This Week in My Life: Week 24 of 2016

The view from here:

Parade went right by my house. Nice to be able to just step out the front door and sit on the steps.
It's a pretty boring parade overall, but it's always fun to watch the band I marched in back in the day.

Kind of a cool old car.

Look up!

And look down. My cilantro is growing!!

Fresh strawberries from a friend's garden over ice cream. YUM.

Sorry, fortune cookie, I don't believe you.
This is from Chinese food from a few months ago but just ate the cookie.

Got the exam room with the little spine model this month.

I kind of take issue with this and most pain scales.

One of the issues I have is that it is not necessarily built for assessing chronic pain.

Like pain of a 3-6 that is present every single day for several YEARS can feel like

a 1-2 because it has become the normal baseline feeling. But also like a 9-10 because

a pain that is continuous for years on end is grating in a way that makes it in many ways

worse than an acute worst-pain-ever kind of pain that is very temporary.

Blooming! Raindrops!

This lily is waiting for a few friends to join the party.

Watching a movie "with" my niece. We do this a lot.
Technology is great.

What I made this week:

Lemon garlic green beans on the grill. YUM.

Took part in the #nanogami challenge on instagram to make the tiniest crane you could.
The coral was made from a 2cm x 2cm square, the blue from a 1.5cm x 1.5cm square,
and the yellow was from a 1cm x 1cm square. All were tough, but the yellow one was VERY tough.

MS Update:

I don't remember whether or not I mentioned last month that in my pre-Tysabri appointment, my right leg didn't do so well on the neuro exam. This month it was better. Also, the left side weakness from that relapse a few months ago now? I wrote that it was 90% better a few weeks post-steroids. Eventually that reached more like 98%. A month ago or so, I was able to do a lateral raise with 5 pound weights (one of the lingering problems). But as of last week, I still couldn't do a front raise with 5 pound weights on the left side, only able to bring it up not quite halfway. I decided to try again yesterday, though, one day after my 3rd Tysabri infusion since restarting. And the front raise was fine! In other words, the weakness of the left side is FINALLY back to 100%.  After discovering this happy news, I decided to do a full upper body strength training circuit, and it felt good. I plan to keep it up, as I want to make the most of what I have while I have it and try to maximize the function and ability this body has.