Kickin' MS with HSCT

16 days until I leave, 21 days until I’m admitted to the hospital in Moscow. It’s hard to believe I’m just days away from going to Moscow, and starting my treatment. Since we’ve had so much going on over the past few months, this was put on the back burner in my life, but now it’s here staring me in the face and it’s a little scary.

I went riding my bike for the first time in a couple of months yesterday, on the River Trails, they’re down by the Arkansas River. When I was a kid this area was just a road that fishermen would go down to launch their boats, or kids would go at night to drink beer. (No, never me Mom and Pop ;)) But, now it’s an amazing park with trails everywhere, even over to an island that was nothing more than a spot of land in the river you’d see when crossing the bridge. I’m going to go ride my bike over that bridge this week and take some photos. The view is beautiful, you can see Pinnacle Mt. in the background, I used to love and hike up to the top.

Sunrise over Pinnacle Mountain

I took Tom there on one of our last trips into town a few years ago, and we trekked up to the top, I could do it then, but it was difficult, I couldn’t even think of trying now. I knew something was wrong even then, my legs were weak when they shouldn’t have been. There were signs as far back as 4 years ago, I saw them but not even my husband did. Walking along the beach to the pier was easy, then my legs starting feeling heavy at the end of the walk. I’d make my walks shorter, but I’d still have difficulty at the end. This had to be just me being out of shape and under a lot of stress from my job, nothing was really wrong. When we were in Italy a few years back, was when I think Tom was starting to notice I couldn’t walk as far. But, I think he thought the same, “she’s getting out of shape”. But then when it was getting difficult just to walk the half a mile around the block to walk Dottie, I knew I had to go to the doctor. Who knew this would all lead me to this journey of going to Moscow for treatment, but here I am just a couple of weeks away. I hope that one day I can climb to the top of Pinnacle again and see the beautiful views. Even that hike seems like 93 million miles for me today, but hope is what I have.

VW