Clumsy
I have been clumsy my entire life. There was a joke in our family about my habit of constantly falling up the stairs – I would slip on the carpet or wood floor and fall right into the ascending steps. Was I moving too fast, eager to get where I was going? Or was I just not paying enough attention to where I was stepping? At least I knew it wasn’t just me when it came to clumsiness; my dad has always had a habit of knocking over glasses at dinner (but is that being clumsy or just Italian, I wonder?).
The clumsiness has never really gone away for me – but now that I have MS, it seems to have amplified. I usually have a random small bruise on my elbow or knee, from turning a corner too quickly and bumping into the door frame or hitting my knee on a coffee table. I have a scar on my thigh from scraping it against the cabinet drawer pull recently (but I have to say – the pulls’ corners are too sharp!!). Lately, I’ve been banging my hands on things. I close drawers on my fingers. I’m embarrassed to admit that I’ve hit my head going in and out of the car a few times recently. But my elbows probably get the brunt of this clumsiness, regularly knocking into walls.
I drop things constantly, mostly my phone, which is why I have the dorkiest and most ridiculous phone case that is probably made for mountaineers or construction workers. But good thing I do – I’ve cracked three glass screen covers and camera covers in the last 18 months (I’m currently going sans-cover because I’ve run out of replacements…I feel so dangerous!!). If I don’t drop the thing I’m holding, I might not place it exactly where or how I’m intending – a little to the left, or a little too hard. Wine glasses have certainly been dropped or knocked over and shattered. And let’s not forget tripping over my own feet.
I suspect MS is the culprit for all these issues with coordination. As I wrote about in a recent WebMD article, brain fog (a common issue in MS) can show up as visuospatial problems – or, how to understand what and where things are. A person might bump into things or present as being clumsy or have trouble picking up objects.
Sounds like me! The way I describe it is that I don’t seem to have a good sense of where I am in space. Or where other things around me are in space. I think I’m walking through the center of the doorway, when in fact I’m just a tad aligned to the left or right – and Bang! Part of the problem is that I’m usually trying to do too many things at one time. What I should do is slow the hell down and reduce distractions (add it to the list).
It’s incredibly frustrating, and occasionally painful, to be this clumsy. But I try to laugh about it.
On that note – who was the monster that decided to call it the FUNNY BONE??
