From Tuesday through Saturday

It seems that I've gotten caught up in the new speech recognition software and have blown about 45 minutes just playing around. Sigh.

Today is a new day; in its newness, one can find hope and encouragement and even refreshment should they choose to seek it. I must confess that having gone nearly 6 days straight with attacks each day, and yesterday having two attacks in one day, I'm finding it difficult to put the energy into searching for anything at the moment. That having been said, what I don't want this entry to be is a pity party or a lamenting how life can suck at times. What I do want this to be, however, is a general recounting of the last five days or so. I believe my last entry into the blog came Thursday night following a hellish day. Anytime you see a blog entry that's only got a couple lines of writing in it then I have sent that posting from my cell phone, likely either from my bed or my black chair downstairs. Most often, I use my cell phone to post a blog entry when I do not have the strength to get up and walk to the computer.

So where are we? Yesterday was Saturday, the day before my daughter’s 15th birthday, and the day came with two smaller sized hits, both of which landed me in the black chair with oxygen and the latter of the two hits found me leaning my back against the wall with my knees locked in an attempt to keep from falling and my wife in front of me with her arms under my arms, holding me up until Missy could come downstairs and help. I don't know what triggered either one of these hits, but I did have a gut feeling when I woke up that I was going to take a hit at some point during the day; under these circumstances, I do not enjoy being right other than to take confidence in my gut feelings. One attack happened in the midmorning and the second attack happened in the early afternoon. Though it has nothing to do with me, I'm very proud to share that Missy ran 10 miles today in an effort to raise money for her school cross country uniform and she ran most of the way but he regardless of speed, she finished the race on her own and I could not be more proud of her. My heart goes out and thanks to those of you that were able to support her in her pledge of running the 10 miles; thank you.

The day before yesterday, Friday, Missy had a track meet in Oroville and was gone for most the whole day. Upon returning to the school around 7:30 that night, Joshy, CC and I picked her up from school and drove to her current favorite restaurant, Denny's for an informal, celebratory dinner. By the time it was ready for us to order, I had read through their nutrition guide front to back and realized that there was nearly nothing I could eat; something I had suspected but did not know for sure. I went for the safest dish that we could think of; planes scrambled eggs and playing hashbrowns. All of us were pretty hungry, me included, so when the food came I tried a couple bites and waited for a minute or two to see if I would have any immediate reaction. Seeing no reaction initially, it did not take me long to finish off my plate of food, but, right about the point when the three of them were finished with their dinners, I was having a difficult time thinking and speaking.  Most of us with periodic paralysis refer to this experience as “brain fog”, a typical precursor to an attack. If I recall correctly, both kids helped me get out to the car while CC took care of paying the bill and then we drove home and CC and Missy help me get up the stairs and into bed. I do remember that my job was locked and I was panicking because I could not open it myself, but CC applied in the end downward pressure at the base of my jaw which released my tongue and clenched jaw. After a cocktail of liquid potassium and apple juice, along with my nighttime meds, I waited for the pain meds to kick in and hoped that I would escape my body's retribution in the morning. No such luck. I realized when I woke up Saturday morning that my jaw was very, very sore and somewhat puffy on both sides; I figured out fairly quickly how to be able to maximize my verbal communications with minimizing my mouth and jaw movements. Yogurt was for breakfast.

Thursday's attack was ugly. CC and I were on our way to our PT appointment that morning and on our way there, CC, along with the pickup truck behind us, decided to change into the same lane at the same time. Our vehicles never touched each other, praise the Lord, but there was some swerving and screeching of truck tires and my body locked up. CC told me that after we had arrived in the parking lot for PT, she gave me some liquid potassium and shortly thereafter Mark came out with one of their rolling office chairs and the two of them got me from the van into the building, up the elevator and into their office and then into one of their private rooms. I have a vague recollection of the symptoms mellowing out until my chest got cold at one point and the chills began, followed by more spasms, cramps and muscle locks. I don't know how long this lasted nor do I remember much of anything after that. I understand that they got it back out to the car the same way they have brought me in and that when I was still in the office, she gave me another dose of liquid potassium which eventually mellowed out spasms and cramps. I spent the rest of the day and evening in bed and I'm not able to remember much else. Obviously, I did send from my cell phone while I was in bed; good for me.

Wednesday was Missy's Back-To-School Night and, though I have a small hit in the afternoon, the evening came out fine while we were at the high school. I am so very thankful that nothing happened to me while we were there: that would've been terribly awkward for Missy and I would've felt like trash. A borderline, small hit began on our way home from the Back-To-School Night but it did not fully manifest and I was able to get away with just taking my regular medications going to bed.

I'm kind of fuzzy on Tuesday night’s hit, but I do recall talking with CC about it and we both felt that it was a combination of three things; emotional stress, higher sodium count dinner and being physically wiped out. Unfortunately, any one of these three can be a trigger in and of itself, so after-the-fact, it was not too hard to figure out.

Okay, it's 3:17 AM and I really need to stop and go to bed now. Once again, I am so grateful for this software (may God thoroughly bless you Greg) because without it I would not have been able to have posted this blog. I also just thought about this; I can't remember if I included this in a previous blog, but this software also played a critical role in my getting help a week ago Thursday, I believe. My body had gone into nearly full paralysis during the time which I was posting to the blog and that blog entry actually depicted what was happening to me before most of the rest of the things went South. Because I still had the headset mic on my head, I was able to use the software and my right index finger to be able to send two e-mail text message to CC, for her to come home from a coffee meeting she was having with one of her good friends, because the symptoms were getting worse and the attack had begun. For whatever reason, I did not have my cell phone on me and thus was not able to speed dial her, which I have done in the past. Had it not been for the software, things could have been quite bad. My buddy Scott Shuford called tonight and he suggested that I share this experience with the makers of Dragon NaturallySpeaking as a testimonial; as per usual, I think he has a very good idea.
Okay, it's 3:26 AM now. I'm done