Monthly Archives: November 2013

I Did It. *faints*

fainting with shockI check my emails most mornings while I wait for the kettle to boil.

Nestled among the offers to give me £100,000 if only I hand over my bank details to a very polite and sincere gentleman in The Gambia, lay the email I had been waiting for.

‘Degree classification notice – please accept and confirm’.

My finger hovered over the email. The moment of truth, the culmination of six years study. I took a deep breath and clicked.

Then I laughed. And hiccuped. Rushing to the printer to see actual proof before the email magically disappeared, I did a high five (ok, a very low two, but you know what I mean).

I am now the proud owner of a Bachelor of Science degree (with Honours, yay). An upper Second Class. A 2:1. Still can’t believe it. Thinking about it, I have studied for the last 10 years out of 11, my first qualification being a degree equivalent in Homeopathy (long story). My Glaswegian auntie, on seeing the letters I was eligible to use for that course (RSHom), said, ‘oh dear, if you say that out loud with a Scottish accent, it sounds a wee bit rude, doesn’t it?).

Well, now I’m a Bachelor(ette), which is rather fitting, given my present singledom. I’m supposed to attend a graduation ceremony next May, donning a cap and gown and walking up to a stage to accept a bit of paper tied nicely with a ribbon. I’ll sign up, but the logistics of doing this in front of hundreds of people will be left for another time.

It sounds weird, but this achievement is the positive culmination of a terrible couple of years. The last two years of the degree were excruciating. My brain died a slow death, slinking out of the room without a backwards glance or apology. I struggled with every single aspect of the course. I came so, so close to giving it all up. What was once fairly easy for me (I’m an unabashed girly swot), became unintelligible nonsense. Essays were torture. In tutorials, I sat with a slightly astonished look on my face.

But I didn’t give up and I’m proud of myself. I didn’t give up during the diagnostic process, during the legal proceedings against my ex-employer who sacked me for the heinous crime of having MS, during two lots of Campath treatment and their after effects. I did it. I actually did it.

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Have You Flossed Your Brain Today?

have you flossed your brain todayMy mornings have a fairly set routine.

Shower, feed cat, wake Teenager, coffee, make-up, brush teeth, wake Teenager again, find lost school tie, etc.

All practical tasks, aimed at making us presentable enough to begin a new day. But what about getting ready emotionally?

Woven in amongst these mundane tasks, my mind wanders unchecked, flooding my weary brain with worries and problems.

Why have I put on a pound when I spent yesterday drinking miso soup and eating apples? Will my numb arm stay like that all day?  Why hasn’t the man of my dreams knocked on my door yet? These thoughts drag me down, meaning I always start the day at a loss, so how can I expect the day to improve, despite my presentable appearance?

Felicity Aston spent two months alone in Antarctica and created ways to deal with her solitude and the challenges that lay ahead. Rather than letting a negative emotion dictate her mood (and without anyone to help rein them in), she practised ‘mental hygiene’, or psychological housework, every morning.

She would ask herself if she had any worries or doubts lurking and would mentally deal with them before getting on with her day. I read the article with piqued interest.

Ok, so I’m not trekking through the Antarctic, but I am alone a lot of the time and like most of us with MS, each day is a series of physical challenges. We could do without the extra emotional baggage.

I tried this yesterday, with one eye on the skeptic-o-nometer. Normally I start worrying in the shower. I wake up with no problems, but by the time I’m washing my hair, I’m a whole bundle of stress. I decided to just concentrate on the shower, nothing else.

Downstairs over coffee, I mentally sorted through my brain. Three major worries. I wrote them down and next to each of them, jotted down exactly how I could tackle them. It was that easy. By transferring those seemingly insurmountable problems onto paper, I had released them from my mind. They no longer had the power to cycle endlessly through my brain, colouring every thought.

And you know what? I had the most productive, most stress-free day I’ve had in a long time. Those five minutes I spent gave me a whole day off from worrying. Which gave me more time to concentrate on important things like….well, just enjoying life.

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Numb And Number

Numb and NumberWe certainly know how to enjoy ourselves in our little household.

Yesterday, after some lovely chicken pie, my big toe went completely numb (I’m not saying the two are connected, but we’re having lamb next Sunday).

Unable to keep this to myself, I nimbly/numbly stumbled into the living room and told The Teenager.

‘I can’t feel my big toe!! See (flick) nothing! Go on, you try.’

‘Mum. You’re weird. If you weren’t my mum, you’d be the kind of person you tell me not to talk to.’

‘Look, try this (finds a drawing pin), you be the neurologist. Just press it on to my toe.’

‘*sigh* Did you feel that?’

‘No! Weird, huh?’

‘Feel that?’

‘That was my ankle. It’s fine. Give me that.’

I’m no stranger to numbness. One of my first symptoms was completely numb feet, making walking a painful and tedious exercise in tentative negotiation, often resulting in ‘hilarious’ trips, foot drop making matters even worse. I was on first-name terms with every pavement in the vicinity.

Since my last relapse, things have calmed down a bit, although my feet still constantly tingle and buzz. In fact, I can’t remember the last time they didn’t. If I could go back to that very last day of ‘normal’ feet, I’d wear 4 6 8 inch Jimmy Choos for 24 hours and dance til dawn. Then I’d box-frame them (using my glue gun, natch) and hang them on the wall.

Numbness is an odd sensation, and to other people it doesn’t even sound like a troubling symptom, but it sure makes life…..interesting. If I hold a book for too long, numb fingers. Waking up in the morning, numb arms. Sit for too long, numb legs. No wonder The Teenager calls me Numb Numb.

But as with most of MS’s weird and wonderful box of tricks, it’s surprising how much I’m used to it now, especially dropping things. I am a past master.

Like the other day when I was in a smart cafe having breakfast. You know, those places that don’t just put your beans on the plate, they serve them in dinky little chrome buckets (why?). You can see where I’m going with this. The thing flew out my hands, I caught it, smiled with relief, then it jumped back out my very loose grip and clattered across the floor. Raised eyebrows from the next table.

The waitress rushed over, ‘Is everything ok?’ It was so tempting to say, ‘pull up a chair love, this may take some time….’

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Walking That Lonely Mile…

only the lonely

A couple of months after MS first appeared, I had a conversation with my partner, telling him I knew the months/years ahead would be hard and I would understand if he wanted to leave.

He did.

Perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised.

A study from 2009 indicated that women with cancer or MS were more than six times as likely to become separated or divorced within an average of six months of being diagnosed as were men with similar health issues.

In fairness, our relationship at that time wasn’t as strong as it once was and this could have been the proverbial straw. Following his abrupt departure, I slumped on the sofa, too stunned to cry.

My entire life was falling apart and just making an effort to get through each day was made more difficult by MS dragging me backwards, numbing my limbs, forcing me to sleep and making every step fraught with anxiety. I wasn’t walking a lonely mile (or several), I was stumbling blindly along a malignant deviation of the path I thought I had once been on.

Looking at it positively with hindsight though, by becoming suddenly single I now ‘only’ had to worry about myself and The Teenager and how we would deal with MS. In all honesty, it was perhaps easier than patching up a rocky relationship that seemed to be springing lesions as quickly as my brain scans did.

Looking at it in the depths of despair, it was truly, gobsmackingly wretched. My self-worth was rapidly plummeting, I spent night after night inwardly howling at the unfairness of it all. Who would want me now? I mean, really? Divorced single mother, wrong side of 35, oh and by the way, I have MS. Form an orderly queue and sign up here if you’re interested.

Two years down the line, thanks to a Campath-induced remission, I am slowly getting back on track. It’s been a horrendously lonely time and I probably wouldn’t have started this blog had I had a partner at my side. It would have been lovely to have someone to offload to, to share the journey (awful word) with. On a practical level, it would have been brilliant to have another adult in the house when times were bad and I battled to maintain our normal routine.

I’m learning to live alone. It’s not easy. At times it’s achingly awful. But I know that when the right person comes along, I will be in a much stronger frame of mind. Form that queue, and don’t mind me while I cross my fingers…

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A Sense of Disconnection

life without the internetOh my days. Who knew that being with a much-reduced internet connection over the last week could be quite so traumatic?

The Teenager has gone through a whole range of emotions, from full-blown panic (‘how will I survive? I am utterly, totally disconnected’) to deep depression (‘wake me up when it’s over’).

I helpfully suggested he read a book or I don’t know, make something.

I was smartly told that whilst that may be acceptable for old people like me who went through their teenage years *gasp* without the internet, he’d rather sit in McDonalds like a saddo all day where they at least have free wifi, thank you very much.

Anyway, we’re back on track and a sense of normality has returned to our little cottage (it won’t last). In other news over this quiet week:

  • I had a letter inviting me to my graduation ceremony next May and did I want to hire a cap and gown? Which means my degree results must be on their way, eek.
  • The Teenager gave up his paper round. Enough said. You really don’t want to hear about it. Or the specially-extended lecture I gave him.
  • My smartphone (so badly-named) decided to get in on the internet act and freeze at inopportune moments, leading to a telling-off at work. Boss – ‘oi, get off your phone’. Me -‘ I’m not on it, I’m waiting for it to unfreeze’. Boss – ‘right, no more coffee or chocolate at break times’. Me ‘be right with you, boss.’ To show how sorry I was, when the phone worked I sent him pictures of cats doing funny things as that always cheers him up.
  • All the crafty bits I ordered for Christmas have arrived – candle wicks, wax pellets, craft knife, cutting mat, white card, Christmas essential oil, modelling clay and star-shaped cookie cutters. Much hilarity will ensue.
  • The cat kindly left a birds head outside my back door. Which I stepped on.

While we have been surviving without much internet, my mum (62 years old and a great-grandmother) whizzed ahead of us.

In between Skyping her sister in Scotland, she upgraded her phone from a brick-like Nokia to a Samsung all-singing, all-dancing model. The Teenager is quietly impressed, if a little jealous….

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