You go, girlš!
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I have not been riding a horse or my Home Horse since I got this totally miserable cold, possibly from a grandson over the Christmas holidays.
My main comfort is that this cold is nowhere as bad as the cold I got during the holidays in 2019, which was probably a very early case of Covid-19 (I got the Covid toes).
I am getting somewhat better but I figure that doing any type of riding would just be doing too much for my health.
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I hope you feel better soon! There are a lot of flu and viruses around right now. I almost hate to go out in public for fear if catching something.
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I finally got back into a saddle today, on my Home Horse and just for 5 minutes.
The flu or whatever it was whomped me. Fortuitously it has been COLD, cold enough so I probably would not have ridden a horse anyway the past few weeks. I would look at my HH every time I passed by it then my body warned me not to overdo it. I listened to my body.
So today I got on. A lot of the time was getting myself balanced on the HH since my balance has been worsening these last few week, bad enough that one day I was using both of my quad canes to just walk around the house.
I also āwalkedā some moving the HH with my seat and weight.
I got on fine, but when it came time to get off my husband looked at me as I was standing on the platform of the HH and came over and lifted my right leg over the cantle. I truly appreciated that !
I will try riding my HH some more on Sunday, hopefully Shannon will be able to come out since my DH will be away on a business trip. Next Wednesday it will be COLD again in the morning. I told Debbie yesterday that the weather might prevent me from getting my lesson until mid February when the Polar Vortex finally decides to end its vacation in the sunny South.
The deciding reason why I spent my money on my Home Horse was the knowledge that some days I would not have the energy to ride it for more than 5 minutes. Today if I had gotten to ride I do not think I could have ridden much longer than that in a cold wind. To me it seems a waste of money to pay for a 30 minute lesson and only be able to ride for 5 minutes, but Debbie helps me so much to get MJ ready to ride that she definitely would be earning the money I pay her.
It is just so much easier for me to ride the HH when my body is not working as well as usual.
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I hope you get your strength back soon!
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I just did too much yesterday, though it is hard to believe that 5 minutes on my HH could be too much for me.
I am so glad I did not try to have my lesson yesterday. I doubt that would have gone well.
I tend to consider wintertime as the armpit of the year. It will pass.
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I am not a winter person either!
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Winter is the armpit, and potentially the butt crack, too. What an awful time of the year.
Iām so sorry that you are not feeling well. Itās hard to know when and if you are doing too much. 
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I finally got back into a saddle this morning. I made it a whole 7 minutes on my Home Horse. I did not do much. My side to side balance was fine and I was leaning a little bit too much to the front. I balanced, āwalkedā, balanced in 2-point and threw in maybe 5 posts. I did not exercise hard this morning.
The super cold Siberian air was not good for me since I am getting older. Sometimes the shock of going from inside the house at 69 F to the outside at 15 F is something my body is not willing to deal with any more. So I have been mostly inert, my body slowed way down, and my desperate runs to the bathroom to pee has been the only thing preventing me from dissolving into a puddle of protoplasm.
In olden times, this yearās annals would be full of several disastrous floods, relentless wild fires, deep freezes in the winter and devastating heat in the summer. Plagues of agricultural diseases, uncontrolled swarms of hungry insects, our annals this past year would be full of disasters of biblical proportions.
But it will warm up and I will get more active again. Riding horses, yes!
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I am always encouraged when it stays lighter a little bit longer in the evening.
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I cancelled my Wednesday riding lesson this week.
I am still recovering &/or adapting to my much worsening fatigue from the flu.
Late last Sunday night which had a low of 15 F I woke up needing to go pee, something that happens every night. I felt super weak, I NEEDED both quad canes and my full concentration to make it to the commode since both knees wanted to buckle under me. It was exhausting.
When I finally got back to bed I got out my Pulse/Oxymeter and my pulse was 99. My oxygen saturation was 94% so that was not too bad. It was sort of hard to think, should I wake up DH and see about taking me to get medical help? But my body said NO, that it could not take the shock of going from 69 F inside to 15 F outside while I got down my lengthy ramp to the car. My body was afraid that something would just stop working in my body from the shock.
I took Hawthorn Berry tincture which is good for heart problems and works gently. The rest of the night there was not much improvement so I moved extremely slowly when I had to go to the bathroom. My body would have collapsed if I had not been leaning heavily on my quad canes.
Since it was still COLD for hours I repeated the Hawthorn Berry tincture and I used my Resona Vibe PEMF machine on the Heart Function setting. I gradually improved some.
I got to see my PCP on Tuesday. I told him my tale of woe, he listened carefully to my heart, did a EKG (sp?) and ordered blood tests. My EKG was normal, and my blood tests were also normal.
So what I did helped enough to get me out of an emergency mode. My pulse has been around 69 and my oxygen saturation at around 95-97% so I seem to have recovered from this odd health event.
I am still very weak and shaky and my endurance is microscopic. I am using my rollator to walk around my house every once in a while just to be moving around. When using my rollator I am trying to stand erect and not lean on the handles so my body gets out of walking all hunched over, but I could not walk like this without using the rollator.
I am also getting up in years and that is not helping either.
I already told Debbie that when I get back to riding I want to ride Cinnabar, the least exciting horse in the stable whose preferred speed is 2 MPH. It is going to take me a while to get back to the level of riding fitness I was at on 1-1-2025 and I will have to go SLOWLY.
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Hugs to you! My hat is off to your positive attitude and grit!
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That had to be very scary! I hope you get your strength back soon.
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Iām so sorry the flu kicked your butt.
Iām trying to get my PCP to understand that things that most people can take in stride can be devastating to a disabled person. I think heās starting to understand. I hope your doctors know that and take it into account.
Rebecca
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I have had MS longer than most PCPs Iāve had have been alive.
In fact I have had active MS longer than most neurologists have been in medical school and in their practice.
I am the worldās expert in MY case of MS, not any neurologist.
Yeah, sometimes I am arrogant. It is just like with the horses, with over 60 years of riding horses I have much more experience than most of the horse people I run into.
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Shannon came by today.
I made it 11 minutes on my HH. I balanced, āwalkedā, 2-pointed, and posted for 10 āstridesā around 3 times.
I got really, really tired from this, but at least I was able to do a little bit more than the last time.
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You go girl! You are my inspiration to keep trying to get over, past, or around my neurologic deficits. Thank you!
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I tried something new for my neck pain that seems to help.
www.fenwickequestrian.com, they have an Equsuede Sherpa Fleece Scarf, and right now it is just $10.00 US.
I am sleeping in it now, putting it above my regular neck collar so that it covers the back of my skull. I am waking up without neck pain and I have not had to wear a neck collar during the day.
I just wear it loose draped across the back of my neck, at night I do not wrap it around my neck so it does not have to be tight to work.
Just in case someone else could benefit from it.
It is SO NICE to wake up without my neck and scalp hurting. It is SO NICE not to have to wear a neck collar all day every day.
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I had my riding lesson today on Cinnabar with Debbie.
I particularly asked for Cinnabar because my body was not up to any shenanigans right now. I am also not really up to riding a good flat-footed walk properly either. In fact his usual 2 MPH walk was all I was up to riding right now.
Before my lesson I took hawthorn berry tincture and used my Resona Vibe PEMF machine on the heart function setting because I have been so very tired lately. I figured it could not hurt being somewhat proactive about my heart even though my PCP had cleared me (listening to my heart, EKG and blood tests).
So we were slowly (yeah!) puttering around the ring. With Debbieās permission I kept contact with just the Weymouth curb at the walk for maybe 3 minutes, I did not aim for full contact but I did get a good feeling of connection between my hands and the bit at the walk. He even walked a tiny, really tiny bit faster with the curb bit contact. He did not protest or show any signs of discomfort. We walked and did some turns on the hindquarters too.
Then excitement erupted in the other riding ring, a lady was starting to mount a pony mare without picking up the reins first, and the mare got away from her. It had been rather warm the last few days but this morning it was quite cool and a brisk breeze was blowing. ALL the mares in the adjoining paddock decided that running around like crazy and bucking was a wonderful idea.
I was on Cinnabar so I did not have any problems, I stopped him and we both enjoyed looking at the madly running mares. Cinnabar does not believe in wasting any energy so he was quite peaceful. It took several minutes before the pony mare calmed down enough so someone could grab a rein, then everything calmed down.
By the end of my ride I decided that Cinnabar was worth more than the entire wealth of the richest man in the world, and I told him so (I think Cinnabar agreed with me about that).
I just made it 20 minutes in the saddle, and both Debbie and my DH had to help me off.
I got to ride a real horse today!!!
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So glad you were able to get on a real horse and a safe one!
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