Bracing for the next appointment...

  We made it through the MRI scan successfully. Was VERY happy with how well it went. My butt may have went to sleep sitting there lol but the combo of a new face mask (didn't enclose him totally like the old one) and a stronger Valium and the scans went great! He even fell asleep on the table :)
  I try hard to not focus on the next appointment on the 19th. That is the one where the neurologist will read the scans and tell us if his MS is staying the same or getting worse. The scans show lesions and if he has more lesions then it means his MS advanced. Increase of lesions mean an increase in melanin being "eaten" by the MS and increases the chance of a relapse. 
   I want to hear that his MS hasn't advanced, that the steps we took this last year has helped, that his MS shot every single Sunday night for the last year has not been in vain, that his B12 shot every month isn't silliness, that he's not relapsing, and that his leg cramps/ horrible headaches are not from advancing lesions. I guess I'm selfish, I'm a dreamer, a nutjob whatever lol but I want to hear those words. I want to hear Dr B say that we are right where we were last year. 
  I hate the unpredictability of MS, the days of him not feeling like getting out of bed, the headaches, the leg aches, the times he forces himself to do something fun and the loathing he sometimes feels for himself. 
  If you do not have MS you don't understand. I don't have it even though I "See" it everyday...I can sympathize with him but I can't "feel" it because I don't have it. If you are not a support team member for someone that has MS you don't know how I feel or how I deal. Chronic illness is one of those lovely illnesses that has no face or alike symptoms. You can look great but feel horrible. People can see you with your family and think you're exaggerating your symptoms but not realize a huge outing may make you lay on the couch the whole next day.
  I firmly believe that every single thing happens for a reason..to make you or break you. Steve often felt he was punished for getting MS. Here his family has addicts, dead beats, less than desirable personality traits and people that could care less about even their own kids...and he..a good husband, a good Daddy, an involved person with family...was dealing with a horrible illness. Till he realized that those other people don't have a support team, don't have true friends, and are not strong enough to take on the illness.
  So we take it day by day, appointment by appointment and just live life. So many in the family and some friends think of it as a diagnosis, then Steve then family. When Steve and family are the same thing and he's merely BEEN diagnosed. It doesn't rule our life. Yes it hangs out in the house, it hangs right around the corner of everything we do but it's not our life.
  All we can do is prep for the appointment, be honest with the dr and each other, and keep on being a team. We face everything in life together and we do almost everything together..