One of Aesop's fables is The Tortoise and the Hare.  The main message of that story is that slow and steady wins the race.  Another message is that if you don't take things seriously and do your best no matter how confident you are, you might lose, just like the Hare did.  For me, this story very closely relates to my post-HSCT journey.  Slow and steady, don't give up, and take it seriously.  I tried to move quickly when I got back to Canada after receiving treatment, and I expected results (i.e. improvements in my legs) to show up as just as quickly.  When they did not, it nearly broke me.  But thankfully, it did not, and it slowed me down some, which was very beneficial, and very necessary.  Slow and steady it is, and slow and steady it has to be.

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I am continuing to do physical therapy, and have inquired about having a therapist come to my home 5 days a week.  I am inherently lazy, and having somebody here every weekday will force me to complete my exercise routine no matter how I am feeling, instead of making excuses not to.

The biggest challenge to my mobility these days is my right leg.  It is getting stronger (still weaker than my left leg), but my hamstring and calf muscles in my right leg are extremely tight.  Extremely.  This does not allow the leg to move properly and fluidly which throws off my balance.  One stretch I am doing a couple times a day is lying on the floor with my right leg up on the wall.  This stretch works well because I can just lie there (appealing to my laziness) for a long time, allowing my leg to get a good stretch.

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In September 2013, my Neurologist prescribed me the drug Fampyra.  He said that is it not a disease modifying drug (DMD) - there are not any DMD's for primary progressive multiple sclerosis - but alternatively, it is a symptom management drug that may improve my ability to walk.  Initially, it did, but after almost a year of using the drug, its benefit dropped off to almost nothing.  Whether my body got used to it and adjusted accordingly, my disease progressed to a point where the drug was not beneficial to me, some combination of the two, or for some other reason(s), I was not sure, and I did not care.  By that time I had been accepted for HSCT and been given a treatment date.  I decided that I wanted to stop taking Fampyra about 1 month before HSCT, so I stopped taking it September 2014.  I wanted to get the treatment 'clean'; I wanted to see how my body responded to the treatment without any outside influence.  It's too early for me to say if the treatment has stopped MS progression, but my gut feel is that it has.  I will know for sure in the coming years.