Dear Friends,

I hope you all had a very Happy Holiday Season and hope you have a wonderful 2011, filled with many good friends, laughter, love, and most of all Good Health.

Although I have enjoyed reading what many of you have written, I have not posted anything on this site in quite a while, and I missed doing so.  The reason I have been absent is that since May I have had a series of health problems—problems serious enough to prevent me from living my life as I would have liked to.  Those of us with chronic illnesses often have to face this, and when you have multiple chronic conditions it is even more difficult to get on with life.  You begin to feel better from one set of health problems, perhaps even enjoy a couple of weeks in which you feel like your energy is resuming and POW, you get hit by something else. (Picture a Batman and Robin cartoon with the POW in a jagged balloon, just to make the point. And no, I am neither Batman nor Robin. I have so much metal inside me I see myself more as the Bionic Woman. Ha!)

In my situation, with Multiple Sclerosis (MS) and its many symptoms, chronic back pain from several failed spinal surgeries and then a spinal fusion, and the repercussions of a surgical infection, after a rod was placed from my knee to my ankle, that was never completely cured and resulted in Lymphedema and chronic Cellulites. These cause my legs to swell up badly, turn very red, and burn as badly as the worst sunburn you can imagine.  While I have had the Lymphedema treated and my legs don’t swell up to 3 or 4 times their normal size like they used to, they still get swollen and red, and I sometimes cannot stand because of the pain.  I post my articles on both the Chronic Pain and Multiple Sclerosis sites because some of my symptoms and life situations that result from them can be found in both illnesses.

Sometimes when my pain is very bad in my back and radiating down my legs, I truly don’t know which doctor I should see, my neurologist for my back or the neurologist for the MS.  Even the doctors don’t know what causes some of my symptoms, especially the numbness and weakness in my legs.  Other problems, such as my double and blurry vision are clearly from the MS lesions on my optic nerve.

I am sure you have all had times when your pain or symptoms have caused you equal discomfort, (discomfort is quite an understatement in this situation isn’t it?) and I don’t mean to sound like mine is worse than anyone else’s.  I simply want to explain why multiple chronic illnesses can keep a person down for months at a time — or more! 

Fortunately I am feeling better and ready to get back to work on my personal writing, which I haven’t done anything on since May, posting on the sites I contribute to, and my volunteer advocacy work with the American Pain Foundation (APF) Action Network (AN).  Exciting things are taking place around the country; the Action Network has become stronger in numbers and purpose and I encourage anyone who has not done so already to go to the APF website, www.painfoundation.org and see what is happening.  If you haven’t already you should also complete the volunteer survey so you can become a part of our efforts, if only to call or email your elected representatives to ask them to support or vote against a certain Bill that could impact the care of people in pain.