Jan has come and gone

Well January 2019 is now in the books. As I look back at the month, the following events happened. I started the protocol under a trained medical professional. My current doctor has been trained by Dr. Coimbra, in addition, her medical training provides additional options and alternatives. The first meeting left me very excited and hopeful, not only with the information provided, but also with possibilities. Unfortunately, nothing has happened just yet, but I am trying to remain optimistic. Another slight chance is increasing my water intake. I can understand that increasing from 3L per day to 3.5L may not seem like much. I do believe that is a factor in lowering my creatinine. It's still in the upper range, but is under the upper limit. I do appreciate that. The other change is adding swimming 3 times a week. For those of you that read my earlier posts, I had videos of me walking. I continued recording those videos in 2018, but very few of them ever got posted as I felt that they showed a decline. Now I am wondering about videos of my swimming. We will see, depending upon how my swimming improves and I am able to find an individual willing to take a video of me.

A little more about my "swimming".  This is my 3rd week. The first day in the pool was really more like water aerobics, with half a pool length of swimming done twice. The next time in the water I did the half lap 6 times, and found someone to shoot a short video of one of my 1/2 laps. From there I would increase the number of laps, but did more walking and such to help with mobility and balance. That was until today, when I got my latest test results, which showed my calcium going very much in the wrong direction. The days that I do not swim, I participate in the MS gym, which is good exercise and helps with balance and mobility, but is not really strenuous. 30 minutes of vigorous exercise is necessary to lower calcium, so today I switched to swimming laps in the pool. I did a full lap 4 times, and the rest of the time was swimming from the point where the shallow meets the deep end to the wall, and back. Once I reached the shallow end, I would stand and take like 3 steps towards the shallow wall, turn around back towards the deep end. Those 5 steps or so I would use to catch my breath, rest my arms, before swimming to back to thew wall and repeat the process. I lost track of how many laps I completed, need to do a better job tracking in the future. I am planning on doing the blood tests once again in two weeks, and try to see if these changes, additions, are having the desired effect. On days like today when I do to the pool, I do move a little slower in the afternoon, but I do feel it's have a positive effect.

So in a couple weeks I will have an update and share the results, fingers crossed they are positive

The holidays have passed one again...

Well Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's has come and gone. I cannot believe that 2019 is already upon us. Unfortunately, it was not as successful as I had hoped. I will try to remain positive about the protocol and the possibility of getting better in 2019. At the end of last year I published a collection of my walking video through the year, I should do the same shortly. Just not as inspired as it seems instead of showing improvement, feels that the videos show decline. This year I discontinued working with individual that I began the protocol with as I felt that he has lost his way. That was later confirmed as Dr. Coimbra himself removed his name from the list of trained and recommend medical professionals. So I continued without any outside assistance for awhile, but then discovered another medical professional that stated a willingness to help. Granted, this person was not formally trained by Coimbra, but seemed to be knowledgeable and sincerely interested. Unfortunately it later seemed that I was not a sufficient priority, so currently without any outside assistance once again. There are a couple of possibilities that seem promising and possible. There is a Dr. from Portugal that I have been exchanging messages with, unfortunately a face to face appointment is necessary to begin the protocol.  That is not impossible, but a bit tricky, so will have to wait and see if that will happen. In the meantime, I am trying to arrange having a medical professional guiding implementing the protocol. It has not yet happened, but trying to remain optimistic.

Waiting to see what 2019 will have in store, hopefully something positive....