moonwatcher wrote:hi again fulenn--
question for you: just read your "I Ran!!" thread in The Lounge--you distinguish there between sensory and physical symptoms. That's interesting to me. My sensory symptoms affect how I move around in the world, so I consider them physical. Anyway, I'm mulling over what you said. Thanks for the food for thought.
moonwatcher
I'm thinking and typing as I sit here....
I started thinking in terms of sensory and physical when I was first diagnosed. My neurologist said it that way and I just kept doing it. Actually, I think I've done it longer than that as my father had MS and we discussed his symptoms in that manner. Of course, he had the same neurologist as my first one.
So I tend to think of sensory as ones that don't affect my body moving but do affect how I perceive the world. My are is numb, but it still works. But I see where you are wondering about it. One of my initial symptoms, that I have been fortunate enough not to have again, was that my feet sensed things that were not there. When I walked, it felt like I was walking on sharp upward thrusting pieces of glass. It was sensory, but bad enough that I couldn't take more than a few steps without experiencing extreme pain. But my feet worked. It did affect my mobility. I kept telling myself that, there is nothing really there, mind over matter, just do it, but never could walk more than several steps. As an example of a physical symptom, my father had problems with his right leg dragging, for lack of a better description. Over time, it had stopped responding to his brain's command to lift the muscles necessary for him to lift his leg and take a step forward. He couldn't stand up and lift his knee at a 90 degree angle. I do remember when he had his first solumedrol treatment, though. I walked into the hospital room and he was like a little boy he was so excited. He immediately showed me how he could now lift that knee straight out.
It is unfortunate that he could only do that for several hours. By the next day he no longer could.
So I see the pain in my feet as sensory and the inability for dad to lift his leg as physical. It probably doesn't matter anyway. My neurologist told me years ago that people with sensory symptoms tend to have a better outcome overall and it gave me a lot of hope. That may be why I still distinguish between the two. She told me later that my onset was one of the worst she had ever seen and she thought for a while that I was one of the small percentage who would just progress rapidly and die within a couple of years. So I needed a lot of positive support to hang on to.
Now that I have typed this, I am surprised that I ever went off of the Swank diet, much less ever had a hard time getting going on this one. I just never put it all in one place and I obviously needed to. Go figure.
Fulenn