OK, so maybe I take that entire first blog back. Maybe work wasn't so much easier than being home...in the heat, with babies...and MS. But it could have been. I forgot that steroids aren't so sexy...or easy...or a quick fix. I agreed to a home IV of steroid treatment for 5 days. I kind of thought I would rip that sucker out and keep it moving. A newer, fresher me. Eh...not that easy.
When you have the roids in you, it does make you feel better after a couple days. You start to perk up a bit. I was less despondent. I think I actually got someone's joke on day three. I have to admit I was bumming there for a bit. I have the pictures to prove it. I'm visual. I take pictures of everything, even the not so pretty things. The strangest things with the slightest bend are quite beautiful. I don't post them on Facebook, but I should. I hold them just as tightly as the pretty, couldn't-stage-it-better-if-you-tried pictures. The ones where you don't have 3 chins and you actually look really refreshed! I find beauty in everything. A blessing or a curse. I'm still not sure. Note to self - post that awful picture.
So, I felt better. The pictures got happier. I even ran 4 miles on the last day of IV treatment. Ahh, but I went to work the next day and at 10 am it hit me. This wasn't my sexy side-car bitch. This was Mario Whatshisface again. Orange Crocs and all. He was on my back and in my lungs. Things were spinning and burning and I was barely...barely... holding on. I held on until the end of my workshop and snuck off to the medi-merge, which then landed me and Mario in the hospital. Not quite as smooth as I had imagined.
Long story short, there is no quick fix to MS exacerbations. The Solu-Medrol withdrawals kicked my butt. What was meant to treat a flare-up, in turn, shut down my immune system and made me more infection-prone and sicker than before. Most doctors agree that a taper after the IV Solu-Medrol is best. My doctor doesn't agree. And I agree with him. So I declined the hospital's offer to put me on a month-long oral taper and went home. The long-term effects of taking oral Prednisone and tapering, after a home IV of steroids, can be a bit...ummm...more comfortable?
Mario sleeps peacefully in the guestroom for a couple of days. BUT homeboy is still snoring...loudly! The long term effects can be super sucky for your body and your health. And the withdrawals are still difficult. Just a tad less and a bit more drawn out. Lesson learned. There is no quick fix. And like I've said before there is a price to pay for everything. I won't do another round of IV steroid treatment again.
So I went to work today, room unprepared. Bulletin boards bare. Text books locked up in some far away place and I was (gulp) OK with that. The Pre-MS ( very similar to PMS) me would have not slept. Would have stressed about it the entire weekend. The Post MSTripper understood there are some things beyond my control. I tried. Just like I tried to run 6 miles and made it a mile and a half to someone's sprinkler and just stood in it until my husband came to pick me up. I felt like a failure standing there drenched in that sprinkler. Zoe rolled up in the car with Daddy, hands up in the air...fists pumping. I was a champ for playing in that sprinkler. I was cool! See, the slightest bend to the strangest thing, to her, was beautiful. My kid is cool. Mental picture snapped. And my students survived as well. They put up the bulletin boards. They took ownership of the classroom.
They helped me to reshape and rearrange the furniture and the lessons of the day. The lines and the boundaries and the lessons lay in everything. They designed the word walls and the theme walls and we wrote and we reflected...together...on what makes a home. Someone said it's where you felt safe. I felt safe in that sprinkler, albeit a little dumb. I felt safe at work, in my students' hands. Everyone's still standing. Everyone's safe. And in some strange way, heads tilted a little to the right, everyone and every place seemed like home. All-natural deodorant and all...today was a good day. PS-The trick is to reapply.
