Giving up my Sins

Maybe the title should be "Guilty Pleasures" instead of Sins.

Week one down living with diagnosed ALS.  I received my new prescriptions last week - Riluzole, the only ALS drug approved by the FDA, and Glycopyrrolate, which is to help with the excess saliva that results from the disease.  Nice, huh?

This posting is going to show my human, petty side.

As I suspected, the Riluzole drug information indicates no alcohol consumption.  I have to have a blood test every month to see how my liver is tolerating it for the first 6 months.

No alcohol is a tough blow for a wine collector.  I normally have one beer, mixed drink, or glass of wine with dinner every night.  Supposed to be good for you, right?  Everything in moderation.  I have cellared about a dozen bottles of wine for 10+ years, waiting for a celebratory event with friends to open them up and enjoy them.  I probably have about 120 bottles all told, 10 cases of wine in my two wine refrigerators.

I have had a bottle of Yuengling Porter with dinner most of this week and had 2 glasses of my favorite mixed drink last night - black spiced rum with club soda.  The club soda adds fizz but without sweetening the rum and allowing the delicate flavorings of the spiced rum to come through.  I think we may go to Carrabbas for dinner tonight so that I can have my last Blackberry Sangria - so good!

I will stop drinking any alcohol Tuesday night before I go to my first ALS Clinic meeting at Hershey on Wednesday morning, and will take my first dose of Riluzole Wednesday morning. 

To add insult to injury, I can't have caffeine anymore either.  Caffeine tends to cause too much Riluzole to build up in the body. 

I admit to being a coffee snob, having had a Keurig K-cup machine at home and at work for more than a dozen years.  I can't drink the stuff they serve at work - I tried it once and it was just slightly flavored brown water.  I normally drink 2 cups of caffeinated coffee every weekday morning and 3-4 on weekends.  Several years ago Kim bought me a T-shirt that says "Instant Human - Just add coffee!", which is very appropriate for me.  Kim will tell you that I get grouchy when I don't have my caffeine - that will be an adjustment for both of us.  I also love chocolate, which has caffeine.  I'll have to ask the doctor about chocolate this week.  I can probably tolerate the switch to decaf coffee, but life without chocolate is too much to bear.

So, having surrendered two of my guilty pleasures to ALS, that only leaves two - bacon and sex.  I told Kim to be forewarned. ;-)  Two weekends ago we drove up to Pitman, PA, an hour and 40 minutes each way,  to buy fifteen pounds of smoked bacon that we really like - 10 pounds for us and 5 pounds for my mother-in-law, Jean.

Looking forward to a good day working around the house.  Hoping it gets warm enough to do some work outside - my bushes and shrubs are leaning sideways after the harsh winter and need to be tied up and staked to pull them back upright.  I can't get the lawn mower past them easily at this point.

P.S. - I realized after I posted this morning that many years I would be at Tom Leachman and Laura Hillenbrand's house near Cooper's Rock outside Morgantown WV this day sharing good food, drinks, and stories with my former roommate Tom, his sisters, Laura, their dogs, and many of my WVU/Morgantown friends from my 6 years in Morgantown.  I am thinking of all of you and hoping you had great time and weather this year as you celebrate Tom's birthday.  I hope that I can be there next year to share it with you.