when all else fails

Well, I guess the sh*t hit the fan.  I’ll back-fill a bit briefly before the actual rant begins… January I decided I was DONE with Tecfidera.  Couldn’t live with the side effects any more and unhappy with the fact that the nerve pain still followed me around every day of my life.  So I stopped.  Just like that I was done, cold turkey.  Doctor’s don’t recommend that, but I didn’t care.  I mean, I do everything in my power to help my body fight this disease on its own, so I wanted to see if that was enough.  I eat really clean, I exercise regularly, get lots of sleep, drink lots of water, take all the vitamins and supplements they recommend… so I should be good.  My recent visit to my MS doc brought up a comment of “you’re going to live forever!!” when he took my blood pressure.  And for half of January, all of February (even with 29 days!) and much of March, life was grand.  I no longer felt fluish every day.  I no longer had to hide in the office several times a week to ride out a flushing attack.  I was sleeping fantastic and had plenty of energy.  I felt “normal” again.  Till mid-way through the Open when my hands and everything below my knees went numb.  Functional, but without feeling.  Believe me, I had a few moments of thinking “oh shit!  What have I done?!”, but carried on.  First relapse in more than 3 years, but not like I haven’t been trough these before and this one was pretty mild.  Lasted for a little over 2 weeks then I started to regain feeling.  Cool!  Piece of cake!  Except a few days later I had a rough day.  The every day nerve pain was amplified.  It was a long day at work cause we had a staff meeting at the end of the day, so 13 hours straight in my store.  My wonderful girlfriend drove out to give me a hug cause she knew I was feeling rough.  🙂  A moment of smiles at least!  I fought through it and the next day things felt a bit better.  The day after that, better still.  That tough day was last Wednesday.  Yesterday, was another tough day less than a week later.  Tougher than I’ve had in a long time…  The pain was so bad I fought of feeling like I was going to barf all day long.  Stoned on pain meds I at least managed to sleep and woke up today feeling a bit better.  Ok, it’s progress.  Went to the box this morning, cause that’s just what i do and scaled the sh*t out of the workout.  Sucked a little cause it was heavy squats and I like heavy squats, but let me put things into perspective – If someone had been able to promise me yesterday that I would never have to deal with the nerve pain again if I would give up crossfit, I wouldn’t have given it a second thought.  And I LOVE CROSSFIT.  No one can tell what causes this nightmare, or even how to prevent it… but I’m going out on a limb maybe and guessing that heavy lifting doesn’t help.  😦  I’m not doing a very good job right now of pleading my case to live without the daily injections which have been once again suggested…