powers that be in the hospital analyzing specific MRIs and other such tests. While I lay there with an ever-growing belly, I was doing my best to put on a braveface.

The diagnosis we eventually received didn’t come as a surprise because the neurologists were saying it all along.

Multiple Sclerosis

I’ll end todays entry with this…. I try not to be too schmaltzy (despite what my wife says) I’ve never been an avid reader of the Chicken Soup for the Soul books, I’ve been blessed with an amazing wife, one that worries way too much for one person,

in order to not over diagnose myself I’ve limited myself to what I’ve learned about MS… this tends to work for me.