"I'mmmmmm Okaaaay....."

“I’MMM OKAAAY”

If you’ve lived around someone with MS for very long, more than likely, you’ve seen them take a tumble or two.  Whenever my Charlie takes a tumble, his favorite thing to say is, “I’MMMM  OKAAAAYYYY.....”  I can’t count how many times I’ve heard a “crash” in another part of the house or garage......I stop what I’m doing.......stand very still......until I hear his voice yelling, “I’MMMM OKAAAAYYYY...”......I then know its safe to continue what I was doing and stop holding my breath.  

We’ve had many, many of these tumbles throughout our marriage and so far, none have been too serious.  Well, unless you count the time he walked into an exterior metal stairway at his favorite italian restaurant and broke his neck.........but I would consider that more of a “Hunger” issue opposed to a “Balance” issue.

Anyway, one such incident was when we were traveling in our motorhome.  We were visiting some old friends of ours and had just arrived at their lovely home in the country. They were standing in their yard waving and watching us pull in..... I pulled the motorhome as close to the edge of the road as I could to allow cars to go by.  As Charlie prepared to step out of the RV, his legs failed him and down he went; he rolled and rolled down the hill and into the drainage ditch.  It was like a “sloooooow mooootion” movie as we stood by, helpless, for what seemed like an eternity before his body came to a stop. We then hear, “I’MMMM OKAAAYYYY”  and then followed with, “Hey Norm, you sure need to clean out your drainage pipe” as he proceeded to pick himself up and dust himself off.

Another time occurred at the halfway point up Pikes Peak in Colorado.  We were traveling on our motorcycle trike and had stopped to take a break and rest.  While there, we met another couple, an older couple, from California who were intriqued with the trike.  As we were talking with them, Charlie decided to take his jacket off, unfortunately, he was standing too close to the edge of the mountain at the time.  As he was pulling his arm out of the sleeve, he lost his balance and, as if some invisible force pushed him backwards, he was gone.  As we all rush to the site where he had been only seconds before, we see he didn’t fall too far and fortunately, we heard those beautiful words, “I’MMMMM OKAAAYYY”......The older lady grabbed his hand and pulled my Charlie back up from the clinches of Pikes Peak.

Last June, we found ourselves just outside of Mt. St. Helens in Washington state.  Just beautiful!!  We found a wonderful little campground for the RV and were elated to settle in for a few days.  There was this large hill just in front of our RV that separated the campground from a creek with a nice little walking path on top.  We hadn’t been settled in very long when I hear Chuck yell out, “Murphy needs to poop.  I’ll take him out.”  I didn’t think anything else about it until a few minutes later, here comes Charlie and Murphy; Charlie full of grass and dirt on him and Murphy looking like he still needed to poop.  I guess by my befuggled look, Charlie decided he better explain he and Murphy tried to climb the large hill (we’ve since named it Mt. St. Helens, Jr.) and didn’t make it.  Charlie rolled all the way down the hill with Murphy in tow the entire way.  But, he was “OKAAAYYY”.....thank goodness.  People pointed and smiled at us in the campground after that.......