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Stressed at Work? Tips to Regain a Healthy Balance

Stressed at Work? Tips to Regain a Healthy Balance

Here's some great advice on stress-relieving things you can do. Stress is an MSer's worst enemy as it can lead to a relapse or otherwise called an exaccerbation. Hopefully, you can take a few of these tips and use them when you are feeling tense.

PostSecret

PostSecret


I just absolutely LOVE this site!!! Check it out once. It's a great tool to learning what most people's true colors are, especially when they think they aren't going to be judged for their thoughts, actions, etc. It really gives you a perspective on things.

New Exaccerbation--Definitely Stress Induced

Stress is not a good thing for the average relatively healthy person.  That being said, I can assure you that stress is major no-no for someone who happens to be sick, such as my fellow MSers.  However, most of us, healthy and sick alike (me included!), simply can't control our thoughts such as "how am I going to pay the rent/mortgage this month?" and/or "God, I have so much work to do, how am I supposed to finish all of this stuff by the deadline?"   The list of everyday stressors seems to never end.  In fact, I often find that my worries seem to multiply when I think of them because one problem usually has another problem or problems that caused it.   However, one has to be extremely careful not to think negative thoughts that may lead to stress when that person has Multiple Sclerosis.

Unfortunately for me I have yet to figure out ways to fight, or at the very least manage, my stress triggers.  This lack of knowledge has now left me with an oh-so-nice MS exaccerbation.  My poor right arm and hand just don't have the strength to even start the ignition in my car.  Actually typing this blog right now is a bit on the difficult side of things.  It's weird too, when the palm of my hand is facing up I cannot extend all of my fingers.  It's almost like they are too weak to function correctly. 

Due to these symptoms I was forced to call the neurologist in hopes that he will start me on an I.V. steroid treatment.  But, guess what!?!?  I have to suffer this way until he can get me in....on Monday!  I am a CNA and definitely need all of my appendages to function correctly in order to do this physically demanding job.  I work Friday-Monday so this should be interesting.  How am I supposed to be a caregiver to someone else when I, myself, am needing to be cared for?  Ugh!!! Something else to stress about!  It never ends...

In January of 2009 after a visit to the Doctor regarding the numbness I was experiencing from just below my breasts and going all the way down to the tips of my toes, I was diagnosed as having Multiple Sclerosis. This traumatic discovery devastated me, however, it explained the sudden weakness I experienced in my left arm roughly a year and a half before as well as my debilitating, extreme fatigue that had been plaguing me for some months, maybe even a year or so, really. Due to the career path I chose, which happens to be healthcare, I knew exactly what M.S. was and upon hearing my initial diagnosis, my heart dropped and almost immediately the tears fell from my eyes. I am a certified nursing assistant who had personally taken care of numerous M.S. patients who resided in nursing homes. Of course in the nursing home setting the people who live there due to M.S. are all in the last stages of progressive M.S., not the relapsing-remitting version of the disease as I have. Due to this fact, I thought that was where I was going to be in a few years. I wasn't aware that some go many, many years before progressing to that level of disability. My knowledge of M.S. was that once you are diagnosed it's a downhill road from that point on. Little did I know that there are many that never reach the progressive stage of the disease and that rather, they stay healthy and active until an exxacerbation occurs and after it is over the person is better. Almost as if they never had anything wrong with them. I just specifically remember stating somewhere around the ripe old age of 21 what a pain in the ass Multiple Sclerosis patients are and that I NEVER wanted to become one of them. HA! I guess the jokes on me. I strongly believe in Karma and think that this is Karma biting me in the butt.I say this because I wasn't really sympathetic to their demanding, controlling, and all around anal behaviors. At the time I truly believed that the M.S. patients were just difficult because they wanted to be. I never really thought about their potential reasons for having to have their knick-knacks in their room just so or why they were on the call light every five minutes for something I considered unimportant. I didn't, at that point in my life, have much patience for this. Had I just slowed down and just thought about why the M.S. patient acted out in these ways I may just have understood that it was their ONLY "control" in their life. Most of them had catheters so they could not even control when they urinated. Not to mention the fact the fact that they couldn't even have the choice of living on their own. Most of the time family members who were too busy to care for anyone but their own immediate family had placed the person stricken with such a disease into whatever nursing home had an open bed.........I'm getting tired I'll finish this another day.

Fourth of July 2009 Sucked-I Didn't Want To Celebrate

Why oh why does my MS related depression have to ruin all the fun times that I could be having? This fourth of July I was extremely irritable and just simply hated people. That mere fact alone made it difficult to attend fireworks at the park.