Nunka's Nonsense

Having a Chronic Disease or knowing someone with a Chronic Disease can be scary. There is a lot of stuff your doctor doesn’t always tell you about it because you don’t know to ask and there’s a lot of stuff the patients won’t tell their friends and family because they’re afraid of worrying them. But sometimes things just come out without meaning to because they just happen. I know I personally have a tendency to make fun of it because it can cause all sorts of weird stuff to happen but I have Multiple Sclerosis or MS for short. My grandmother had it, my father had it and I ended up being Diagnosed shortly after I turned 20 although I showed early signs through most of my teenage years. In my case, my nerves like to shut off at random times although the intervals for me are typically consistent. Stress can cause it to happen more often but isn’t necessary for a flare up. For me, Flareups happen in one of two ways: 1. A nerve in my body can shut off. 2. A nerve in my brain can shut off. When a nerve in my body shuts off two things can happen due to how muscles work. A muscle will continue doing whatever its last signal was for at least a couple minutes if that last signal was “contract”. When you’re balancing something or even holding something, those muscles contract and relax constantly to maintain the appropriate pressure. Your muscles will also be forced to stop contracting if they reach a certain point which is why normally you’re only limited to how much you can pick up because otherwise it’s self damaging. A muscle stuck on “contract” when the nerve loses signal will tear itself and cause massive bruising. It’ll stop after a few minutes if the flareup continues on for much longer but it still hurts even after it goes limp. A muscle stuck on “Relax” will cause the limb to go limp and depending on the limb the person can really hurt themselves. It’s really common for either “Relax” or “Contract” to cause a person with MS to lose control of their legs and thus their balance, ending up on the ground and unable to stand up until it’s over. I joke about the stuff this causes such as my fingers relaxing while the rest of my arm contracts forcing me to either drop or throw things while the arm goes into an awkward position or even knocks shit I’m wearing off my head but it’s not really that fun. I joke about how I have Right Sided MS because I don’t have to worry about my heart shutting off(it’s on the left), but the reality is, if I was unfortunate enough to be left sided, that tiny chance is always there and thus the tiny chance of it not restarting would be even scarier than what my current reality is. Enough signal lost or enough damage done to the nerve in the process can cause it to shut off permanently with no chance to receive signal again even with electrical stim. With the right balance of Potassium I can prevent these kind of flareups to keep them to an extreme rare pop-up. Which is good because I’m pregnant and too much contraction in the abdomen could end up leading to a miscarriage or internal bleeding and hemorrhaging. But I can’t do that with ones that happen in the brain as they have nothing to do with my muscles’ personal nerves. When a Flareup happens in the brain, it depends on the location it happened in. For me, these can’t be prevented by potassium and stress levels don’t control how often they happen. More often than not the less stressful of the two is just hiccups. Basically my brain farts so hard that it craps itself. I will completely lose track of what I was just talking about, doing, or even my current location in some cases even if I was just talking about or doing the same thing for the past 30 minutes. I will literally draw a blank until someone can describe what I was attempting otherwise I move onto a completely different thing until I can remember myself again, usually weeks later. These “Brain Farts” can also bridge time so effortlessly that sometimes I’ll bring up a conversation I had with someone several months ago as if they made their last answer two minutes ago. I’ll still remember what I was doing and where I am but I might forget who that conversation was with and even though I know what time it’s been It might take a few seconds to remember. It’s probably why I suffer from memory loss and bad short term until I remember a weird moment years later(I seriously can’t remember what I did or ate the day before if I don’t have some sort of reminder like a receipt or item on hand) On the otherhand, the second kind of nerve disconnection is much more scary and often takes people by surprise when it happens. I can usually play it off like it didn’t happen because people don’t notice but when it happens when I’m doing something important, it can really scare the jitters out of people like my Life Partner. Basically what happens when I have this type of Flareup is I get a warning of about 2 seconds of Dizziness followed by an immediate blackout of my vision. I can’t tell what I’m doing at this time nor can I really feel anything with my hands either. The best solution is to just sit down if I’m not already. It almost always involves a blanked out brain fart so afterwards I usually have no idea what the fuck I was doing other than vaguely knowing what just happened. Stronger variations also lead to a complete numb out of my entire body where everything everywhere gets sent the signal to “relax” literally leaving me like a ragdoll. Witnesses of this happening to me have reported that during this blackout my eyes will be open but I won’t be responsive period. Often my hands will be making grabbing motions but I am unaware of doing this either. If I blink, it usually means it’s over and I’ll start sluggishly responding again until I can get back up to speed. It odd when I explain this to people close to me because they think they can handle it when it happens but it’s absolutely terrifying when it does and some have even considered calling 911 before I became responsive again before they could grab their phones. My whole brain essentially goes through an entire reboot. Most will see the Body based signal loss and they think that’s it. The body based ones are worry-some but I’m at least mentally capable of taking care of myself when it happens or am able to explain how to help. This morning won’t be the last time and it was certainly wasn’t the first where I’ve had to explain that I don’t need emergency medical services unless my heart stops, I stop breathing, or I go unresponsive for longer than 3-4 minutes. Just keep me from hitting my head on stuff if you were hugging me instead of letting me sit and lay back when it happens and keep talking to me till I talk back. I’m sorry I scared you but lets not pay 2 grand for an Ambulance when they can’t do anything about neurological disorders. I’d be awake and back to normal way before they got here.