When you realize a weed is actually a flower…

As I write today I have blisters and scratches all over my hands. I spent the morning outside weeding the front garden. As new homeowners, my husband and I are constantly surprised by things we never realized came along with owning a house. Things like having to call your first extermination service because there is a wasp infestation in your deck railings. Or the first time the upstairs toilet overflows. Or realizing that if you open the upstairs bedroom and bathroom windows at the same time your upstairs doors will all slam shut and scare the poops out of you! All of those lovely, first time homeowner memories will be cherished forever, I’m sure.

We bought our house in the fall last year, so we didn’t really get to see what the trees, flowers, plants around the house looked like in full bloom. Much to my surprise this spring, once our yard finally emerged from its icy blanket of snow I realized that we have quite the little garden started in our front yard! Unfortunately for said garden it took me about a month to realize that the plants growing were in fact intentional, not weeds. Now that I have realized my error (sorry flowers!) I decided it was time to get to work on weeding my garden and cleaning up the front of our house.

Again, knowing nothing about gardening I learned a very important lesson that I shall pass on to my children and my children’s children.

“When one weeds their garden, one must wear gloves, lest their hands will harden”. – A less wise me

Yep, once these blisters heal I intend on having some nice calloused hands to show off my gardening status!

Beginner…the status is beginner.

No matter, I am still proud of the work that I did today. It was hard, physical work, but in a way it was deeply cathartic. Yesterday we buried my husbands grandfather. It was a day full of family, sorrow, memories and love. It was truly a beautiful reminder of what is important in life. Faith, family and love.

As I was weeding the garden, early this morning, I couldn’t help but think. I thought about the past, namely the day before. I prayed for my husbands grandmother and the rest of the family as they process their grief and loss,  and that they will feel a healing in their souls.

I also thought about the present. As I continued to weed the garden the my body began to ache, it was getting warmer and I could feel my fatigue starting to take its toll. But each time I looked at my progress I felt such a sense of accomplishment that I forgot how tired I was. I forgot how easy it would be to just go inside and do this another day.

In those moments I felt weak I was finding comfort and strength in helping another living thing. By clearing out the dead branches and leaves around the roots of the plants to help them better grow. I felt comforted by watering the flowers as the hot sun threatened them and by sweeping off the path walking up to our front door, creating a welcoming pathway.

By the way, while I was doing this I found and AMAZING pink rock. It’s a bit bigger than my fist and beautiful. I put it on our front step. Talk about good energies!

 

Even though the work was tiring and physically demanding, it energized me to be taking care of nature and allowing myself to only worry about one task at a time.

I think that we can think of our own minds as a garden. We need to nourish it, feed it, and care for it to help it grow. And it won’t always be butterflies and rainbows. It tough work. But good work.

Whether it be through reading, writing, gardening, doing an activity you enjoy or learning about a new subject that interests you, I think it is important to keep growing our minds, no matter how stressful or how busy our lives get. We need to remember to take the time to stop and ask ourselves how we are doing. Check in with your body and mind and give it the care it needs! And always remember that you are not alone. There are always people who care about you and appreciate you and think of you. Even if you don’t know it.

I am wishing everyone peaceful minds today and an evening full of love and comfort.

-A

 

First Injection Day: √

Today was the big day, injection training! For those of you who have read my blog before you know that I was recently diagnosed with Relapsing Remitting Multiple Sclerosis (RRMS). Since my diagnosis I have had a lot to wrap my mind around. As someone who suffers from some pretty intense anxiety to begin with, it has been…challenging to put it kindly. But one thing that I have been working up the courage for was beginning a disease modifying drug.

Disease modifying drugs work to slow down the progression of MS. There are various drugs (I think 15? currently on the market in the US) that can be used to slow the progression of this disease. These drugs range in effectiveness, risks, and the methods in which they are administered/how they work in the body.

There is no cure for Multiple Sclerosis. There is no way to undo the damage, if permanent nerve damage has already occurred. One of the biggest misunderstandings I had (and I think many people would have) about the treatment I am starting is that it does not make you feel better. It doesn’t really alleviate any symptoms, rather it gives your immune system something different to attack rather than your own myelin (protective covering of the nerves. Think of someone with MS as having a cellphone charger with the wires exposed). The hope of this treatment is that it will slow the progression of my disease and delay my next relapse or attack of symptoms, maybe by months…maybe by years!

The treatment I chose to start with is Glatiramer Acetate (the generic form of Copaxone). Glatiramer Acetate has minimal side effects, mostly confined to the injection site and does not cause long-term damage/risks to the reproductive organs. This was really important to me. I have already lost so much to this disease, I didn’t want to risk losing my future family too. So I wanted to try this less aggressive, albeit sometimes less effective, treatment option first. This drug is injected into the fatty layer under the skin either daily or three times a week, depending on dosage.

I’ve been trying to wrap my mind around giving myself shots for a while now (pretty much since I started researching treatment options last fall) and have been rather nervous about it. All it would take was the image of myself pushing a needle into my own tummy and my vision would go dark, hands and feet go numb and the room starts to spin (funny, those are all MS symptoms too! Yay anxiety, double the fun for me!) I tried to comfort myself by reminding myself that I would be thoroughly trained on how to safely inject, I would have my husband to help me if I really was that squeamish at the end of the day, and that when it comes down to it I could just inject in other body parts that made me feel less freaked out.

But all the self soothing in the world couldn’t keep that bossy voice of anxiety from running her mouth in the back of my mind.

But this morning came, and so did the nurse to show me how to tackle my newest MS challenge.

I just have to give a shout out to my nurse, who did an absolutely amazing job teaching me everything I needed to know and making sure I felt comfortable and ready to give my self my first ever injection.  And that is just what I did, and in my tummy no less! I decided that if I am going to face this fear I am going to face it head on!

It wasn’t too bad! The injection itself just felt like any shot does. There was some pretty strong stinging and burning for a few minutes after, while the injection spread, but it passed within a few minutes. As I write this, the only indication that I had such a life changing morning is a slight ache in my abdomen and a tiny dot where the needle went in. That’s it.

It’s funny. There are many moments when our lives change forever, and they pass without us even realizing them. Moments when we fall in love, take a stand or face a challenge. Sometimes they’re big, sometimes they are small. As small as pushing a button and a tiny needle injecting you with not just a medicine, but hope.

Hope that this disease won’t progress. Hope that I’ll have many years of health ahead of me. Hope that I’ll grow nice and old and have a family of my own to watch grow up too. Hope that one day I can look back at this time of my life and be proud of the bravery I showed, even when I felt like hiding. Hope that one day we won’t be on here talking about a treatment, we will be talking about the cure.

Until then, I will continue to learn each day, to cherish the peaceful moments and to fill my heart and the hearts of those around me with as much love and positivity as I can muster.

-A

“Happiness can be found, even in the darkest of times, if one only remembers to turn on the light.” – Albus Dumbledore

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