Discombobulated

Ok, this actually is a word. I looked it up. It means to throw somebody into a state of confusion.



Those of us dealing with the cognitive meltdown of multiple sclerosis know this word well. Tim and I dealt with it this morning as we were trying to organize our day and all the things we have to do. Tim is becoming a busy man, which is a good thing, but it requires him to organize his time, his emails, and many pieces of paper. It also requires him to communicate with more people than what he is used to. The whole thing is causing both of us to become “discombobulated”!


How do we handle it? At least 15 minutes each day to sit down and talk through what we both have to do. Tim enters his schedule into his phone and has all the things he needs to accomplish in writing on one or more lists. He also needs to know my schedule, so anything I am doing that deviates from the normal routine also goes into his phone.


This 15 minutes a day doesn’t always happen. We are busy, or tired, or just plain don’t want to deal with it. The problem with that? Discombobulation! (Yes, this is also a word.) We really have to force ourselves to take our 15 minutes or the whole day can fall apart. It has before. It probably will again. At least we took our 15 minutes today so we both know what we have to do. We are up for the challenge, though, and we will do our best to keep our schedules organized. Call it our “anti-discombobulation” campaign. (No, I didn’t find that one in the dictionary.)


By the way, for those of you who are interested, our workshop went very well and we got some great feedback from the participants. The Wisconsin Chapter of the MS Society is working with us to put the workshop on again sometime next year, so we are looking forward to that.