Already half way through the year!

Posted on June 30, 2018 by Positively Alyssa

Good afternoon y’all! Can you believe tomorrow is already July and we are half way through 2018? I had so many expectations for this year, but unfortunately nothing has really changed since 2017. I kind of feel like I am trapped in the quick sand of life and can not seem to find my way to the better side!

Have you ever felt like you were drowning in the struggles that life throws at you? There are some days that I feel like I am just treading the waters of a painful life and sinking relatively fast! I have heard the saying, “Life does not give you anything you can’t handle”. But I mean come on there does not seem to be an end in the amount of tests I am given daily. I do like to believe that I am a pretty strong person, but everyone has a breaking point and they need some easy days!

How has your year been thus far? Did you set goals for 2018 and have you been able to reach them? I am not saying for even one second that if you have not accomplished your goals by now that you won’t be able to, it is just all a matter of never giving up and believing you can do anything you set your mind to! When we fall down and feel like we have crashed and burned, we just have to stand back up, brush ourselves off and keep moving forward! There are still six more months to go to achieve any goals we had for this year, but it just seems like time is flying by and not giving a moment for us to catch up.

Do you remember where you were last year at this time? I do remember where I was and it was not a great time for me at all. I was debating with myself if I should let the medication I had been on for 6 years go and try something new! Through a lot of internal discussions and against my doctor’s advice, I ended up dropping the Gilenya to give Tecfidera a chance. The combination of the stress I put on myself and changing medications, I ended up with the worse relapse I have had since being diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis. It was a terrible time in life and I am honestly still feeling some of the consequences now. Of course I did end up going back on the Gilenya because it was apparently strong enough to help control the progression of the Multiple Sclerosis. Even though this difficult time in my life has lasted a long time, I still believe that giving up is just not an option for me and never will be! I am still trying my best each an every day and little by little I do believe I will get back to my “normal” self again, whatever that may be.

Now honestly do you sometimes feel that for every step forward you take, there are always two steps backwards in return? In situations when you feel like this, it is just always important to pull yourself together and just fight to take more steps in the right direction! Life was never meant to be full of sunshine and rainbows, but it is all just a learning experience that can be down right painful at times. I do believe that each struggle we face in this journey of life is just a building block that enables us to be a lot stronger than we would have been! We seldom get to choose what our difficulties in life are, but we do always get to decide how we are going to handle them!

Thank you so much for visiting my site on this beautiful Saturday! I hope your weekend is starting off lovely and you will be able to enjoy the rest of it! Remember that this is the last Saturday of June, so make it wonderful! I do always encourage your amazing comments and I will respond to you as quickly as I possibly can! I do not have too many plans for the weekend, but I do have 2 award nominations and 2 tags to work on, so hopefully I will get them done by the end of the weekend! As always, I am sending y’all LOTS of love and comfort!

Always, Alyssa

1,000+ Amazing Supporters!

Posted on June 28, 2018 by Positively Alyssa

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I started my blog on July 17, 2017 to raise awareness about Multiple Sclerosis, but also to encourage and inspire those that suffer from any chronic illness or just difficulties life has to offer us that we really do not want. I was just learning about the blogging community and I had only 3 followers, my husband, mother and mother-in-law. Since that time my blog has grown to over 1,000 amazing followers! I have learned so much from each and every one of you and I really hope that I have been able to do some good for you as well. I am so very thankful for y’all!! I never thought that blogging would be so incredible but I am really glad I made the decision to start my blog!

I hope y’all are having a good week! I know you are probably happy that tomorrow is Friday and then we have the weekend to enjoy! I am definitely really glad the weekend is near considering I have not been feeling all that great. Y’all already know that I have been dealing with a lot of pain and headaches for weeks now without any help from my doctor! I reached out to my doctor on Monday to inform her about the fainting spells I was having, but there was NO response. Unfortunately the lack of caring from my doctor does not surprise me at all and it only makes me more excited to move soon and find a new doctor that will hopefully be more attentive!

I would really like to thank y’all for always being so amazing and caring! In our society today it is so hard to find people who really truly care about more than just themselves. It seems as though so many have adopted a selfish behavior, but none of you have gone that way in life! All of you are so caring, compassionate, sympathetic and empathetic for others and I appreciate this more than words can even begin to describe! Y’all have given me so much hope that love and kindness still exists in this world!

Thank you for stopping by my site today! I always appreciate you taking the time to read and make fabulous comments, which I will always respond to as quickly as I can. Again, thank you so much for your continued support. I value all the friendships I have been able to make through this blog! As always I am sending you LOTS of love and comfort!

Always, Alyssa

Half way there!

Posted on June 27, 2018 by Positively Alyssa

Good afternoon y’all! I hope you are having a wonderful Wednesday! I am beyond excited that this week is almost over and next week is a four-day work week because of the holiday!

I have honestly had kind of difficult week dealing with pain issues! There is a certain amount of pain that I find tolerable, but then there is another kind that makes me feel absolutely miserable and incredibly fatigued! Even though I have been dealing with a terrible amount of pain that is mixed with headaches and muscle spasms, I have been able to go to work. I did not make it through six hours Monday and Tuesday, but I did today! Of course after whatever hours I do work, I come home and I am absolutely exhausted. But the simple achievements are better than none! There has been another issue I have experienced this week and I have no idea what is causing it. Both Monday and Tuesday while sitting at my desk at work, I had several what seemed to be fainting episodes. It was really scary, but I was thankful I was sitting down. I did call my doctor’s office to let them know about this, but not so surprising they did not call me back. Have any of you ever experienced this before?

I am a pretty resilient person and I never give up on the goals I have for myself!! A while back I had made the goal to work six hours each day, which honestly did not happen at first. However I did not allow that to keep me down for too long and tried to not view it as failure. I have always been very hard on myself, but seriously that does not help at all. Being too hard on ourselves only sets us up for hard times, which is never good. My goal now is to just continue to always be resilient and keep moving forward!

I have to say everyone on this blog helps me see the strength I have and keeps me focused on that strength! There are so many incredible people who I have had the pleasure to get to know and I am very thankful for this. There really seems to be so much ugliness in the world today, but y’all allow me to see the good in others!

I hope y’all had a great day and I hope you are feeling well. Thank you for stopping by my site today and I really do encourage your comments. Y’all already know that I do respond as quickly as I possibly can! I hope you have a lovely evening and do what helps you relax! As always I am sending y’all LOTS of love and comfort!

Always, Alyssa

Motivational Monday!

Posted on June 25, 2018 by Positively Alyssa

Good morning y’all! I hope you had an amazing weekend! Monday is often a very dreaded day or at least it is for me, but I think we can make the best of a this day! Let’s look at all Mondays as a fresh start to a new week that will be full of fantastic things! What ever happened last week is in the past now and we have the option to create new and wonderful better days for our future!

Y’all know I like to start the week off with an encouraging quote! Great quotes have the ability to start days off in a positive and uplifting way! I hope you find as much encouragement in the quote I am sharing with you as I do! I hope you have a great day and that you are feeling well! I look forward to reading your comments on this fabulous quote! Please always remember that I am sending you LOTS of love and comfort!

Always, Alyssa

Logic and emotion!

Posted on June 24, 2018 by Positively Alyssa

I am a very passionate and emotional person who has a very hard time separating emotions from logic! When I hear of something that has happened that is not humane, like innocent children being locked in cages or an unarmed person being shot to death by the police for no reason at all, my emotions go into overdrive. But in cases like these, I do not believe that my feelings are illogical but in fact very human and normal!

Do you ever allow your emotions to override your logical side? My emotions have always run very deep because I truly hate to see anyone in distress. I will admit that sometimes my compassion for others causes me a lot of stress and I know that does not help myself or anyone else for that matter. All I have ever wanted to do was help others that are experiencing difficult times. Part of this all leads back to the fact that I strongly believe that everyone should be treated equally and with much respect.

Y’all already know that I am very upset about how people are being treat throughout the United States. I do believe that the actions of so many are very hateful and inhumane! No matter how you were raised child abuse and out right murder are not the way we are supposed to behave. I personally do not have one violent bone in my body and fail to be able to understand how anyone could cause so much harm to another human being and still be able to sleep well at night. What kind of person could cause so damage to the lives of so many and not have any regrets or sadness? It will just never make sense to me and it will always affect my emotions to the core!

Changing the subject just a little, how are y’all feeling today? I hope you have been enjoying your weekend and feeling as wonderful as you possibly can. I have not done too much this weekend because it is crazy HOT out and that alone just takes all my energy away! Yesterday my legs were hurting me so intensely, but I did go to the grocery store anyway because it needed to be done! All I can say is walking around the grocery store for a short amount of time increased the pain I was already experiencing vastly! At least after my short not so fun time at the grocery store I was able to rest the rest of the day!

My perfect idea of a weekend evening is being home with my husband and cats watching a movie, which is exactly what I did! What is your idea of a perfect evening on the weekend? I might be a little boring, but I do not really enjoy going out with large crowds! Large crowds tend to make me very uncomfortable and a little stressed! I hope your weekend was spent doing what brings you joy and peace! A weekend that is spent doing what makes you happy leads to a good start to the new week ahead!

Thank you for visiting my site today! Your comments are always appreciated and encouraged. I do promise to respond to all comments as quickly as I can. As always I am sending y’all LOTS of love and comfort!

Always, Alyssa

Dismiss the judgments and embrace compassion!

Posted on June 23, 2018 by Positively Alyssa

Good afternoon y’all! I hope you are enjoying this beautiful Saturday! Of course it is insanely hot where I live today, but I have learned to accept it because that is the way it will be for the next several months.

So much is going on in the world and it has really affected me emotionally. Life can be viewed as short or even painfully long at times! But, however we view life, why waste any of our precious time passing judgments on others? I do believe too many people judge a book by its cover and fail to see the bigger beautiful picture that each individual is in their own unique way.

I do feel that it is extremely important to always treat others the same way we would like to be treated! I do not have any room in my life for hateful and judgmental people. It seems like there are far too many out there that do not view things the same way I do and that is incredibly unfortunate. I am not saying that everyone should follow everything that I do because I am not perfect in any way, but I do feel that we should all try to spread as much love and compassion as we can! I know y’all already do an amazing job with this, but there are still so many others that do not!

When I look at the way the country I live in is behaving, it is very troubling to me. It seems that some think it is perfectly acceptable to use innocent children as a bargaining tool, which in my opinion is anything but acceptable! Anyone that has children or use to be a child, which we all were at some point, should not think it is acceptable to use children like they are pawns on a chessboard. It is just incredibly disturbing to me. There are children being taken from their parents and put into cages like animals. These parents and children that are being tormented did not ask for this treatment and definitely DO NOT DESERVE IT!

I will never understand why some people will continue mistreat others just because of the color of their skin, sexual preference, religious beliefs or any other thing that may differ from them. It is 2018 and we should all be evolving instead some are devolving at an incredible fast pace. We are all entitled to our own opinions, but everyone is also entitled to never have to fear being ostracized for being who they are. I know it is probably obviously, but I strongly believe everyone should be treated equally and with respect.

Thank you for stopping by my site today and reading how passionate I truly am about equality for all. I am sorry to go off a rant about how horrible people are treated in the United States, but it is something that I feel is not right in any way! We all have our own opinions and it is perfectly fine if you disagree with anything that I have written. I do look forward to any comments you may have and I will respond as quickly as I possibly can. I hope you have a wonderful weekend and I hope you are feeling well! As always I am sending y’all LOTS of love and comfort!

Always, Alyssa

First Friday of Summer!

Posted on June 22, 2018 by Positively Alyssa

Good morning and happy Friday y’all! I hope you had a pleasant week and I know you must be looking forward to the weekend!! I want to wish you a wonderful day and remind you to stay cool as you can in the summer’s unrelenting heat!

I hope today we can all try to be the sunshine for another person that might be in a darker place in their life. All it takes is one person to make a dramatic difference to someone else that might be suffering. After all, we never really know what the person standing right next to us is dealing with, so maybe we can help bring them some happiness they were lacking. Spreading love and compassion can go a long way and maybe this could end up being a chain reaction that inevitably spreads throughout the entire world! Wouldn’t that be absolutely fabulous? I think the world we live in would be a much happier place to continue living in, if only we could all embrace each other without any negative thoughts and or unfair judgments! Kindness, solicitude, empathy and love can go a long way, if only everyone would encompass these thoughts into their daily life! Believe it or not, it does not take a fancy magician to accept others for who they are, instead of what we may think they should be! The only person we can change, is ourselves! It obviously just makes me so sad and disturbed when I hear of anyone not being treated fairly. We are all just human-beings and deserve to be treated with respect!

I hope y’all have a wonderful Friday! Your comments are always encouraged and appreciated! I will respond to all of your amazing comments as quickly as I can! Please never forget that I am always sending y’all LOTS of love and comfort!

Always, Alyssa

It is officially Summer

Posted on June 21, 2018 by Positively Alyssa

Good evening y’all! I got so caught up with my rant earlier, I completely forgot today is the first day of summer. Although I think down here in the south, summer had already started a month ago! When you have warm temperatures in February, which was supposed to be winter, what can summer possibly hold for us? For the foreseeable further temperatures are going to be in the 90’s! These temperatures are nice if you are at the beach or have swimming pool, but on a normal day they can be torture!!! I think it is safe to say we are in for one HOT summer!

When you live with an illness such as Multiple Sclerosis, it is extremely important to stay as cool as possible. I have heard from numerous people that cooling vests can be very beneficial, so this year I am thinking I might need to give them a chance. Also, staying hydrated is vital to everyone’s health. When you simply go outside to your car, which is normally a short walk, you can be drenched before the air conditioning has a chance to work! I am lucky that normally when I leave the house for work it is early, so typically the sun has not had a chance to heat things up much, but my goodness when I leave in the afternoon it is insanely HOT! I try to let the a/c start working before I start my drive home so I do not get overheated and then feel faint. When I have to do the one thing I already dread doing, grocery shopping, I try to either go earlier in the day or after the sun goes down to avoid too much of the heat. Do y’all have any certain things you do to avoid the nasty heat? Honestly with the way I have already been feeling, I might be a little worried about the summer heat!

I hope y’all have a nice, relaxing and cool evening! Thank goodness it is almost Friday, which leads us to a two-day weekend! Even though I missed two days of work this week, I am still looking forward to two days away from waking up way too early for work! As always your comments are encouraged and appreciated. I do plan to do more posts about ways to handle the heat, so hopefully they will be helpful for y’all! As always, I am always sending y’all LOTS of love and comfort!

Always, Alyssa

What do you do when…..

Posted on June 21, 2018 by Positively Alyssa

Good afternoon y’all! I really hope your day is going much better than mine has. I already have to get up pretty early for work, but being woken at 3:00 am due to a power outage is a terrible way to wake up. It kind of sets how the day is going to go for you! Waiting patiently for the power to come back on so I could get ready to work was frustrating to say the least. I could not fall back asleep for a few reasons, it was a little hot without the air conditioner and sheer panic in thinking how I would wake up if I fall asleep without an alarm and get ready for my day. Thankfully the power company did work fairly fast and the power was restored by 6:45 am, but I am typically at work at 7:00 am. I guess you can say I was able to partially throw myself together and I was at work at 8:00 am. Even though my manager was fully aware of the situation, my day felt off due to being an hour behind my normal schedule. Thankfully it is over now and hopefully tomorrow will start off much better!

Of course to add to my frustrations from the power outage this morning, I can not seem to get any responses from my doctor’s office. I am waiting for them to send the MRI order to the company that might approve for me to get assistance with the co-pay for the extremely expensive MRI. The nurse, that is normally helpful, sent me the paperwork I needed to fill out and then send to the company MSAA, but apparently failed to send me the MRI order that the company requires. After several phone calls and emails they still have not sent this in or responded to me! The doctor is the one that wanted me to get the MRI, but I guess it was not all that important to her after-all! Maybe I am wrong, but I am taking this to mean my health is NOT all that important to her and neither is the MRI she was forcing on me. Through the fatigue and frustration, I emailed the AVP of the practice and SURPRISE still NO response!!!! I mean who else do you go to when even the AVP does not respond?

Maybe this is my fault because I expected this new doctor to care and treat patients the way my previous doctor from this same office did. Nothing has been the same in this practice since my first doctor retired. My first MS Specialist was caring , compassionate and knew how to communicate, but I guess this is a new day in age and doctors like him are scarce. Communication between doctors, nurses and the patient is vital to good health care, but apparently they see things differently. Every time I see this doctor I go into her office prepared with all my questions written out, just so I do not forget anything and considering I know when I leave the office I will never get a response to my questions. I am not sure what happened to doctors that actually care about their patients, I think they are extinct like the dinosaurs! It is really sad that we pay all this money for a few moments of the doctor’s time, but sometimes feel like we are a nuisance to them? Or maybe that is just me.

Thank y’all for visiting my site today and reading my small rant! I really hope you had a lovely day without any of the frustrations I have experienced today. Your comments are always encouraged and very much appreciated! I hope y’all have a great evening doing what makes you happy! As always I am sending y’all LOTS of love and comfort!

Always, Alyssa

Just Another Day

Posted on June 19, 2018 by Positively Alyssa

Good afternoon y’all! For me today is just another day of resting trying to get past this incredible amount of pain I have been dealing with for WAY too long! This obnoxious pain is mixed with that burning sensation that will not cool down, tingling throughout my entire body, numbness which sounds like it would be better than pain, but it really isn’t it is almost worse and a headache that seems never-ending! The nurse practitioner I normally deal with is off today and the doctor that I do my best to avoid is in clinic today, which makes her pretty much unavailable. The only thing the nurse I spoke with was able to say is rest and staying hydrated is important until I can get the MRI, which I was still waiting to hear back from the assistance program. I did just email the Multiple Sclerosis Society of America, which is the company that will either approve or deny assistance for me to get MRI assistance. Now the response I got back from my email was quite upsetting, which is something I really did not need today. They stated the doctor did not provide an order for the MRI, which made no sense to me considering I did send them everything I was instructed to by the doctor’s office, imagine that another miscommunication from them! To hopefully make things actually work out for me, I emailed the nurse requesting the MRI order. Honestly the nurse has been the ONLY person at this office that has been at all helpful to me. Maybe I will get that back from them sometime this week!!

It is a little frustrating when you are doing everything you possibly can to get well, but it just isn’t working the way it should be! I am resting, staying hydrated and taking all the medications the doctor has prescribed, but there is still NO relief yet! My guess is the stress this issue is causing me is not helping me get better, but it is in fact making things so much worse! Isn’t it crazy when we know what is causing our problems to become worse, but yet we still change absolutely nothing with our thought process? Obviously I know exactly what is making all my pain more intense, but I am still getting myself worked up and upset about it anyways!

I think to help get my mind off of my many pain issues; I am going to work more on my bullet journal I am trying to put together. I do not want to start it at the end of the month because I do not think that makes sense, so I am planning this for July! My plan so far is to have a few trackers that will include: symptoms and food I eat in a day (this will be to see what foods could be causing more issues for me). I want to also include a Hopes & Dreams page, Positive thinking page to really keep my mind in a happy place and a Gratitude page. I might include a page of books that I want to read considering sometimes I think of a book I want to read, but then forget the title! Then lastly I want to include a page of ideas for my blog because I come up with random ideas, but then forget what I wanted to write about when I try to start! I guess I can contribute my forgetful mind to brain fog from the MS.

I really appreciate y’all visiting my site today! Your comments are always appreciate and encouraged because I do love hearing from y’all! I am doing my best to respond as quickly as I can, but with the way I am feeling there is a chance I might be a little delayed, but I will respond!! I hope y’all are having a good day and feeling well! As always no matter how I am feeling or what I am dealing with I am sending y’all LOTS of love and comfort!

Always, Alyssa