It's Been A Long Time

Yesterday afternoon my grandson came into the room and said "Grandpa, you haven't posted anything on your blog since November." Egad!!, I realized that he was right. My excuse is that procrastination is one of my stronger traits as I have fully intended to but kept putting it off. Quite a lot has happened since my last post, but I will try to be brief. My physical abilities seem to have declined somewhat. The Segway has slowly crept back into my day to day functioning. I never really quit using it entirely, but am beginning to use it more often. I am back to using a cane, which I don't really like, but it does keep me from falling. Lately, I have taken a couple of tumbles because of loss of balance. The last one occurred about a week after the New Year when I fell backward while getting out of the car, and ended up hitting my head very hard on the pavement. I didn't go to the Dr. but am sure that a concussion resulted because of the incident. I am still recovering from that spill. Now I somewhat understand what Humpty Dumpty went through, although I didn't break anything. I am trying to stick with some new eating habits as espoused by Dr. Terry Wahl, Montel Williams, as well as a few others; no glutens, dairy, or processed products. This came about due to a correspondence with a pen friend in Canada who was following my blog and had experiences similar to mine. She mentioned in a recent Email that she was beginning to incorporate a nutritional approach to her MS symptoms and as I began to look into and delved deeper into this area, I decided that I didn't have anyhing to lose by giving it a try. Although the research concerning eating habits is mixed, there are several people reporting success. So far, so good, but its not easy, as I was almost addicted to chocolate and dairy products. Prior to changing my eating habits I probably drank at least a gallon and half of milk every week as well as putting away more than my share of ice cream. I hate to think how much sugar was going into my body. I'm going to try it for six months or so to see if I can notice any changes in my MS. We'll see. It's not at all a vegan approach as I still eat meat daily (grass fed and free range poultry) and can (and should) eat almost all of the seafood I want (I love seafood, but no fried - No prob Bob, as I never liked it fried anyway). I have entered a clinical trial, sponsored by the drug company, Biogen, involving different dosages of the drug Baclofen. I will try to keep my posting up to date concerning my experiences as a lab rat. In addition, I have just learned about a new oral MS drug, BG-12, which some are predicting may be the MS drug of the future. It has passed clinical trial phase three and is expected to be released either sometime later this year or early in 2013. Meanwhile, via a CNN crawler across the bottom of the screen, I learned that my current drug, Gilenya, is undergoing a new review due to some deaths both in Europe and the US. After looking into this further, I believe that the deaths occurred during the initial adminstration of the drug. I (as well as others who are taking Gilenya), was required to be under the observation of a doctor during the first eight hours after being given the first dose. As I'm still here and kicking, I figure that I'm not included in the statistical death toll. So for me at least, keep the Gilenya coming. Sorry about any spelling errors as I can't seem to locate the spellchecker function of the new updated blog poster. I say, 'Please ignore the errors as I'm typing Kentuckian'. (Meant to be funny, sorry if I stepped on any toes.)