FOUR

My MS has officially reached its fourth anniversary.

The other day I was talking to one of my cousins and they informed me that one of their friends had just passed from cancer. It was after a conversation we were having in which discussed how we felt sorry for ourselves for having an illness or being in an unfortunate condition.
It was after that point that I rechecked my thinking towards MS and remembered that as much as I hate it sometimes, I am thankful that it is "just" MS.

Unfortunately it isn't always sunshine and butterflies with many diseases. But I really can only tell you about MS. It is hard and frustrating some days. Some days it plays a huge part in my life. Other days I only notice it for some parts of the day.

In saying that I am thankful....

That I can wake up every morning in my own bed. Not the hospital.
That I can eat food without puking. Cause my treatment makes me nauseous.
That I can walk on my own. And my diseased hasn't progressed so I cannot.
That I can still work. Even though it's often only part time.
That I can look after myself. Most of the time. ;)


I am thankful that I have been healthy enough to keep living my life. And living as full as I can. Going on adventures, car trips, camping trips, cabin trips, wake surfing, playing sports, maintaining friendships.

So yesterday marked my fourth year having MS. It scares me to think that fourty years down the road it won't be this well managed. But maybe then they'll have found a cure. I don't know what the future will bring. And it does terrify me especially when I think about getting married, having kids, supporting myself and possible family  and thinking about how this disease will affect every part of that.

 I have so much to be thankful for. And all I really can do is live each day the best I can. 

"Live life full"

 Spend great moments with people you love. 

That was this "fourth" year of MS.

Great moments with people I love! 

Approx. 12,000km later...

So I've been doing lots of travelling since I last posted. Lots of things have changed in my life. I am feeling like I'm in limbo.

End of June I took a trip to the Yukon. Which has always been a dream of mine. I had a blast! My roommate and I explored, drove TONS! It is a decent trek from Fort Nelson. But the trip started out fantastic.
Driving through the Northern Rockies this is what we encountered... Driving through a rain storm into a sunset and this is what you get!

After we got to Whitehorse we camped along the Yukon River. 

It was a very neat trip. I then joined my roommate to keep him company on his drive/move to Manitoba. New experience for me again. Never driven past Edmonton, AB. Very prairie like. Flat. Canola fields. NO MOUNTAINS. Which is not a world I would like to live in. 

 

After that I flew Vancouver for an MS appointment. Eventually back to Fort Nelson, worked a set. Packed up my life into a small UHaul trailer, hooked it up to my 4Runner. And spent the next 4 days driving down to Abbotsford to move in with my parents. 

However, I did get to drive the Cassiar Highway. Which I hear is beautiful. I couldn't tell you, it rained the ENTIRE way! Socked in, couldn't see more than the bottom 200 feet of the mountains. 

Just rain and fog. 

I then got to Abbotsford, unpacked, repacked my car and went on a road trip to Vancouver Island with a great friend. We unfortunately didn't make the connection to our trip and August long weekend. Which if you didn't know, means there are ZERO campsites available. Which meant roadside camping in the back of my 4Runner. Which is great btw. 

 

The island is beautiful, but not a place I would like to live. 

So after that, I believe it has been about 12,000km in the last 2.5 months driven. It was my sisters wedding. Which was beautiful and a very nice day. 

Aren't they cute?

On a side note, I gave a fantastic speech, got lots of laughs and did have a lovely time dancing with family and friends at the end of the night. 

As for my life at the moment?

I'm kinda stuck in between worlds... looking for jobs, applied, had an interview, but waiting for them to call me back. It's a really awful feeling actually. I don't like waiting much. Especially waiting on jobs as I continue to spend more and more money. Its a terrible balance. ;)

As for health?

I've been doing alright. You would like with nothing going on in my life now I would have less stress.. but its creeping up nicely these days as I wait for a job. But until then I guess all I can continue to do is play and have as much fun as I can...

Like go exploring more...hang out with friends, go hiking. Oh yeah, and MOVE TO HOPE, BC. 

I guess I can move out of the north. But good luck getting me out of a small town... 

NCLEX?

Kate: "Here Karl, you take my phone for the day and check my email while I'm at my course. Don't tell me either way if I pass or not."
Karl: "Not sure this is a good idea."

After 8 hours taking a course while being throughly distracted about getting my test results Karl came  and picked Jim and I up.
He looked at us asked how our day was...

(Little more background, after finishing my NCLEX exam there was a without a doubt in my mind that I had failed. I hadn't told everyone that I HAD failed. But that I was pretty sure I had failed. So at this point I had already made up my mind on how my next few weeks were going to play out. Study for another 6 weeks and go write again)

At that point I replied with "Well, kinda sucked, long, stressful. I failed didn't I?"
Karl jsut replied with, "How'd you know?!"
"You're face, right there just told me. Perfect. Ok let's go."

As we walked out to the truck Karl just put his arm around me and said nothing. We got to the truck and opened up the back door looked at me and said with balloons trying to escape put the door,
"So, I know today's been rough. And I jsut wanted to get you some calming bath sruff, candles..... (Long pause) BECAUSE YOU PASSED!!"
In initial response was "No I didn't. There's no way I passed. I didn't pass."
"No seriously Kate, you passed. You're a Real Noob now. You passed the exam!"

At that point Jim jumped out of the truck he also looked shocked. Came round the other side to where Karl and I were standing..

Once I started to believe him and figured this was either the most cruel joke in the world or I had actually passed. I burst into sobbing tears, Karl put the email in front of my face and there it was.
"Congratulations..."

...still took me a few days to believe it

But it's done and I am so thankful for that.


K. Goertzen RN

I have FOUR less wisdom

Wisdom? I've got none. Or at least no more teeth to prove it. 

I've spent majority of this week either in pain, sleeping, exhausted, feeling high on pain medications. But it has left me with a fair bit of time to think. All the things that I thought would be the worst part of getting my teeth out, were the worst part of it, well most of them. I was pleasantly surprised that I was not in fact awake for the procedure at all and have ZERO memory of it. I woke up wonderfully and was just giggly. No tears. I even had to hold my tongue cause I just wanted to say stupid things and once I started talking I knew I wouldn't have been able to stop.

I stayed in the car like my friend told me while she got my medications.
I stayed home and was quiet all day like the clinic told me.
I was a chipmunk like everyone else told me I would be.

I also had a lot of pain, which was something only some people told me and of course did not tell me how much that part would suck. But that is ok. Because I lived. Currently I still look like a chipmunk. And pain is more under control.

Pre op vs Post op

Walking around town, going to work to see some people, running into friends after this all happened. Many people gave me double takes, some at first couldn't put a finger on why my face didn't look "NORMAL", some people didn't even recognize me. Strangers tried not to stare to avoid asking me what happened.



But one thing I LOVED about getting my wisdom teeth out is that people KNEW there was something wrong with me. People knew I wasn't feeling well because my face was twice the size and black and blue. They knew I wasn't feeling well because I was taking funny and with a slight lisp.

It gave me a feeling of a great amount of frustration as well as a smirk of happiness.

I wasn't frustrated for the reasons that you think I may have had. The frustration came from my MS. Bear with me here..


From what you know of MS you probably have learned either from me or other people that MS is a very invisible disease. Most people aren't in a wheelchair or walking around with a cane, some are, most aren't. We also don't generally share with everyone we meet that we have MS. Which makes it hard for people who know us/me well to understand that I am always sick, and have some pretty rough days you just can't see it.

My face doesn't swell up like a balloon when I'm in pain or my MS is acting up like my face did with my wisdom teeth being removed.  But my body gets exhausted, I can experience pain, and I get frustrated and no one would be able to tell, physically. That is what is frustrating
with MS.

That is why having my wisdom teeth out this week was terrible, but wasn't the absolute worst thing in life. Because people knew, they knew I wasn't well. And I didn't even have to tell them.