Lady with the Cane.com

                                                                                                                                                                         I await two months out of the year with great anticipation. November is National Novel Writing Month (aka NaNoWriMo), which gives me great pleasure in my purpose-driven mind. That's the month I write 50,000 in 30 days. So far I have published four of those manuscripts. March is my other anticipated period of purpose. As MS Awareness Month three is collective attention given to this MonSter that inflicts millions of people across the globe. As one of those Warriors, I vowed several years ago to spend the month of March bring public awareness to my life with multiple sclerosis. To do that, I blog daily on several mediums. I talk about my book I Have MS. What's Your Super Power?  make myself open to discussion about this ridiculous disease. In March I want to educate those newly diagnosed and I want to learn more a

PICK UP YOUR FEET. I WISH I COULD. “Left. Left. Left, right, left.” No, I’m not in the military. I’m just remembering my high school marching band days. n of my favorite band directors dubbed our lazy technique the Monongah Shuffle. We spent hours perfecting our cadence and getting our feet in the air rather than dragging our feet across the pavement. Oh, to know then what I know now. Dragging my feet has become a daily practice I would as soon leave behind. It is no longer a choice for me. It’s a standard and I HATE it. With foot drop, the toes become an unavoidable enemy. They don’t lift enough to clear the ground. Give it a try. Make sure you’re close to a table or chair or wall. You’ll need it. When I see (or hear) someone shuffling their feet, I want to scream for them to pick up their feet. Take pride, man! Lift those tootsies! I wish I could. The effort it takes some to get my toes in the air is exhausting. Foot drop is not fun. It isn’t c convenient. It is not safe. It is not m

Happy February!  In the middle of my sixth-grade year, our family moved from one end of the state to another.  Already a quiet person, my southern drawl secured my silence in lieu of classmate ridicule. After a week, I received a note passed up the row of classroom seats. Cautiously I accepted the unexpected offering. In careful cursive (what?), the note posed this question :   Do you want to be my friend? Check Yes or No. Initially, my heart swelled with joy.  Unfortunately, my suspicious mind screeched the brakes. What if this was a joke? Were the students behind me laughing awaiting my response? Before the tears could spill, I noticed the crudely drawn daisy at the top of the page. That sealed the deal for me. Daisies are my favorite flower snd I really needed a friend. Until our sophomore year in high school Vickie and I wished one another a happy first day of the month with a hand written note adorned with a pencil-sketched daisy. When teenage hormones stopped our routine in favor

Letters to the MonSter Thirty-seven hours ago you woke me up before dawn, screaming in my ears and demanding an audience.  Why?                                            https://headlinebooks.com/book-author-profile/lisa-a-mccombs/                                                       For what purpose? I know not. Days later I am still at your mercy, but better equipped to face you in battle. For other days the entire left side of my face has felt like the recipient of a jackhammer blow. For the majority of that time, the muscles on the left corner of my mouth drooped in a pseudo novocaine manner. A decisive ringing in my ear proved to me that Edgar Allen Poe knew what he was talking about when he invented the word tintinnabulation. The vice that embraced my forehead had nothing to do with Hannibal Lechter.  What's with the literary references? When one feels this bad, there is nothing else to be done but close your eyes and concentrate on the distractions of television or recordi