Stumbling in Flats

I’m ever so slightly nervous.

I’ve been invited to speak at a neurological conference, about my experience of MS treatment: in my case, Lemtrada.

I’m nervous on two counts:

• I’m not a hugely experienced public speaker
• It’s taking place just outside Budapest, Hungary (and I’m going in two days, eeeek).

However, I am going and I will do my absolute best – it’s a topic I’m passionate about and if that means conquering my MS-travel-related-anxieties, then so be it.

I’ve written (and re-drafted) my speech and I think it comes from the heart. In it, I discuss my decision-making process in choosing the treatment I had and the benefits of it. And also the downsides.

It it empowering to have a voice and to discuss in public the importance of choice. Reflecting back over the last couple of decades of my life, my voice was somewhat quashed; whether through experiences or through people I allowed into my life, with all their notions about how I should act, what I couldn’t say. It’s kind of poetic irony that my first relapse affected my speech.

So MS may have taken away my speech with one hand but it gave me back an attitude – a desire to create change – with the other. Blogging has been a huge part of this – from meek beginnings, where I hid my identity for fear of ridicule or prejudicing the legal case against employers who sacked me for having MS, to my more strident posts, yet always trying to demonstrate a balance of how life actually is for a small family coping with MS.

However, finding a voice is also about listening to other voices, and the thousands of comments on my posts I’ve received over the years have proved that, over and over again. You guys have sanded off my sharp edges, picked me up when I’ve been down and virtually held my hand through Teenager crises.

And that’s why a large part of my speech is devoted to you, and the power of support. When I took The Teenager to Uni almost two weeks ago, I didn’t feel alone, even as a single parent. I really felt that you guys were there with me, every step of the way.

And it’s also why we are all ‘experts by experience’ – a phrase mentioned to me by a fellow blogger, Patrick. We both agree that the usual, ‘expert patient’ can still make us appear as passive recipients of care, whereas ‘experts by experience’ emboldens us, allowing us to stand up and say, ‘yes, amongst everyone here, the neurologists, the physiotherapists, the researchers, I’ve had the treatment and I am the expert too.’

So, listen to me?

It’s me who went through the lumbar puncture, the MRI’s, the blood tests, the initial steroids to ward off relapses, the actual treatment, administered in a drip. I’ve been completely floored and got back up again. The different tablets for weeks afterwards to ward off infection. The fatigue, the weakness, the all-too-quick-recovery back into work before time.

We’re symbiotic – the health care professionals and us, the patients.

We work together?