Monthly Archives: July 2015

The Plastic Revolution

food processorAfter an awful couple of weeks (health, blah blah, vicious people blah blah), I have found ‘The Answer’.

Who would have thought that a modest plastic thing with two settings – plus a turbo boost – could bring me such joy?

Yes. My brand-new food processor has revolutionised my life.

I was standing there the other day feeding bits of butternut squash into it, the mash part of my vegetable pie. It may have taken a couple of years but I’m now embracing a much healthier diet, spurred on by the daily weight increase thanks to the dratted thyroid meds.

Anyway. There I was, letting my mind wander when it came to me, ‘hang on, why am I feeling this despondent about recent goings-on, all of which are outside my control?’

Hmm. This scenario was beginning to sound boringly familiar. A bit like MS.

As luck would have it, I saw my lovely neurologist last week who mooted a third course of Campath as there’s a couple more lesions, one which was active, on my last MRI. We chatted about it and it was obvious I was going to take the damage-limitation path and choose a third course.

So, my MS is, for now, manageable.

People, sadly, are not.

I’ve learned that if you keep getting cannon balls lobbed at you, you begin to duck.

Then you walk away.

Back to my food processor. I stumble home after work, a new recipe already printed off, ingredients waiting for me in the fridge. I chop, blend, pulse and pulverise. It’s unexpectedly therapeutic.

With no small amount of serendipity, The Teenager is also going through seismic changes. Hold the front page – Dominos has lost one of their most faithful customers.

He is going to the gym five days a week, losing the pounds and toning up. I’m currently researching chia-seed  and flourless birthday cake for next month when he turns 16. However, we have yet to get over his aversion to onions, red peppers, garlic, apples and porridge. Give it time.

So, where are we? Me and The Teenager are doing just fine. We’ll both get through this and we’ve both got a whole lot to look forward to. At times it seemed our little family unit might implode under the dual pressures of MS and those few rogues intent on making our lives a misery.

They can pack up their cannon balls and leave. And let us get back to what we enjoy doing the most – looking after ourselves.

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The Year Of Tragical Thinking

tragedyI’m a bit weird, in that I seem to celebrate my own personal New Year around the time of my birthday.

Which, I hasten to add, isn’t for three whole weeks.

Anyway, this time last year I could still be found in dark corners, lamenting my fate.

I mean, really?

Sure, I had MS, was fat, single, wrong side of 40.

And today?

I have MS, am fat, single and the wrong side of 40.

So, what’s changed?

Well, I think I have finally found some backbone, even though my spine is yet to be MRI’d. But I’m sure it’s only a matter of time.

I’ve been trucking along, picking up the pace when MS allows, making sure The Teenager is ok, ensuring our household is running smoothly and the kitten is fed, yet all the time in the background there’s been certain people hovering, just waiting to see me trip up and make a spectacular fool of myself (I wish I was making this up).

And it would have been so easy. Almost too easy.

I’ve often wondered what drives people to make other people utterly miserable. What possible enjoyment do they derive from it?

And there’s the nub. I’ve spent far too long thinking about this. A very tragic, very long year. Years probably.

I watched an excellent programme the other day, ‘Before I Kick the Bucket’ on BBC ( I urge you to download it and follow her on Twitter – @B4IKTB). A woman explains she will probably die soon from breast cancer. Puts life into perspective, Big Time.

I can sort my weight out. I can join Tinder (lol). I can accept a third course of Campath. But I will never be able to change other people’s perceptions of how I am failing miserably at being … me.

And if that’s not enough to get my soggy brain around, I don’t know what is.

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Parallel Lives, Sliding Doors

appleEver wondered what your non-MS life would look like?

I have. Frequently.

On that fateful day in 2011, when I woke up into a nightmare, I often imagine how it would be if it were just another Saturday.

I would schlep around a flea market, buy some artisan bread, laze around on my sofa like there was no tomorrow.

  • I would still be a trusted member of the team in my workplace. The very idea of being sacked for having an illness such as MS (when we, as a company, prided ourselves on, ‘allowing our customers to reside at home as long as possible, with a little care‘) would have seemed like a bad dream.
  • I would still be in a relationship.
  • I would still be an active parent.
  • I would still be awake at normal hours.
  • I would still cook everything from scratch.
  • I would still have a fully-functioning brain.
  • In short, I would be trucking along, just as always.

Instead, I woke up into a beautiful, cloudless day when all that was missing was my power of speech and my balance.

There were no warning signs, nothing unusual, although I was a lot more tired over the previous six months. But that was all it took – a massive, life-changing relapse and everything had altered.

I lost my job, my partner, the trust of my child and my future.

But what did I gain?

Well, when I look back, I would still be in a soul-destroying job, still in a dead-end relationship and still be oblivious to the wonders all around me. Ok, so my brain might not work properly, but what’s writing creatively without a little struggle?

I gained a new direction and a new purpose.

Not all to do with MS – like a lot of you guys, it could have been any life-changing illness. It just makes you wake up, take stock and steer your life in a whole new way.

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Fat, And Then Some

thyroidThere’s short straws. Then there’s short, fat straws.

The Alemtuzumab treatment I had for MS gave me odds of 1 in 3 that I would develop Grave’s Disease, a thyroid problem.

I was the 1.

At first, it was wonderful, as my loopy thyroid helped me shed pounds effortlessly. I was buoyed up with an incredible amount of energy (the Holy Grail for any MSer) and I sighed with sheer bliss as yet another pair of jeans were consigned to the growing Fat Pile, tucked away at the bottom of my wardrobe.

Enter the endocrinologist who took one look at my thyroid levels and immediately put a stop to my fun, effectively reversing then decelerating my over-active thyroid into a sluggish, bored, tired under-active thyroid.

I cried when I stepped on the scales. I snivelled when I rummaged around my Fat Pile. Every single day I gained a pound. I banished carbs and chocolate (gah) from my diet. I sipped green tea and swirled cinnamon sticks in my natural yoghurt.

I have a fairly physical job, so hoped against hope that this would offset the rapid weight gain. Nope. My Duracell-Bunny hyperactivity had morphed into slow-mo.

At my last meeting with the size-six endocrinologist, I’m not afraid to say I begged. I pleaded and put my case forward: the meds I was taking were of course sorting out the thyroid, but were ruining my life on two levels:

  • Relentless weight gain. I am now a blob of my former self.
  • Extreme lethargy and fatigue. Commonly known as, well, common MS symptoms, so I was having a double-whammy.

She had no mercy and told me I might be on them for a year. A year. At my current rate of weight-gain, I will be dressing in tents with holes cut in them for my head and arms.

It’s getting harder to keep going at work, as weight gain plus fatigue means it takes me hours to recover after just half a day in work. Never before has my nickname, ‘Half-Shift’ been more appropriate. My body and mind shut down at a certain point and I slump onto a pile of bricks, head in hands.

On the plus-side (lol), I am yet again radically over-hauling my diet in a desperate bit to put a stop to the pounds piling on even more than they already are. I have dusted off my kettle-bell. It’s still a door-stop, but I live in hope.

For now, I am experimenting with black clothes and dramatic scarves. Perhaps I should start wearing my heavy, black-rimmed reading glasses again, to draw attention away from my triple-choc muffin top.

And I will have insane pleasure in saying, ‘oh the fat? It’s my thyroid. Honest.’

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Don’t Need No Edukashun

ChrisIt’s all over.

The tears, the angst, the arguments.

Day-glo highlighter pens were flung across the room, doors were slammed and the fridge was stripped bare on a daily basis, until even the rubbery carrots and three-day-opened tub of houmous was wolfed down.

Yup, The Teenager’s exam season is finally over and it couldn’t come soon enough.

I tried my best to be understanding and supportive. I made endless rounds of toast and was sympathetic when he regularly drained my printer of ink as yet another past paper trundled through and was stapled, completed and torn up before he stomped upstairs, scattering the pieces.

I gently engaged him in conversation only to be rebuffed with, ‘gah, you wouldn’t understand, you’re like, old yeah? and didn’t even have computers Back Then. Or the internet. Or mobiles. Or Facebook. Or Snapchat. I mean, really, what did you, like,  do all day?’

I regularly received text updates after his exams, ranging from ‘smashed it, ohhhhh yessss!!!!!!!!’ to ‘leavin school, not doin A levels’. Or, ‘Dominos? Pleeeeeeaaaaaasssssseeeee?’

He came home after a rather hard maths exam and told me he had decided to go into gainful employment after his exams rather than continuing his education. I reasonably told him I’d take him to Burger King on his results day to sign him up. Along with all the University graduates who can’t find a job. ‘But I love Burger King. I can tell them that in the interview?’

Anyway, there’s not much we can do until his results come through on 20th August. In a cruel twist of fate, that’s the day before his 16th birthday.

The Prom Suit Saga filled much of our time, mostly mine. Due to his stature, we sourced the Gentlemen’s Outfitters that kits out the Welsh rugby team. Only problem was, it was embedded deep in the valleys, so deep that even my sat-nav queried me at one point with, ‘turn around when possible, you numpty, you, there’s nothing here.’

On The Prom Evening, suited and booted, he rushed downstairs. ‘PROBLEM’, he yelled, ‘there’s stupid, idiot lines in my trousers, where’s the iron?’ He was frantic and with only five minutes to go before he was to be picked up for the prom, so was I.

‘Huh?’

‘Lines? Lines? Look‘.

He pointed and flapped at the beautifully pressed-in creases in his dinner suit trousers.

‘That’s what they’re supposed to look like’.

‘Eh?’

‘Yes, my little cherub. It’s a prom suit, a dinner suit, now let me get a photo of you’.

‘Dinner?’

*strop, thump, meh*

He left, his tie skew-whiff (‘s’right’), photo taken for posterity (‘muuuuuuuuuum, really?’) and I slumped on the sofa.

We got there. In the end.

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