Monthly Archives: March 2013

Mar 31 2013
4 Comments
Emotions

Cutting Ourselves Some Slack…

The last blog post brought up some interesting comments. I wrote about being too hard on myself for not being able to do everything the same way as pre-MS and it seems I’m not alone in this.

I’ve been carrying on as if everything is the same as before, leading only to anger and frustration when things don’t go according to plan.

Take the other night. The Teenager was away, I was all dressed up in my arty clothes and jewellery ready to hang out in an  arty wine bar with a friend. So far so good. I was feeling on top of the world. I was doing what everyone else takes for granted.

Two small glasses of wine and a couple of slices of caramelised onion  and rocket pizza later, I was ready to swap my flats for slippers and settle down for a night in front of the telly. I went home incredulous at the early hour and sought solace in a family-sized Bubbly chocolate bar, but it did little to assuage my feelings of sadness and anger at being such a lightweight.

Time for a re-think. MS smashes into our lives, obliterating everything in its path. We can go under or resurface, tweaking our lives in new ways.

I may not be able to go out as much, but when I do, I make the effort to hang out with true friends, the ones who’ve stuck by me through it all. I might not be able to (or want to) schlep round the supermarket, but oh, the joys of Waitrose online shopping certainly make up for it.

Housework? Clever lighting and candles hide the dust. Stuck on the sofa, pinned down by MS fatigue? Scrolling through Twitter on my phone, connecting with similar MSers across the world makes me feel far less alone. The Teenager has more of my undivided attention as life has slowed down.

MS makes you reevaluate your life. What is truly important? What will make me happier and more fulfilled? How can I improve my life despite MS?

We are all doing just fine. Most of us are still juggling everyday life as best we can as well as living with a serious neurological illness. We should be proud of ourselves. We got knocked down, but we get back up again. And again.

A big high-five to everyone.

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Mar 29 2013
11 Comments
Daily Life

It’s Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas…

The shops are full of chocolate and cakes, magazines are stuffed with recipes, we’ve got two bank holidays and the kids are bouncing off the walls with excitement and e-numbers. Easter is rapidly turning into Christmas Mark II.

I’m not complaining. I love Easter. So much so that I put up my Easter branches (in lieu of a tree) weeks and weeks ago. I’m looking forward to lazing on my sofa watching ‘Gone With The Wind’ for the 27th time, pausing the telly only to hunt out more chocolate.

(Handy hint for MSers – don’t bother buying those teeny-weeny chocolate eggs wrapped in foil. If your hands are dodgy, like mine, the teeth-gnashing frustration really isn’t worth the effort. Just buy several large ones instead).

Anyway, The Teenager is away for a week, so it’s just me and the cat rattling around the house. The laundry basket is empty, the fridge is fully-stocked and I am going to use this time as a period of quiet reflection. I have decided to re-hash my New Year’s resolutions, giving myself another chance to fail at unlocking my true potential.

My resolutions, in no particular order, are: eat less, exercise more, try new things and learn how to make a decent Hollandaise sauce. My emotional resolution is to stop being so hard on myself. I get frustrated and angry when MS fatigue drives me to the sofa yet again, when I bale out on friends or have to go to bed early. I still raise my son, study, work and run a house, so maybe I should cut myself some slack.

It’s strange, but sometimes I forget I have MS. I just think, oh, that’s the feet buzzing again or here comes the fatigue and whoops, nearly fell over there. It’s become such a part of my life and it brings me up with a sharp shock when I think, ‘oh yeah, I’ve got multiple sclerosis.’

So this Easter, with The Teenager away, I am going to indulge myself. I will be meeting up with friends (fingers crossed), reading trashy novels and magazines, trying out new recipes and chilling. I am going to be kind to myself, something I have really neglected to do recently.

Happy Easter!

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Mar 27 2013
15 Comments
My Ramblings

Waking Up In La-La Land

The first thing I do when I wake up in the morning is mentally scan myself, checking for any sneaky MS symptoms before stumbling my way to the shower.

Then it’s feeding the cat, flinging a couple of Weetabix at The Teenager, organising schoolbag/handbag, meds, coffee, make-up, to-do lists, washing up, sorting laundry, more coffee.

All pretty normal? A scene played out up and down the country?

Nope. Helena “I don’t get out of bed for less than $10,000” Christensen was recently plugging her latest lingerie collection and put her name to an entire article about underwear with some sage advice for us lesser mortals.

She suggests creating a ritual out of selecting and putting your underwear on by lighting a candle first, as ‘there’s something about the scent and the low flickering light that’s good for early starts.’  Bizarrely, she confesses she never has time to find matching socks or underwear, but finds it ‘inspiring’ to mix pieces. So that’s alright then.

Helena, love, it’s simple really. Ditch the diptych candles and hey presto, you’ll have time to find your matching socks.

Anyway, once you’ve successfully completed the tricky task of selecting your underwear, another person with too much time on their hands, Calgary Avansino (no, me neither)  recently had a three page spread where she shares her breakfast smoothie recipe with the world.

The twenty ingredients include chia seeds, coconut water, baobab powder, bee pollen, lacuma powder, maca powder, frozen kale and half a courgette. Oh, and some mint leaves which she keeps a stock of in her freezer. No doubt she grows the stuff herself in her specially-designed herb garden.

She is beautifully photographed in her fabulous kitchen, hair perfect, designer dress and high-heeled shoes on, wrists laden with artfully-chosen jewellery and surrounded by rustic bowls of fruit and vegetables, a vast array of tubs and jars and a cute kid with silver shoes on.

Now, I have nothing against Helena promoting her underwear or Calgary plugging her website per se but what I do object to are the endless unattainable ‘lifestyles’ us normal women are bombarded with on a daily basis. Don’t these people know anything about real life? Most of us wake up worried about money, jobs, MS – not whether our housekeeper has re-stocked the candle supply or if we’ve run out of bee pollen….

p.s. Do tea-lights from IKEA count?

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Mar 25 2013
16 Comments
My Ramblings

It’s Only A Number. Isn’t It?

Oh joy. I will be forty 39 plus 1 in less than half a year. I won’t be celebrating, but rather I shall be holding a memorial service to my first 40 years, along with lashings of wine and copious amounts of cake.

To help me feel even more inadequate than usual, The Sunday Times Style magazine thoughtfully published a list of ’40 Things To Do Before You’re 40.’Here’s some of the ones I haven’t done and have no hope of doing before August:

  • Get an accountant – ha ha thud. That’s me laughing my head off.
  • Bin all your tights and replace the lot with Falke – unfashionable me has no idea what/who Falke is. Hopeless.
  • Have a kinky dream about a colleague – the builder? Seriously?
  • Go to Glastonbury – nope.
  • Host an afterparty that people still talk about years later – what the heck’s an afterparty and why have I never been to one?
  • Stop wearing lycra – never.
  • Spend a year with an incredibly flat stomach – and give up Maltesers and toast? Crazy.
  • Unwrap a diamond – not unless it’s a Diamond White cider party pack.
  • Grow your hair so long that it covers your nipples – one word – why?

But here’s some I have done:

  • Decide whether you want children – yup, I’m keeping the Teenager.
  • Be able to order wine confidently – ‘Cheapest bottle of your house white, and make it snappy, my good man.’
  • Pull an all-nighter, drink sambuca, dance on the tables, then go straight to work – too many times to mention.
  • Live abroad long enough to get a taste for the local breakfast – those were the days. Sigh.
  • Witness a birth – I was definitely there when The Teenager was born.
  • Perfect your signature roast chicken – Waitrose, I love you.

Don’t you just hate these lists? Here’s my kind of list – recently-announced top 5 snacks in the UK (drum roll….) bacon butties came out top, no doubt helped along by my recent alarming consumption of them. They were closely followed by cheese on toast, sausage rolls, Cornish pasties and Scotch eggs. Now that’s a list you can get your teeth into…

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Mar 23 2013
12 Comments
Symptoms and Treatment

Tripping All Over The Place

Did you know twice as many people die in trips and falls at home than in car crashes? No, me neither until I read the cheery news over breakfast yesterday. Now I have another thing to add to my list of worries that keep me awake in the wee small hours.

Foot drop is the bane of my life. I trip over flat surfaces, the cat, pavements, dust balls and just about anything else in my way.

At Christmas I tripped up the stairs, then fell backwards, smashing into my bookcase and landing like a squashed spider on the floor, books raining down on me. The bruising was spectacular, but I did find a book I’d given up as lost.

There’s no way of knowing when foot drop will strike. One day it leaves you in peace, the next it’s shoving you around the high street with abandon. People give me a wide berth, as hey, I could be drunk. At 9.30 am. Kerbs taunt me, potholes are a logistical nightmare when crossing the road and cobble-stones are pure evil.

Sorry Shakespeare, but I am never, ever going to Stratford-upon-Avon ever again. A lovely little day trip turned into a day from hell when I got out the car and saw cobble-stones stretched out in every direction. I clung to my friend for dear life and quite possibly looked as if I was being taken out from a secure unit for the weekend as I muttered, ‘evil, evil things, I hate you’ under my breath every few minutes as he dragged me up the road.

Then there was the Gastro Pub Incident, when a friend took me out for dinner. A short stumble to the bathroom led to disaster as I cartwheeled across the floor in front of six bemused diners, ending up halfway under their table. To compound my misery, my friend hadn’t even noticed as he was too busy scrolling through his phone. I limped back to our table, face burning, sniveling with pain and embarrassment.

Anyway, the good news is, the sixth most common way to die at home is by drowning in the bath. Thank you, MS heat intolerance for making baths a thing of the past. At least you’re good for something…

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