Dog's Dreamin...

My partner made an interesting observation about my sleeping habits... and came up with a new phrase for my spasticity. And, I've been meaning to talk about this subject but kept getting distracted with shiny things!!

Apparently, a few weeks ago, my legs were twitching so bad that I was shaking the whole bed. My other half ended up sleeping quite peacefully on the floor. I didn't realize this until the following day when she told me. I was very upset about it until I was laughing my ass off about it! I was told that I was puppy dreams. My partner asked me if I was chasing rabbits as well as Emma (our chocolate lab mix). She equated my spastic legs to when Emma is asleep and dreaming with her paws running after some unknown rabbit(s)...

I had been trying to get completely off my anti-spastic medicine (which for me is Zanaflex or Tizanidine) and had not taken it for a few nights when my bunny-chasing night happened. As long as I take my meds I don't chase bunnies....or at least not enough to wake others! We've had quite a few chuckles over that. We all know how our muscles just start going whether we want them to or not. I have had the wonderful privelege of having some facial ticks off and on and I can always tell when I'm having one I don't feel when I get that tilted head-trying to ignore it-look from someone looking at me at the time... The ones I usually don't feel but others might are in my side of my trunk/rib area and upper thigh area.... Anytime I have those now, I get asked what I'm chasing... AHHAAHHHAHAHHAHAHHAH

I love it. I'm the type that wants to laugh at something - I'm a big believer in talking for 30 minutes rather than fighting for 3. The easiest way to disarm someone is to either share something of yourself or laugh at something about yourself. Which, with MS, is quite easy to do. We walk funny, sometimes we talk funny, we have our own language about our bodies because of what's going on with them.... We speak of things like neurons, and myelin, and synapses, and auto-immune.... all those SAT words we wish we would have paid attention to more back then (course, me being the nerd I was in high school I do have SAT words I pull out of my buttocks every now and then just for fun = I was proud of my verbal!)

We each develop our own voacabulary to deal with the specific crap that is unique to our MS. We all know that while we might share hyper-active immune systems that attack our central nervous systems on their myelin and the myelin sheaths... But, being that is a vast world in our brains and spinal cords it makes the disease different for all of us because a sclerosis on a specific spot on our brain or spinal cord makes for a specific reaction. I have 2 lesions on my cervical spine that causes numbness and tingling in both my arms and hands. I wake up almost every morning with numb hands and it goes up into the lower arms sometimes. My last MRI showed no changes in those lesions - which is good. None of us wants the "black hole" conversation about our lesions. Isn't that the reason we overcome our fear of needles for our DMDs??

Anyways... in my house the term "spasticity" or any related words has now been changed to rabbit chasing or doggie dreaming. Think I can get my neuro on board with those terms? I'd love to see it in the New England Journal of Medicine... 'statistics show that group B undergoing treatment 1 experienced statistically less rabbit chasing than group A undergoing a placebo treatment'