MaggieMae wrote:Cece,
How many days does Dr. Sclafani recommend that you stay in NY (after your procedure) before returning home or flying?
I can't quite remember. (drsclafani, this one's yours to answer....) I had the procedure Saturday, I'm flying out Tuesday, but that was longer than necessary.
But, that's good, because I "overdid" today. Overdid in quotes, because I have underdone by any reasonable tourist standards. Yesterday we were in the hotel except for about two hours in the later afternoon; today we were in the hotel except for maybe four hours.
We took the subway in to Central Park. There was a young chinese woman on the subway with a purple hat and scarf in an intense hue such as I have never seen before. There were brick walls that we passed by that were freakishly red.
Central Park is a marvel, even if you only stand on its edge and peer in as we did. The buildings surround it, so much taller than the trees. (Do trees get jealous? Or are these trees used to being the little brothers.) Then we walked a bit, with the street straight forward and the buildings straight up in angular perfection. By the time we got to MOMA, I was a little unwell, but we toured a bit, then had a bite, I was hoping that eating would make me feel better.
We were having fun and it has been more pure fun and not fun-but-in-pain as I'm used to. My daughter impressed me by recognizing a number of pieces that she'd seen in school, and getting her picture taken by them, and excitedly talking about how she will show the pictures to her art teacher.
But I was getting worse and then, total MS crash. "Overdid." When I'm spiraling downward like that, the way to stop the spiral is to get away from stimulation and to lie down. Yeah, I was in Manhattan, how do you get away from sights and sounds? My husband was worried. It was a surreal stretch of time from when I crashed to when we made it out of the museum, down streets looking for a subway, to a McDonalds because my daughter needed a restroom, to a subway, a stop later switching stations, then all the way back to the hotel.
I improved some during the walking to the subway, which is unusual.
I am better now. It did not take too long to feel better.
I would have liked these MS crashes to have been pure blood flow-related, instead I think they must be the brain shutting down somehow when it has been overtaxed? I am not sure. But perhaps I can separate out the things that have improved as being blood-flow-related, and I have had good improvements, from any things that are not improved, which I would say would be neurologically caused. My cogfog is vastly improved, but it is not gone. Clearly my "sudden unexplainable fatigue" or MS crashes are not gone. My constant every minute of the day fatigue is gone.
My mild foot drop, which has to be neurological, is gone. It would show in my gait, where my foot would not place straight forward as it should but come down a bit off and be a bit difficult; it was from a relapse five years ago and, while mostly improved, MS leaves its traces and this was still there. It had never been as gone as it is now.
Mixed bag or not, my doctor worked miracles in an hour-and-fifteen-minute procedure.
