I wish I were new then my body would be too, but that's not the case. I'm just new HERE. Everywhere else I'm a decrepit old fool.
Anyway..for the past few years I have been losing strength by the bucket loads. About 3 years ago I was hauling scrap metal for a living jumping in dumpsters or what have you and loading my pickup truck with every available scrap of metal I could find then unloading and selling it all at the local scrap yard and I was good at it. I could lift a stove over my head and lift most refrigerators without help, but now carrying a gallon of milk from the car to the house has become a real challenge for me.
I no longer have a use for a pickup truck nor for the many tools I once used to take things apart to separate various metals. The closet I have to a use for tools now is my cigarette lighter because i still smoke like a fiend, but other than that they just collect dust and rust.
At first doctors pretty much ignored my complaints of losing strength until I was forced to use a cane to walk and I still am using it, but moving now is slow, painful and tedious at best. About the furthest I can walk now is to the car and back, about 150 feet there and back and each trip takes me about 15-20 minutes and if I could get a wheel chair through that path I surely would. The reason i don't is because it's full of roots and rocks and assorted junk not to mention it's like a maze of fences pushing anything through it. Also I barely have the strength to lift a wheel chair anymore so loading and unloading one in and out of a car would be nearly impossible for me.
I haven't been diagnosed with anything as of yet, but have had several diseases ruled out such as MS and other things. My doc thinks it might be ALS, but we still don't know so now I'll get to why I think it might be and why it's still undiagnosed.
My last trip the the clinic where these tests are done took me over an hour to get from the car to the office and in that time i had to stop several times to rest plus when I got to the floor it was on I couldn't find it so i just haven't been back. In the meantime I've lost a lot more strength and I seriously doubt I would ever make it to that floor unassisted again. That doesn't even mention lack of funds for gas money there and back.
Everything I have read about ALS or MND leads me to the same place and I've been to almost every other forum or site that could possibly be the culprit and it always leads back to ALS or some form of MND.
I'm not really scared of death and in fact i look forward to it in many ways. I've had a damned hard life anyway and another 30 or 40 years of it doesn't have any appeal to me in any manner whatsoever. So if I do have ALS it might as well be that as anything else. I can think of plenty of worse things to die from. Old age is one.
I'm not overly depressed. I accept it for what it is and I have nobody to blame and wouldn't want a scapegoat if there was one anyway.
The only issue i am scared of is the impending inability to care for myself. Right now I'm a caregiver for an elderly woman with really bad knees and between her bad knees and my weak as hell legs we make a great pair. Neither of us have family who really gives a damned one way or another and those who do care either live to far away or are to wrapped up in their own lives. Her offspring live close, but in the 5 years I've been here only one has dropped by for a visit and even that was a quick hello and goodbye to check to make sure I wasn't hitting her over the head to take everything she has. I was already accused of that once.
Marjorie is my only and best friend in this crappy earth so the last person i would even consider hurting is her. I am worried though that once i am unable to care for myself her own quality of life will go from bad to much worse. As it is now she often sits in her own urine for hours because its to difficult to get up to go to the bathroom for her most days and I am unable to lift her, but I do manage to do the laundry and hang up the dozens of towels she uses every week to sit on. What will happen to me is anyones guess.
You see..I live in a separate building from her. She lives in the house and i live in the shed out back. I have heat and electric and even the internet. We keep in touch with the use of walkie talkies and rechargeable batteries.
Now about some of my symptoms.. I do get leg cramps especially at night when my feet get nasty little spasms. Other than weakness which is becoming profound when I walk, especially in the morning I feel like I've been walking or even running barefoot on sharp rocks all night..Quite painful, but as the day goes on the pain usually eases up somewhat until I sit for long periods then it's right back to the same pain again when i have to stand.
Since this began I have has burning pain just below the skin what feels as if someone lifted my skin and dropped something hot between the skin and muscle in my legs, but this pain often moves from place to place. Some days in my legs and feet and others in my arms, back, neck, chest and so on, but it's mostly concentrated in my legs.
Well, I'm worn out typing this so I can't do much more so I'll close and hopefully finish later. I don;t know what's really going on and i don't want to say its this or that, but it is quite maddening to not be able to do much of anything i once could. Just typing in often exhausting..
Thanks for reading and i hope to return soon. Oh yeah..In my signature is my site. I have so much free time so I watch a great many movies online. I hate commercials so i watch online. Drop on by sometime if you like old movies..most are B movies.the fun ones..
Thanks again..
M aka Noirvault
Anyway..for the past few years I have been losing strength by the bucket loads. About 3 years ago I was hauling scrap metal for a living jumping in dumpsters or what have you and loading my pickup truck with every available scrap of metal I could find then unloading and selling it all at the local scrap yard and I was good at it. I could lift a stove over my head and lift most refrigerators without help, but now carrying a gallon of milk from the car to the house has become a real challenge for me.
I no longer have a use for a pickup truck nor for the many tools I once used to take things apart to separate various metals. The closet I have to a use for tools now is my cigarette lighter because i still smoke like a fiend, but other than that they just collect dust and rust.
At first doctors pretty much ignored my complaints of losing strength until I was forced to use a cane to walk and I still am using it, but moving now is slow, painful and tedious at best. About the furthest I can walk now is to the car and back, about 150 feet there and back and each trip takes me about 15-20 minutes and if I could get a wheel chair through that path I surely would. The reason i don't is because it's full of roots and rocks and assorted junk not to mention it's like a maze of fences pushing anything through it. Also I barely have the strength to lift a wheel chair anymore so loading and unloading one in and out of a car would be nearly impossible for me.
I haven't been diagnosed with anything as of yet, but have had several diseases ruled out such as MS and other things. My doc thinks it might be ALS, but we still don't know so now I'll get to why I think it might be and why it's still undiagnosed.
My last trip the the clinic where these tests are done took me over an hour to get from the car to the office and in that time i had to stop several times to rest plus when I got to the floor it was on I couldn't find it so i just haven't been back. In the meantime I've lost a lot more strength and I seriously doubt I would ever make it to that floor unassisted again. That doesn't even mention lack of funds for gas money there and back.
Everything I have read about ALS or MND leads me to the same place and I've been to almost every other forum or site that could possibly be the culprit and it always leads back to ALS or some form of MND.
I'm not really scared of death and in fact i look forward to it in many ways. I've had a damned hard life anyway and another 30 or 40 years of it doesn't have any appeal to me in any manner whatsoever. So if I do have ALS it might as well be that as anything else. I can think of plenty of worse things to die from. Old age is one.
I'm not overly depressed. I accept it for what it is and I have nobody to blame and wouldn't want a scapegoat if there was one anyway.
The only issue i am scared of is the impending inability to care for myself. Right now I'm a caregiver for an elderly woman with really bad knees and between her bad knees and my weak as hell legs we make a great pair. Neither of us have family who really gives a damned one way or another and those who do care either live to far away or are to wrapped up in their own lives. Her offspring live close, but in the 5 years I've been here only one has dropped by for a visit and even that was a quick hello and goodbye to check to make sure I wasn't hitting her over the head to take everything she has. I was already accused of that once.
Marjorie is my only and best friend in this crappy earth so the last person i would even consider hurting is her. I am worried though that once i am unable to care for myself her own quality of life will go from bad to much worse. As it is now she often sits in her own urine for hours because its to difficult to get up to go to the bathroom for her most days and I am unable to lift her, but I do manage to do the laundry and hang up the dozens of towels she uses every week to sit on. What will happen to me is anyones guess.
You see..I live in a separate building from her. She lives in the house and i live in the shed out back. I have heat and electric and even the internet. We keep in touch with the use of walkie talkies and rechargeable batteries.
Now about some of my symptoms.. I do get leg cramps especially at night when my feet get nasty little spasms. Other than weakness which is becoming profound when I walk, especially in the morning I feel like I've been walking or even running barefoot on sharp rocks all night..Quite painful, but as the day goes on the pain usually eases up somewhat until I sit for long periods then it's right back to the same pain again when i have to stand.
Since this began I have has burning pain just below the skin what feels as if someone lifted my skin and dropped something hot between the skin and muscle in my legs, but this pain often moves from place to place. Some days in my legs and feet and others in my arms, back, neck, chest and so on, but it's mostly concentrated in my legs.
Well, I'm worn out typing this so I can't do much more so I'll close and hopefully finish later. I don;t know what's really going on and i don't want to say its this or that, but it is quite maddening to not be able to do much of anything i once could. Just typing in often exhausting..
Thanks for reading and i hope to return soon. Oh yeah..In my signature is my site. I have so much free time so I watch a great many movies online. I hate commercials so i watch online. Drop on by sometime if you like old movies..most are B movies.the fun ones..
Thanks again..
M aka Noirvault
