Category Archives: Emotions

May 05 2018
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Emotions

Rage Against The Lesion

Lesions, eh?

Little white sinister blobs on our MRI’s, causing untold relapses and despair.

I had a spectacular first ‘proper’ relapse eight years ago and nothing – absolutely nothing – could prepare me for it.

A day trip; a long-planned stroll around shops, and a coffee with a dollop of cream on top with a generous slice of cake in Ye Olde Tea Shoppe afterwards.

The Teenager was away on a rare break, and even though I still had a packet of wet wipes and an emergency box of Lego-themed plasters in my handbag, I was … an adult … for the day.

Or so I thought.

It started on the way there. I couldn’t stop yawning and slumped in the passenger seat, answering my friend with a Danish accent.

We parked up, and I meandered the streets, weaving this way and that, feeling completely spaced out. I floated around with numb, unworking feet and arms, disconnected and, if I’m honest, beyond scared. I fell against walls and tripped over my feet.

I finally found the Ye Olde place we’d agreed to meet at and I sat down, terrified. Something was very, very wrong. The language difficulties increased, as did the sensation of not being of this planet (I know, not that unusual for me, but bear with).

Two days later, I was admitted to hospital with an (eventually diagnosed) unusual lesion on the speech part of my brain. I could have gone in earlier and stayed in for days, but The Teenager was due back within hours and that took complete  precedence over anything and everything. Within a year I had highly-active MS and treatment to match.

Fair play, The Teenager, even after all these years, still does a wicked Danish impression of me. I cannot begin to imagine the impression it left on him at such as young age.

So, lesions. Every day I wake up, I know exactly which ones will come forward and play up. Some are here to stay, the frayed cables permanently snapped – the foot drop, the balance. Some flare under fatigue – the language, the garbled speech, the cog fog. Sometimes they all get together and push me on to the sofa where I spend my days watching clouds drift past my window.

The one I hate the most is the sudden darkness and depression. It descends rapidly – I can be happy one moment and then in the pit of utter despair; I would rather speak with a Danish accent the rest of my life than go through it over and over and over again, a vindictive Groundhog Day I cannot escape from.

In short, it’s awful. It happened just two days ago. That sudden darkness. I’ve tried to learn to just relax in to it – I tell myself it will pass and I will be ok, but it’s so hard.

I know it’s MS and I know it’s a lesion. It’s just a blob asking for attention.

So I try to rage against the lesion. I know what’s happening. But it can take all my diminishing strength to see it pass back in to real life again.

But the bonus? I can still do a wicked Scandi-cop impression …

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Apr 23 2018
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Emotions

Life Is Short

I spent ten minutes before work this morning planting some seeds that have been hanging around my house for years.

A set of three herbs, complete with three zinc pots and a tray you’re supposed to put on a sunny windowsill (if you don’t have a cat).

Ten minutes previously I’d been lying on my sofa, shattered, buzzing with nerve pain and with a weird flicking tremor in two of my fingers. The usual.

Today was different; it marked the 40th anniversary of my dad’s death from MS complications, at the age of 35.

I’m now 44 and wasn’t even properly diagnosed until I was 37.

Years and ages to one side, living with a chronic, progressive illness speeds life up. The questions and fears you once expected to face in your 60’s become more or less commonplace in your 20’s or 30’s.

The positive side to this is it makes you concentrate on what makes your life meaningful. The flip-side is terror and anxiety. The trick is to outweigh the fears with the joy. Easier said than done.

So today I wanted to make something grow. The herbs might not, but the hope is there and when The Boss picked me up for work, I was beaming from ear to ear despite sadness.

I can’t solve every problem with happy thoughts and actions and I don’t expect life to always look as beautiful as it did this morning. Life with MS is an endless round of awful symptoms I dampen down with medication and a fair sprinkling of Anglo-Saxon language.

Life is short but so are our memories. If anyone has ever broken an arm or a leg, I bet we can all remember thinking, ‘wow, I’ll never take you for granted again, dearest arm/leg’; But we do.

I hope my herbs will grow and they’ll give me a great excuse to make some pasta. And more than anything, I hope I can enjoy every day, no matter what MS, or life, throws at me.

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Apr 09 2018
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Emotions

With Friends Like These …

A BBC journalist has himself been in the news recently.

He is disabled, and quite rightly needs to use a disabled parking space.

So far, so good and I read his article in a weekend newspaper with a keen interest.

Until, that is, he stated that he had never yet seen a disabled person park in them; they all looked non-disabled. To him.

I’ve done some research and his complaint is not new – Boris Johnson even wrote an article citing him and his parking issues back in 2011.

I’m interested in how he can ‘spot’ a disabled person and whether in fact they do, ‘bound(s) out, whistling, remote-locking (their cars) with a backwards squirt of electrons.’

I wonder if, in the interest of his being a journalist, he has ever used his unique position to question these blue badge ‘frauds’. Perhaps strike up a conversation with one of those ‘bounders’?

Apparently not. Which renders his views utterly subjective and not based in reality or fact.

I have every sympathy for this journalist. Of course, he needs the extra space for his wheelchair that a disabled space affords. And, of course, there are many people looking to park in the same spaces as they too are disabled.

Essentially, there are not enough disabled spaces, and therein lies the problem.

So to broadly sweep a dismissive brush over every person he has ever seen park in a disabled space as ‘not disabled’ is breathtakingly insulting.

The Invisible Disabilities Association defines invisible disability as:

‘… symptoms such as debilitating pain, fatigue, dizziness, cognitive dysfunctions, brain injuries, learning differences and mental health disorders, as well as hearing and vision impairments. These are not always obvious to the onlooker, but can sometimes or always limit daily activities, range from mild challenges to severe limitations, and vary from person to person.’

Can this journalist see pain? Feel fatigue? Heat intolerance? All of which are valid MS symptoms, to mention just one illness that has invisible symptoms.

It’s hard enough being attacked by the Government through punishing benefits ‘reforms’ and not being at all represented in the last parliamentary election, even though 1 in 6 of us is disabled.

So to be attacked by ‘one of us’ (even though he clearly places himself above that) seems particularly harsh.

Aligning himself with the Blue Badge Disbelievers may gain him Brownie points and a few headlines, yet he does us all irreparable damage.

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Apr 05 2018
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Emotions

Really? Was It?

According to the dictionary, ‘gaslighting‘ is a form of manipulation that seeks to sow seeds of doubt in a targeted individual or in members of a targeted group, hoping to make them question their own memory, perception, and sanity.

I remember watching the old 1940’s film, ‘Gaslight’ as a kid, the husband manipulating the wife into believing she was losing grip on reality.

Never has the term ‘gaslighting‘ been more apt than today, when thousands of us with indefinite Disability Living Allowance awards are being reassessed for Personal Independence Payments.

You thought you had MS? Parkinson’s? Think again.

You thought you had problems with balance, walking, cognition? Think again.

You’ve taken the time and immense effort to fill in the 40-page form (which essentially amounts to writing the equivalent of 14+ essays). You’ve endured the stress and fear of losing what is for some the only payment between you and poverty (it certainly is in my case).

You have also probably gone through the extremely difficult process of raking through your life, highlighting just what you cannot do, after years of trying to be upbeat, contribute to the community and in short, remain an active member of society.

Yesterday, I was slumped on the sofa after work, The Teenager slumbering safely upstairs in his old bedroom after a night out catching up with friends, back for the Easter break from University.

Despite my fatigue and pain, I felt proud I was still working and I was still able to maintain our home of 14 years.

However, reading through my PIP Award (never has a word been so misused) Letter, I felt deep confusion. I was reading about someone else. This never happened. I don’t recognise the assessment in the letter, and neither did my witness.

With an illness such as MS, this seems particularly cruel, as the diagnostic process can seem similarly confusing.

For months, years for a lot of people, we try to make someone ‘in charge’ make sense of our random bundle of symptoms. They often don’t hang together well (we all get tired, we all feel a bit buzzy around our feet at the end of the day?).

Even six years after my diagnosis, I still feel like a fraud – how can you possibly describe what it’s like to have MS when so many of our symptoms are internal? And internal, impossible-to-see symptoms are easy to dismiss.

And this is despite me having highly-active, or rapidly-evolving MS, for which I’ve had Lemtrada treatment three times, one more than the standard two. It’s a brutal treatment and not one undertaken lightly.

During my PIP assessment, I was led, confused and upset. Not true apparently. I was well-dressed, confident and happy. Who to believe?

Who do you believe?

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Apr 02 2018
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Emotions

A Date With Fate

People often say, if you think too hard about the best time to have a child, you never will.

It’s the same with car crashes and disabilities.

If you’d asked my 23-year-old self if I had the time and resilience to be involved in a near-fatal car accident, necessitating six months off work, I’d have laughed. But it happened.

Forward 14 years and if you’d asked me on Friday 24th June 2011 whether – as a divorced mother of an 11 year old – I was ready for a serious, degenerative illness to suddenly pop up and change my life forever, I’d have laughed my head off. I had far too much to do, how could I possibly fit it in?

Yet it happened – I went to bed that evening as usual and woke up in a completely different body, one I barely recognised.

The surprise element in these three scenarios can be overwhelming for people like me, who think they knew where they’re going.

Just like that, you don’t.

I often think back to that fateful evening and wonder if I truly appreciated my life, as it was, when I closed my book, fluffed up my pillow and turned out the light. I don’t think I did.

Sure, I had a plan, and it was a good one – possibilities were opening up as The Teenager entered high school and the tethers of childcare were loosening. I would also lose that extra weight, learn how to apply eyeliner and rustle up a mean Martini.

MS hit and I went under. For two years. It was almost as if I refused to believe that it had actually happened. I was grieving for what could have been and what should have been. It was all so … unfair.

It’s only now I realise that it wasn’t so much the MS that rocked my life (**** happens?), but my inability to recognise that life had changed and there was absolutely nothing I could do about it. A bit like the car crash.

Almost seven years on from that day, I am serene, calm and accepting.

Nah, not really.

But – I’m much more flexible in my approach to life, unlike my body, which is often rigid, wracked with weird vibrations and does the strangest things.

So many awful things have happened since MS but none now have the power to shock me quite as much. When life events drop down the shock-scale, it’s rather nice. When MS happens, what can be worse?

Oh, wait, I forgot about The Department of Work and Pensions …

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