The term for it, or so I'm told, is "spasticity:" the sudden localized surge of electrical impulses that randomly cause certain parts of my body to feel like they've been splashed with water. Imagine a fat, juicy grape being suddenly and forcefully squished inside your skin, just near the epidermal surface. A burst of liquid-like sensations, so real that I look down to check if I haven't actually been hit by some water. I haven't. It's the spasticity.
My knee has been acting up lately. If I tuck my chin down into my chest, my left knee goes all pins and needles. It ceases the second I lift up my head, but as soon as I tuck it down again, my knee twitters and begins to go numb. It's frightening, like the moments after your leg falls asleep and the feeling is just beginning to come back, and the icy little jabs cover your muscles as you try to move, and the thought flashes through you that you couldn't walk if your leg was always like this, when is the feeling going to come back, already - and usually, that's exactly when the feeling comes back. You shake 'er out and feel relieved.
But the feeling doesn't come back. At least, not as frequently as it used to. My knee noe goes numb when I cross my legs. It goes numb if I'm laying on my side and I swing my leg over the bed to get out. It spasms and tingles even when I'm just sitting down. I hate it. I absolutely hate it, because I can't control it. I just have to sit there and wait until its over.
The only control I have is over how much sleep I get. My knee will stop tingling for the first few hours after I get up. If I'm overtired, it starts as soon as I wake up. I know the solution is to get more sleep, but that's so hard to translate into accommodations in every day life. I do a pretty good job passing, and so I find people look at me like I'm crazy if I were to bring it up.
When I write that reasoning down, it's hard to ignore how stupidly self-destructive it is. I'm afraid to ask for the accommodations I need because I'm afraid the healthy, able people I'd be asking would a) think I was lying "because I seem just fine,' or b) refuse in some horrible, un-ignorable manner which would simply cause me to have to undertake more responsibility: pursing legal action, dealing with office weirdness, etc.
I guess I don't want to out myself, because I don't want my disability to be the root. I don't want to cause weirdness, to be the person that did something to make everything uncomfortable.
But on the other hand, how am I supposed to reasonably act on this? Say I have class on Thursday. I'd have all day, until 6:00 PM, to do the reading for the class. Should be more than enough time to get it all done, right? But it's not. If I wake up and my legs are tingling, I start to worry, and the worrying takes such a physical toll that I get dizzy and have to return to bed for awhile. Add the responsibility of reserving my strength to make it to and through class, and I'm lucky if I can get a fourth of it done.
From my end, it's understandable. But honestly, if you were a professor, and one of the students told you "sorry, I didn't do the reading, I had to sleep all day instead," what would you think of them? Honestly. Wouldn't you automatically, perhaps unconsciously, think that student as lying, or lazy, or both?
I guess I don't have a good reason for why that bothers me to the point of self-detriment. I don't know.
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