I wanted to let you all know that I have made a lot of progress the last few weeks. Mayo sent me home with a prescription for 4 weeks of physical therapy. While I can't say it's done anything at all for the sitting pain in the left hip, it has given me some strength, balance and much needed confidence that I'm still a person. I'm driving now. I still haven't ventured out of town by myself and I am careful to let my husband know where I am and carry my cell phone with me. But I feel that I can drive anywhere in our little city. I even put gas in my car today.

Yesterday I got up, got dressed and went to the grocery store. Walmart is a biggggg place. Pharmacy (where I needed things) and the dairy counter (where I needed things) seemed 40 miles apart. But I did my grocery shopping, loaded it all in the car and drove home just like a real person. You know...one of the most demoralizing aspects of this insidious disease is what it does to you as a person. I've spent a year and a half in my pj's, and a robe. Nothing done to my hair but a haircut every now and then. No makeup, no nothing. And could have cared less. But every now and then I'd look in a mirror and think, who is that person?

I came home from Mayo with hope for a better quality of life. This week I walked into my beauty shop and said dye my hair back to the copper red it had been for the last 20 years. I wanted me back. I wanted the familiar spicy hair on my head. So now the Redhead's back!! She's spicy too to go with the hair and she also talks a lot.

Yes Mayo was worth it. I've still got lots of aches, still got the pain in my how do I say it?....b*tt, still got Sjogrens, and still got neuropathy. But I've got some of my life back. Hope you guys can put up with me.

Billye