Yes I do understand walking and exercising is important, the problem is convincing my left side that it's important
. And by the start of the evening, it decides no more. I would use a cane, walker or my forearm crutches, except my left arm is as useless as my left leg right now so there's really no way to safely manuever with those as only one arm can catch me and even it's not that strong since it's a non-dominant hand. That's why the resistance bands are out, so I can try to keep and hopefully gain back some of the lacking strength.
I mean the left side is pretty much dead and gone, no reflexes, the strength of a newborn baby, no feeling, just gone though I can still force it to move, and it can hold me up with some very conscious effort earlier in the day for short distances, but around 4/5 o'clock it's done. It's not a matter of it hurts too much to walk, or I'm frustrated with moving at a snails pace, it is quite literally the leg muscles will not work, any attempt to apply weight to the leg that just kinda starts dangling there as the day wears on ends in epic failure, it immediately collapses at the slightest attempt to even adjust my center of balance to transfer to my chair, so I'm left wiggling around my right foot and likely destroying what's left of the tendons trying to transfer to the chair or from the chair to the toilet.
Left arm and hand arm the same, which bites being a lefty let me tell you, though I suppose I could say thankfully I've recieved a lot of injuries to my left arm over the years so I can tie my shoes one handed, brush and wash my rather long hair and if I'm really feeling mentally acute I can even braid it and use a ponytail holder with one hand, along with pouring milk or juice from a full gallon, doing up buttons and zippers. I just can't write, draw or paint with my right hand.
But yes doing everything I possibly can to not be in the wheelchair, it is a last and final resort when the left side just wanders off, but my bladder doesn't, or the GB "needs" me as she likes to say. Otherwise I walk as much as I can and use the resistance bands to exercise the limbs if I haven't gotten up for a bit.
But I'm also not just dealing with MS as such, but rather the severe spasticity that it caused to my muscles has degenerated the majority of tendons and ligaments in my body as well, and also broke my back and to date has caused 3 herniated and bulging disks in my spine, one in the neck, one in the thoracic spine and one in the lumbar spine which is also where it broke a disk. My ACLs and MCLs are shredded, 3 major ligaments in both of my ankles are shredded, torn rotator cuff in the left shoulder with multiple tears to it, 2 frayed ligaments in my left wrist.... seriously even before losing feeling and reflexes it's a small wonder my body has had any functions since about 2002. And it was after a lot of that that I was in 2 car accidents
both accidents caused further tears to my rotator cuff.
I only recently realized how bad things were when my DH started having neck problems and our doctor put him through the reflex and strength tests and he got to do far more tests than I think I've ever done. But then he was passing his tests, whereas my epic failures on the majority of the ones they even bothered to do, basically stopped further tests in their tracks.... if you can't squeeze a hand or offer resistance up and down there's not a whole lot of reason to keep checking all the different strengths that might exist in the arms or legs for that matter when you can pulled up your toes or keep your leg straight. My DH got to do all sorts of things with his arms, hands, legs and feet, they even checked his eyes more than they do with me... seemed rather unfair, though to who I'm not sure... me because the doctors were just saying... good, good... but skipping over a lot of other tests so clearly it was .'bad, bad' or the DH because a lot of the tests were causing him physical pain and they just kept giving him more tests.
And yes I did tease the doctor about who did give a bit of a chuckle since she knows me quite well and did tell me straight up that if I passed the tests better I could have more... we laughed about me needing to go home and study... and the next time I saw her she did add in another test, though afterwards she did say that it wasn't because my 'studying' paid off, but rather to prove just how bad I was doing on the physical exam, because even I could tell it was baddddddd. Like the most epic fails of epic failures, she had me splay my fingers and told me not to let her squeeze them together. I could barely splay them on the left hand and she oh so easily squeezed them together, and yet still said 'good, good' until I started laughing. Occupational hazard, always say 'good, good,' to the patient no matter how terribly they are doing. You can pretty much vomit blood on a doctors' shoes and they'll still say 'good, good', until all the tests are done and back and then they'll let you know that no, vomiting blood on their shoes wasn't an okay sign.
I've come to the conclusion that if they ever achieve one of those sci-fi things of loading your brain into a computer, I'm totally up for it.