So it’s not that I cannot feel them, but rather that there is an odd lack of feeling. And I’ve noted this deterioration has crept up my leg.
No Pleasant Sensation From the Joint Liniment
I suppose I first began to realize the situation when I decided to put a medicated lotion on my aching feet. The product I used is meant for joint issues, but it has several natural ingredients (like rosemary, eucalyptus, lime oil, Scotch pine extract) which give a cooling-warming tingle to the skin, as well as delivering its active ingredients. I had hoped this tingling would distract me from my aching dogs. Twenty minutes after application, my hands had a lovely buzzing about them, but I didn’t feel anything akin to it from their lower cousins. I chalked it up to another joy that multiple sclerosis (MS) has decided to take away — and moved on. RELATED: Numb Feet: Is It Multiple Sclerosis? Or Something Else?
A Limited Afterglow From the Body Scrub
After a bit of gardening at the weekend, it was time for a cold beer and a hot shower (in no particular order). I was good and dirty and felt I’d earned a scouring with the “good” body scrub. Again, this is one that uses natural ingredients that give a long-lasting tingle after the bits of concrete and oyster shell (or whatever the hell they put in it to take off the outer four layers of epidermis) have done their part. As you might imagine, due to MS balance issues and general safety concerns, I avoid lathering up the soles of my feet. While I toweled off, and the exfoliating scrub’s afterglow effects began to set in, I noted the same lack of pleasant sensation I had experienced (or didn’t experience) in my feet was now making itself known further up my legs. My left leg (my more MS-affected side) was lacking any tingle all the way past mid-thigh, while my right leg only tingled down to mid-calf. Although I had lost the feeling below the skin of my left leg a number of years ago, the surface sensation (sometimes hypersensitive and painful) was always there to be relied upon.
Loss of Sensation Hurts in More Ways Than One
What hurt me most in this realization was that I had expected a pleasurable sensation from my post-gardening shower, and MS had left me short of it, once again. There are real concerns when it comes to loss of sensation. We are prone to injure ourselves without realizing. When this loss occurs in the legs, particularly, falls can be a real risk with which we must contend. Those things I will cope with the way I always seem to cope with the hand MS deals me. I’ll adapt. That a little kindness I offer to myself now and again has less joy because my immune system finds the insulation of my nervous system appetizing, well that just stings a little bit — and that wasn’t the sensation I was looking for. Wishing you and your family the best of health. Cheers, Trevis
