Annie, I'm sorry everything feels so hopeless. You are wise to sort of lay low for a while and wait for the strength to deal with things to return. I wish we could help. Please keep us posted on how things go...

Abby

Abby, After my acupuncture I has some thoughts come. This is not normal for me to feel like this. Not this intense and lost. While it has been a bad few few weeks I dont think I would be this down. I remembered that this has the quality of mood change I have when my vitamin D has dropped and my parathyroid is more elevated. With winter set in I sure havent gotten enough sun. This will be the first winter I couldnt drive myself to a tan salon. My endo wrote a letter this summer saying it was medically necessary so an aid can take me. Now I have more hours of home aid so it should work. But I want to go out and jump in the car and go. This is one of the big changes I am trying to handle I miss that freedom. I thought it would be back by now. The cold of winter is giving me a modest boost in strength.

Annie59

Annie59,

Look into a sunlamp for home use. I used to have one for health reasons, luckily I don't need one now due to the abundant sunshine here where I live now. I hope you are feeling better.

Annie59, DesertFlower has a "brite" idea there. Tanning beds really aren't the safest things. If the cooler weather doesn't seem to bother your MG maybe it's better to put on some warm comfy clothes and try to spend a bit of time sitting outside. Natural sunlight is the best source of Vit D, most people only need about 10 mins. daily.

Hope you feel better soon!
Rachel

Actually I have experimented since the 2006 diagnosis with the vit D issue and have discovered I am not the average person in this area. When I was diagnosed it was at the end of summer and I had been out exposing hands and face as docs will say. I tried doing that more and reducing the amount of clothing and such and saw only mild increases. It wasnt untill I started tanning that I saw my numbers really rise and the other piece 'stay up.' I have to work so hard to keep my numbers from plummeting. And then at a certain threshold the deficiency symptoms begin to return. Some of those are from the parathyroid elevating too tho.

I used the lite in my face before I knew I had such little D in me. One of the things that D deficiency can cause is SAD symptoms. So I bought the lite and it helped some but only when the vit D was adressed did the many issues that went with the low D including that disappear.

There is a doc at the univeristy I go to that designed her own program to help her MS. There is a presentation by her I will post a link to here later. One of the things she notes is that her program affects endorphins in that she agressively uses high powered TENS devices as part of her exercise regime. So she notes that the affect to the disease of the endorphine increase is something to note. This struck me in that an alternative treatment used by some for MS is low dose naltrexone or LDN. One of the basis for this is that folks with automimmune disease may tend to have lower levels of endorphines. The reason I bring this up is that I did wonder if the endorphins brought on by the tan bed use had an effect on me that other types getting the vit D didnt.

My youngest daughter connected with me a couple days ago. She said we are going to get together on Saturday as a family for Thanksgiving. This gave me a boost I so needed. I found out that my oldest daughter has a very very sick kitty. This makes her call to me that was so overwhelmed from her standpoint make more sense. When she took her to the vet she ran into the old vet that was such a sweetheart when our kitty nearly died from an animal attack when she was in college. This brought all that back to her, all that emotion of back then added to now. The good piece being that he just happened to walk in the door that day.

I am kinda off on tangents here I think. Hope you can forgive.

Annie59

Annie, I'm glad to hear that a family Thanksgiving celebration is in the works. Sometimes we forget just how overwhelming chronic illness can be for EVERYONE in the family. I'm sure you will continue to find the strength you need through your family.

Please remember that no matter how bad things might seem we all have something to be thankful for. Even the smallest of things can be looked at as a great blessing. Heck, I get excited if I can stand up to brush my teeth!!

Have a beautiful day with your family, keeping you and your family in my thoughts and prayers.

Rachel