pain and pleasure

I suck, I know!  I’m not generally one to make excuses, but here comes a big one.  I haven’t been blogging cause the pain in my leg has been SO bad lately.  To the point I have given up on my stubbornness towards taking something for the pain some nights…  The morphine numbs the pain, but it also numbs my brain.  Not a huge fan of that, but sometimes there’s only so much one person can take.  As for the blog drought, sitting at my computer is agony.  Don’t get me wrong, I feel bad.  😦  And there has been lots I have wanted to write about!  My 100 day challenge ended Sunday.  I will be taking some “after” photos in the next few days, but will have to try to get ahold of “before” pics from my trainer.  This smart guy didn’t take any.  Awesome.  :p  Not really sure they will show a whole lot of a difference, but I KNOW I do feel stronger!  Yesterday I was supposed to meet a coworker at the gym.  I had planned 2 hours of gym time into my day to fit in my workout, and help her out as well.  When she didn’t show up, I was SO excited!  Two hours to do nothing but kick MY a**?!?!  Right on!  😀  So I did!  It’s crazy really, when it comes to physical activity, my leg is FINE.  Also the part of the day when I am completely happy 🙂

Wanna talk HAPPY??  Let me talk about accomplishments for a minute.  😀  Box jumps.  I can do them physically, but my head prevents me from doing them well sometimes.  Some days I stand in front of the box and we just connect.  I spring up onto it like it’s nothing!  Other days though, my head tells me I can’t do it before I’ve even tried.  It’s usually those days that I smash my shins.  Why is it our subconscious can sometimes set us up for failure?  Anyways, enough of that.  Yesterday I had one of my best leg workouts to date, which included 40 brilliant box jumps.  That’s right 😉 

One more accomplishment I’m proud of is chest dips.  When I started my 100 day challenge back in January, I was barely able to perform one quality chest dip.  Since all the workouts in my current program involve 4 sets of each exercise, I have worked HARD to build up my performance with these.  I was happy with the progress I was making… had built up to 4 sets with 5, 4, 4, 3 reps consecutively.  Then today, something was different.  I don’t totally know what happened, but chest dips and I became best friends for a moment.  🙂   It was the weirdest thing… I felt like I weighed nothing for a moment or two!  Very strange, but I’ll take it!

The last two weeks (ish) I’ve not felt my usual strength through my workouts.  My mind was telling my arms/legs to LIFT, but they were not so willing to oblige.  I just figured I was over training and needed a bit of a break.  While this may have been the case, I also decided to switch back from banana pancake breakfasts to my old routine of 1/2 a baked sweet potato mixed with a dash of cinnamon and a scoop of protein powder.  I figured that adding a little extra carbs back into my life might be just what I needed to get things back in gear.  After two days of incredible workouts, I’m getting the feeling I may have been right!

one life, LIVE it.

Sorry I suck right now.  So busy!  Working lots, working out LOTS, cooking some, and getting ready to head to sun and sand next week.  Poor me, ya I know! :p  Next week I’m really going to suck 😉

Just a note…  So, I often throw the “Multiple Sclerosis” tag on my posts, but never talk about it.  The whole thought process there is: I write about LIFE and how I choose to live mine.  I have MS, but I still do my best to live the life I want to live.  Being diagnosed with anything WILL change a person’s life, but it’s up to the individual which path they choose to take.  The whole experience certainly opened my eyes to the importance of appreciating the people and things I do have and can do. 

Three times a week, this is my reality…  Also probably the reason I have very little patience for people who cry about how rough their life is and carry on the sob story looking for sympathy.  In my mind, it always could be worse.  Life really is too short to sweat the trivial things…

It’s all connected… pt. 1

So a good friend, and the inspiration behind my decision to start writing this whole compilation of thoughts, suggested that I back track a little here…  She mentioned that it might me a good idea to share my experiences with living with MS, as well as a bit of history behind my journey through nutrition and fitness which has led me to today.

Ok.  When it comes to MS, there really is no simple explanation.  It sucks sometimes.  This being said, I try to not let it change who I am…  Some of the challenges I’m more than willing to share, some I’m not :-p  The biggest problem I’ve come to expect is not knowing what to expect.  Everyone will have a different experience, and no one will be able to tell the recently diagnosed “ok, so this is what’s going to happen”.  All you can do is learn to pay more attention to what your body is telling you. 

The most consistent complication I have is fatigue.  It can be completely debilitating and impossible to explain just how bad it is.  If you don’t “know it”, you have no idea!  (And I wouldn’t want you to!)  When I was first diagnosed, I resisted the suggestion to start on any “disease-modifying” treatment.  Yeah, they do call it that.  I guess when there isn’t a cure, you have to come up with some other kind of a name which sounds appealing.  I was a young punk who thought I good tough it out on my own.  I also wasn’t the type of person who ever liked to accept the need to ask for help.  I’ve gotten over that over the years :-p  When I finally accepted the need to give the drugs a shot, I started with Copaxone.  It was a once daily injection which, other than pretty ugly site reactions, was not so bad… and actually helped with the fatigue a bit.  Only problem there, it didn’t seem to help slow the progression of my disease and the MRI’s showed my worsening condition.  Boo.  So my neuro suggested the switch to Betaseron.  This meant less needles (yeah! only 3 times a week!) BUT they make me feel like crap after, hence bed time is the only option.  It’s a more aggressive treatment, which has done a good job so far at reducing new flare ups, but the fatigue returned with a vengeance.  😦 

There is soooooo much more I could talk about, but that will have to do for now.  Every day I am affected by this disease.  Every day the people close to me are affected as well.  I’m lucky to have an incredible support system at home, Ange has been my ROCK 🙂  More than a month ago, I watched a video which was shared by my friend Amanda that gave me the inspiration to fight back.  To see if there wasn’t a way to take the reins, rather than just picking myself off when I get bucked off.  THIS is where the connection exists.  My rants about Primal Blueprint and Paleo and Crossfit all do come together in the end.  Check it out if you’d like:

http://youtu.be/KLjgBLwH3Wc