It's been awhile since I've posted, so I thought I would write about our recent change in life. Over the past few years I've ran a children's home while my wife helped to develop programs for the home along with handling donor relations. After 2 and a half years of 24/7 work we decided to make a drastic change and move to Colorado to work more normal hours and have more time to spend with our daughter. This has been a big change for me and for the whole family, but it has been a good one.
Life has slowed down, even with us still pushing and unsure of how to slow life down. :) We've learned that the general culture of Colorado is much slower than we're used to, and it's been healthy for our whole family to not be in a rush all the time. It took a few weeks for my wife to become acclimated to the climate, and she had a few MS issues during the first month here. It never ceases to amaze me how sensitive her body is to climate changes and different elevations. After a month or so her body has acclimated and she isn't having those issues anymore, and of course we used and continue to use Pro Adjuster Chiropractic when she has issues and it continues to stop any MS issues.
Our recent move is another natural step in our minds to live life in a way that will help our family. We've made many moves and changes through the years to create a better life for ourselves and also to create the best life choices for my wife's MS. We've learned that climate, stress, chiropractic care, sleep patterns, climate control in our home, and a host of other things can make our lives easier or harder and we try to control as many of those as possible. With this new change I should have more time to update the blog and some new thoughts on MS.
Showing posts with label family. Show all posts
Showing posts with label family. Show all posts
Sunday, December 8, 2013
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
Can You Still Walk?
The last few years has shown me how little our closest friends and family really understand Multiple Sclerosis. I realize that I have studied and understand the disease, but neither one of us really knew how little they understood. A few months back we had a family member ask if Michelle could still walk. I kinda thought that was an odd question since she has been running around with kids at the Children's Home for months now. I have come to realize that they see the disease as something that consistently progresses, and don't realize that the majority of MS sufferers live out a fairly normal life.
I have tried to explain how MS works to my family and they seem to understand until she has an attack. Since she was diagnosed in 1990, she has had a lot of years to learn how it affects her body and what to expect. About two years ago she was having a lot of issues and we were unsure of what to do. After talking with our families, they just felt like the disease was going to progress and that we needed to just accept the fact that she was getting worse. We felt like there was something else causing the issues, so we started weeding out different variables to see what it was. We soon learned that it was the environment where we lived. The toxins in the air from the oilfield work surrounding us was making her have more issues. Once we moved, she immediately felt better and she was back to her normal self.
Through that experience I guess I finally realized that my family was expecting her to just get worse some day. They thought that since she was getting older that her MS would progress. I don't guess I have every thought of it that way since we spoke with Dr. Swank so many years ago. His success rate for MS patients leading a normal life was off the charts and we knew that my wife's chances were great. Neither of us expect her illness to progress, but it could. We are already planning for those issues, but are not going to live our lives in fear of what might happen. For now we will continue to try and educate our families about the disease and try to help them see that she is doing great and will continue to as long as we take care of her illness.
I have tried to explain how MS works to my family and they seem to understand until she has an attack. Since she was diagnosed in 1990, she has had a lot of years to learn how it affects her body and what to expect. About two years ago she was having a lot of issues and we were unsure of what to do. After talking with our families, they just felt like the disease was going to progress and that we needed to just accept the fact that she was getting worse. We felt like there was something else causing the issues, so we started weeding out different variables to see what it was. We soon learned that it was the environment where we lived. The toxins in the air from the oilfield work surrounding us was making her have more issues. Once we moved, she immediately felt better and she was back to her normal self.
Through that experience I guess I finally realized that my family was expecting her to just get worse some day. They thought that since she was getting older that her MS would progress. I don't guess I have every thought of it that way since we spoke with Dr. Swank so many years ago. His success rate for MS patients leading a normal life was off the charts and we knew that my wife's chances were great. Neither of us expect her illness to progress, but it could. We are already planning for those issues, but are not going to live our lives in fear of what might happen. For now we will continue to try and educate our families about the disease and try to help them see that she is doing great and will continue to as long as we take care of her illness.
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