Klutzy McGee

Well the weekend went by with very little excitement, except for the fact that I sent my first post-dx .12a.  I think it's called Cookie Dough or Cookie Mix or whatever and is a super nice climb at Star Wall at Donner Summit.  In fact, Sunday was the first day that I actually felt like I was climbing well.  Not super strong, but relaxed and confident and smooth.  

Star Wall was also like a mini Jailhouse reunion on Sunday.  Brad, Tony, Pete Lydia, myself and Ross were all there.  John Schmid and Ethan were over at Snowshed, as were Rick and Denise.  I have to say, one of the nicest thing about Jailhouse is the community.  It's amazing how we all stay up on each others' lives.  I think that for the most part, it's pretty cool.  

This morning I did the 30-mile loop again.  Ok, the ride went well and all, but I have a problem.  I had to pee TWICE!  And if you've ever been to Davis, you know that there aren't that many places with good cover to pee.  It's mostly open fields and fruit tree orchards.  On the other hand, I tend to bike a LOT faster when I am actively looking for a place to drop trou.  So it can't be all that bad.

After my bike ride I had an appointment with a hand specialist for physical therapy.  The building was kind of hard to find, and I guess I must have been a little distracted, because I tripped over a curb and fell flat on my ass.  Well, ok, I fell on my palm and elbows, and managed to scrape my foot too.  I can't even remember the last time I klutzed out like that.  If I were watching myself I would have laughed pretty hard, but fortunately no one was watching.

But then I was busted when the hand specialist (Suzanne), was looking at my hands, noticed the bloody palm and said "oh look at your palm!  Is that from climbing?" Unable to think of some cool reason for having a bloody palm I muttered, "um...no I tripped over the curb on the way here."  Embarrassing.  But then she gave me a grip strength test and was highly impressed with my grip strength, so I figure it evens out?

At any rate, she gave me some exercises to do and then said what everyone has said to me before: maybe this will help, maybe it won't.  But hey, I'm willing to try anything...except more acupuncture...that shit HURTS!  

Discoveries: new things and old things

So it is smoky.  Extremely smoky.  Thinking that the smoke was mostly restricted to the valley, I drove up to Tahoe with Kuan to meet Lydia and this other dude to climb at Star wall yesterday.  Well, it was so smoky that we couldn't even see Donner Lake.  It was unbelievable!  And I just read Justin's blog and it's smoky in Yosemite Valley as well.  I talked to my friend Sunshine who lives in Oakland and was driving towards Big Basin.  Yep you guessed it: smoky as hell there too.  You know, I don't mind it too much.  I still climbed yesterday, still did a long bike ride this morning, and I feel fine.  No congestion, no breathing problems.  I guess I'm in the minority though because a lot of people seem to be having trouble.  Oh well, guess I'm lucky in this case.

I discovered a new 30 mile bike loop (I'm sure that everyone who has ever ridden a bike around Davis knows about the beauty of Putah Creek Road, but it was new to me).  Beautiful scenery (through orchards and fields), smooth road, very little traffic.  You can just fly down it.  I want to bike into the coast range at some point next week and do some hills.  Looks like there's a good 40-50 mile loop.  

I also discovered two amazing desserts: Haagen-Dazs chocolate sorbet and coconut sorbet.  They are scrumptious, and you don't feel like you're going to puke up whole cream if you should (ahem) happen to overindulge in things like ice cream.  Of course I up the ante by putting dulce de leche on top. I've always been a toppings kind of girl.

The cool thing about this week is that I've been rediscovering and reconnecting with old friends.  I think I had been "comfortable in my misery" with certain aspects of my life as Kuan astutely pointed out.  When you clear out some of the clutter in life there is more room for new things.

I'll go up to Donner again Sunday and try to redpoint Cookie Mix, which is a fun little route.  Then I'm not so sure what to try next.  At any rate I need to get my ass into the gym to regain lost ground in fitness.  I also started (finally) the IVIG treatment, and I don't feel psychotic afterwards.  So today is over with, and I'll go in Mon-Thurs next week.

By the way, I tried to donate blood the other day and was "deferred" which is a euphemism for "rejected."  Guess they think donating blood will stress an MS patient.  Go figure.  Guess I'll have to be satisfied with donating a bunch of old books and magazines to the infusion center.  I just feel like giving right now...something, anything.

Lyrics

Every now and then I hear a new song and some lyrics get to me.  I'm really feeling these from a song called "On the Radio" by Regina Spektor:

"no this is how it works:

you peer inside yourself

you take the things you like

and try to love the things you took

and then you take that love you made

and stick it into some...

someone else's heart

pumping someone else's blood

and walking arm in arm

you hope it don't get hurt

but even if it does

you'll do it all again."

Could be the way she sings it...reading lyrics is never the same as listening to them sung.

In other news, I biked about 35 miles today and only fell over once!  Good thing I have lots of natural padding on my hips.  I didn't cough up a lung from all of the smoke either.

By the way-thanks for everyone's comments, keep them coming.

Superhero

This is Pete.  Pete has had the nickname "Super Pete" ever since I've met him, which was a few years ago now.  This is because Pete has an indomitable spirit, tons of positivity, and cranks super hard.  I can't even begin to describe how excellent of a rock climber and human being Pete is.

 This Spring Pete had an accident and lost his foot.  Only a few months later he is already walking around and hopping over boulders with his carbon fiber prosthetic so he can come and support his wife Lydia and get out of the house.

Now Pete is a true superhero.  He has handled his injury with grace and a strength that I can only imagine.  He'll be climbing again pretty soon.

I saw Pete for the first time since April yesterday at Donner.  Pete was there spectating and Lydia and I did a little bit of rock climbing.  We started at Snowshed Wall and warmed up on Little Feat and then headed over to Star Wall.  I'd never been to Star Wall since everyone from Sacramento is always going up to Snowshed and staying at Snowshed.  I am sick of Snowshed, but Star Wall is amazing.  What a beautiful wall!  And what a nice place to hang out as well.  I tried Cookie Dough (or Cookie Mix or whatever) which is a .12a over on the left.  I did pretty well up until the small holds, which are difficult to feel right now.  Did all the moves on the first attempt, but I was knackered for the second go.  Oh well, at least I'm climbing again!  It's amazing how happy climbing makes me.  Not only do I get to move my body and be somewhere pretty, but I get to hang out with cool people.  I ran into Cynthia, Paul Crawford and his wife Ella, of course I was with Pete and Lydia, and I finally met Sanam, who I've been hearing about forever.  Hopefully we will climb together soon.

Anyway, I'm so psyched that I am feeling better, am off the steroids, have wonderful friends and family (ok I know I'm being sentimental).  Now if I could only get my Franken-hand back!

new toy.

behold:

checked out.

No, not that kind of checked out.  It's been a while since that has happened.  I mean checked out of life.  And then checking back in.  Realizing all of a sudden that you haven't really been aware of what is going on with yourself, with the world around you, and most distressingly, the people you care about the most.  And you realize that some of the people you care about really don't care about you that much, and conversely, some people have given you way more than you have given them.

So how to right the balance?  I really wish I knew.  People are flawed, I am flawed.  I wonder how many treadmills I have been running on, trying to push through and ultimately going nowhere.  I know I'm not alone.  Attachments, habits, addictions - we all have them.  Sometimes it really bothers me, and sometimes I couldn't care less.  I think that might be what is hard about changing some things - there's no consistency in the "bad" of a lot of things that are not good for us.

Not to geek out on everyone, but genes are like this as well - some of them are only mildly "bad" for you...or they are only bad in certain combinations with certain environmental factors or certain other genes.  It's the combination that causes the trouble, and the trouble itself ranges from not-so-bad to whole system failure.

Ok so that analogy might be taking it a little far, but my point is that some bad situations just aren't bad enough for you to be motivated to change, or are only bad in certain circumstances or when certain things are happening in your life, or some of them weren't bad, get bad, get sort of better, etc.  Or maybe we just get complacent and have bad habits because we are lazy.  Or maybe we were doing the right thing all along and it will turn out alright in the end.  So how do you know what to do? How do you know what to care about?  What to strive for? What to excise and what to add?

There's all sorts of hippy-dippy shit out there that people will tell you about "listening to your heart" or "feeling what you are going to feel," but what if your heart is wrong, and your feelings are wrong?  How do we know? Is it even possible for feelings to be "wrong"?  Hell I don't know.  I've definitely been told that the way I feel is bad or stupid or wrong.   I think we all have.  It never feels good, and then you wonder if there's something wrong with you, when chances are it's the other person who has troubles.  (Why are they spending time telling you that your feelings are wrong in the first place? Don't they have better things to do?)   Sure makes you feel like shit though.

OK, if you've made it this far, I applaud you.  

Bad bad person

Ok so I officially am a bad person. I didn't realize that so many people read this blog. I'm still a little in denial, because who would care about what I'm doing and what I think or feel?

At any rate, I am somewhwat ashamed of myself for the mean things I have said, and I apologize to any who I have offended.

The Origin of Life - Abiogenesis

Neat! I found this on Pharyngula (see link to the right).

So I've had some remorse about my previous few posts.  They simply aren't very nice.  I've debated over whether or not to take parts down, but I haven't decided yet.  What I have decided is that I am evil.

On to more positive things.  I went up to South Lake Tahoe with Alex and stayed at his family's little cabin at Tahoe Meadows Saturday night.  It was very nice to get out of town for the weekend.  Sunday we hiked up Tallac and were down by 12:30.  It was funny, as we were finishing the hike in the heat of the day a lot of people were just starting up.  I think that starting early is definitely the best way.  Plus I am a morning person and by the time the afternoon rolls around I am off duty.  We were up and down in a few hours, in time for lunch and an afternoon nap.

I headed home to Davis and spent some time with my friend Cassandra who I hadn't seen in a long time.  She has a long-standing $500 bet with her sister over who will cave and get a cell phone first.  Dealing with a person with no cell phone is officially a pain in the ass.  But she is stubborn and I give her props for that.  We had a romantic evening of drinking wine, eating chocolate and putting together a 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle.  Jigsaw puzzles are rad, and if you don't think so, you suck.

I'm going to try a new treatment called IVIG.  I really hope it works because my hand is progressively getting more and more useless.  I'm not looking forward to five more days in the infusion center (bringing my grand total since early April to 18 days of IVs), but at least it won't give me steroid psychosis. 

Hopefully this weekend I will make it up to Tahoe again, or at least get outside and do something fun.  

I have been remiss, wish I were remitting.

So I haven't really talked to anyone in the last week. Went back on the steroids, 2 days in the ER, 3 in the infusion center (all the infusion ladies know me now). And my hand is only getting worse. It really sucks.

It's so sucky and I'm so pissed about it that I just haven't wanted to write (not to mention the fact that it is difficult to type), or talk to anyone. Haven't told my parents I was back on the infusions, my cousin came to town and we were supposed to meet but I never called him back, there was a goodbye lab potluck that I bailed on, I bailed on lab clean-up, etc. The only people I've seen are Alex and the people at the infusion center/ER. I'm quite hopeless actually.

No climbing, but I have been doing big bike rides around Davis on my crappy bike. It's been kind of nice, but I feel like I just fester about everything and get pissed at my hand, pissed at the doctors, pissed because the drugs are making me pissed, just pissed in general. I remember from the time I got diagnosed until about...oh...Saturday, everyone kept telling me how well I was handling it, that I had a good attitude, etc. Well fuck it. I'm tired of trying to have a good attitude, tired of trying to look on the bright side, tired of not punching someone in the face when they tell me "it could be worse," or "what if you can't make it up the stairs one day?" or "maybe you'll become left-handed" or "but you look so good," or "MS doesn't have you, you have MS." Tired of my parents telling me that I should quit rock climbing because "in polio patients, physical activity can make it worse." FYI, I DON'T HAVE POLIO. By the way, whenever I have any kind of trouble in life my parents suggest that it's because I rock climb too much...

Ok, so those are the things that I think about while I'm bike riding. Not very positive are they? I'd like to think that this is just one of those stages that you go through when you have something emotionally traumatic happen. The shock and denial wear away and the reality sets in that this is real, it's not going away, I can't control it or stop it, and it's just infuriating. No one knows what to say, and dammit they are lucky and I am jealous. Some day I will be some uber-zen positive and calm role model for all sentient beings. No wait, I won't. I'm just going to embrace what I feel while I feel it, know that the only thing true in this world is the fact that things change, and so they will.

Drug companies give you cool toys.

I went to a meeting of the National MS Society's Northern California Chapter in Sacramento last night.  The meeting was for newly diagnosed patients.  I wasn't expecting much, maybe to just talk to a nurse, ask a few questions and leave.  But I have to say, I was very very impressed.  There was a nurse from Kaiser and another nurse who works for the NMSS.  I liked them both a lot.  The NMSS nurse was no-bullshit, funny and informative-finally!  Plus I got to hear slander about all of the neurologists that people are seeing.

So one of the cool things about having a disease that drug companies are pouring billions of dollars into is that you get free shit.  A lot of free shit.  I got this cool ice pack last night, a book, I've gotten pens, free medication, people calling to check up on me...I had a nurse make a house call, etc.  And what's more, as an athlete and someone who "looks really good right now" (i.e. "doesn't look sick", there is potential for me to be a drug company whore: you speak publicly for...ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS PER SPEECH!!!

So...it's something to think about in terms of making money in the future.  But I guess I have to be motivational rather than morbid.  Perhaps I should work on that.

I switched interferon treatments from one that was 30mcg 1x a week to one that is a higher dose and administered every other day.  Since the interferon lasts in your body for 48 hrs, I'll have a more even blood level, so hopefully my hand will decide to come back into the fold rather than continuing to rebel.  I mean, I can appreciate a little rebellion and all, but this is ridiculous. I thought we were a team!  I feel so betrayed.  But I digress.  The new injection comes with a little autoject device that is pretty neat.  It injects you AND plunges in the medicine.  I find that this is far preferable to the intra-muscular large needles that I manually inserted and plunged into my muffin tops.  

Hopefully this medication (Betaseron: beta interferon 1b) will prevent my brain from having "black holes", like in the picture above.  These black spots begin as white spots, which are "active lesions" where my T-cells are attacking the myelin.  Hopefully the immune response stop so that my body can re-myelinate.  I checked out a few textbooks (Clinical Neuroimmunology, Immunobiology) to further educate myself about the disease process and the drugs.  Maybe I'll cure myself.

whoa!  A nurse from a Betaseron support program called Beta Plus just called me to check up on me.  Crazy.

rock climbing is fun!

So the past week has been a bit epic.  I got some sort of flu/cold that laid me out for a few days.  Unfortunately it occurred at a somewhat inauspicious time-I had a final report due on my trout project in the middle of feeling like poo.  I basically did nothing for three days...and didn't feel too guilty about it.

Yesterday I went up to Donner with Drew.  It was a lovely day, cold but not too cold to climb.  I made Drew lead everything, which he was fine with since he'd never been to Donner before.  I've pretty much done everything there I'm able to do (and a lot of stuff I am not able to do right now), so I was happy to toprope.  Ran a lap on Farewell to Arms, Little Feat, Manic Depression and Bottomless Topless.  I was psyched to do Manic Depression clean second go (once I remembered the beta).  Little Feat was kind of weird...in years past I've always hiked the bottom (a strength move) and thought that the rest (technical) was hard...yesterday I struggled with the bottom and hiked through the rest.  So I guess I'm weaker but a better rock climber.  I think I can live with that.

But it appears that I am paying for my fun yesterday by having my right hand replaced with a prehensile claw.  It is definitely worse today.  Hopefully it will get better in a few days, but I've been saying that for a few weeks now and it seems to steadily be getting worse.  Funny, when I'm climbing I don't notice it.  I guess I just have to climb more.  I find myself making little deals of acceptance with myself.  For example I'll say to myself "if I could just walk normally I would be ok with having a numb hand."  But then of course my leg gets better and my hand gets worse, so I think "well as long as I can use my hand, I don't mind if it's numb" where before any numbness was intolerable.  I guess it could by my mind's way of accepting a new reality in little bite-sized manageable pieces.  Has anyone had a similar experience?

Oh and I'm curious about whether or not I'm being too impatient about an experience I had at the crag yesterday.  I was eating some Clif Shot Blocks, which are basically delicious gummy treats.  I offered one to some people and they said "sure, I'll try one."  or "no I'm good thanks."  Fine.  Then I offer one to the third acquaintance and he looks at me and says "I don't eat food like that."  I look at him blankly and he adds "I only eat food like that if I'm running a marathon or something."  Again, I'm stumped.  He further adds "I like to eat "real" food while I'm climbing"  while making eating gestures with his hands like I don't speak English or something.  I was recounting this to Drew on the drive home, saying that it had grated on my nerves.  Was he trying to tell me I had a bad diet? Did he want me to know that he has a good diet and he runs marathons?  wtf?  Part of me wanted to say "wait! I have a good diet! you should see what I've been eating the last 2 months!!"  But another part of me was like "this is stupid"  I think just said nothing.

Why does this annoy me?  Drew said "yeah...some people always have to volunteer information about themselves.  You know, a 'no thank you' probably would have been fine."  I think he hit the nail no the head.  Does anyone (besides me) think I was just being too sensitive?

Anyway, I was excited to get home and eat last night, but upon having finished my delightful HEALTHY salad, I realized that I had left my wallet in Drew's car.  Shit.  Not only that, but Drew lives in Berkeley, and my gas tank is on empty.  Double shit.  So I called several people, and naturally no one picked up the phone, because in Davis, what you do on weekends is...leave Davis.  Fortunately this morning my good friend Lauren loaned me $40 and I had a nice little trip to Berkeley to get my wallet back.  Phew!