Aug 27 2017
16 Comments
Emotions

If I Had My Choice, I Would Fire The Scriptwriter

shockedI was is in work the other day and in amongst a conversation about the previous night’s ‘Game of Thrones’ and the price of jacket potatoes, the attention suddenly switched to me.

‘Oi! What’s up with your face? You having a heart attack or something?’ (builder humour).

It was a hot day. My face was burning and bright red, so I yet again explained MS heat intolerance, one of my first and most annoying symptoms, trying to put a jokey slant to it.

‘Oh yeah, that old MS excuse again. Don’t you ever not talk about MS?’ Now, this may seem brutal, but bear in mind this is a building site, they’re all friends and I can give as good as I get. So I did, and cut him down to size.

A while later, more unsettled than I wanted to let on, I casually asked if it’s true, do I always talk about MS?

‘Um, kind of.’

I found a shady corner, sat and sulked for a long time (admittedly, not very grown up) and brooded. It was bugging me. I always prided myself on putting MS to one side and getting on with the job. Apart from when I can’t, and I stay at home, the beauty of a flexible job. I thought I had a ‘work mask’. I’d calibrated my working day so that I started early, finished early and spent the rest of the day recovering before starting again. To most people, I should appear perfectly fine. 

Finally, it was time to go and I continued sulking in the van. Then I thought about it on a different level. They were perhaps right, but it just showed how much MS dominated my life. I try to keep it in a box, or at least a separate part of myself. I’ve tried to come to terms with the totality of it, but maybe it hadn’t really sunk in.

I ran through work scenarios:

  • Unable to work in the sun – MS heat intolerance.
  • Being tired all the time – MS fatigue.
  • Tripping over at work – MS foot drop.
  • Garbled speech – a hark-back to one of my first symptoms.
  • Brain freeze – MS cog fog.

Yep, it was all about MS. To me though, it’s all normal now. So it’s not so much that I talk about MS all the time, it’s when people ask me why I did this or did that, the answer almost always wends its way back to MS.

Maybe they could focus instead on how much I have moved the company forward, which has nothing to do with MS; my superb organisational skills, my rapport with clients, my eye for detail and my all-round fabulousness?

What do you think?

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Aug 25 2017
6 Comments
The Teenager

He Got Wings …

wingsOk, so I’ve always been fairly sanguine about The Teenager leaving home.

I felt so proud that he was becoming more independent and ready to take the next step in life.

Likewise, I had never felt that as a mother, I’d lost my identity or a sense of who I was underneath the daily child-rearing.

So when I waved him, his tent and an early entry pass off to the Reading Festival on Wednesday morning, I was fine. I went to work. I came home. I tripped over the cat. The usual. I made dinner. Then I burst into tears.

A wave of emotion punched me smack in the solar plexus. This was it. 18 years, done. Finito.

It wasn’t so much the empty house; this has been happening with increasing regularity over the last year. It wasn’t the reduced shopping order I put in with Tesco, devoid of crisps, gallons of milk and cereal bars. It wasn’t even the thought of having a full night’s sleep, without one ear listening out for the key in the front door in the early hours of the morning.

It was simply the realisation that my role in his first 18 years is finished. 18 years as a definitively single parent, the last six of which were clouded with MS, has been the best of times and the worst of times. As it has ended, I can see now that no matter how prepared I think I am, there is without doubt a sense of finality and a period of adjustment.

Perhaps it’s because everything has happened at once – he had his exam results  and University place confirmed on the 17th of August, turned 18 on the 21st and headed off to Reading for five nights on the 23rd. In less than three weeks, I will be dropping him off at University.

I searched ’empty nest’, only to throw up advice aimed at couples – you’ll have time to reconnect! This is about you and your partner now! Make the most of being child-free! In contrast, as a footnote, ‘if you are a single parent, you may feel very depressed (sad face)’. And even worse, ‘if you are the single parent to an only child, you’ll feel doubly bereft (very sad face)’.

Well, no, I don’t. I don’t feel bereft as such. 18 years of doing something, being responsible for another person’s life is a big task. When it ends, there’s bound to be a shock to the system?

Other parents have chuckled when I’ve mentioned it – he won’t be gone for long, watch out for the piles of laundry, you’re always a parent. Yep, and gladly so. We just have to formulate our new relationship – far more hands off and way more being the constant, behind the scenes presence in his life.

Anyway, day three of The Teenager being away and me and the cat are doing just fine. I’m in a new rhythm now and I’m excited about both our futures. Horizons are widening.

Bring it on …

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Aug 20 2017
6 Comments
The Teenager

The Teenager Turns 18 (At Last …)

18On August 11th 1999, there was a total solar eclipse.

It’s seared into my memory as I was heading for my final scan, heavily pregnant.

I was standing outside Chelsea & Westminster Hospital in London, mesmerised by the encroaching darkness.

And then, it was light. The sun shone through and everyone blinked at each other, as if to say, ‘did that just happen?’  It was eerie and exhilarating at the same time.

Ten days later, I gave birth. I’d like to say I breathed along to whale music and had my back massaged with essential oils. However, it was perhaps a portent of things to come when the baby refused to budge – they burst the waters, they used an epidural, they pleaded, they prodded around, they used forceps, then finally Ventouse. I was surrounded by medical students. And my baby was born a Cone-Head.

In the post-birth ward later that day, battered and bruised by the whole experience, he wailed the loudest, keeping every single other baby awake. I put his first nappy on backwards. He lay in his Perspex box, peering at me. I fell in love, Cone-Head and all. He was adorable.

And tomorrow he turns 18. A legal adult, ready to leave home in three weeks.

He’s always felt the injustice of being by far the youngest in his school year, so tomorrow cannot come quick enough for him. As a parent, I think it’s no bad thing. It can be hard to be the first at everything. His so-called disadvantage has given him a little breathing space.

Anyway, looking back over the last 18 years, my first thought is, ‘Blimey, I’m old, about to become an empty-nester and probably middle-aged’. The Teenager asked me the other day if I would be ok living on my own, when he goes to University:

‘Oh, absolutely. I’m going to join a yoga class, perhaps pottery and maybe go on one of those little coach trips to the seaside. I’ll be fine.’

Is The Teenager ready to be an adult? Am I ready to don a waterproof jacket and take a coach and flask of tea to Weston-Super-Mare?

I think this will be a whole new adventure, for both of us.

But for now, especially for you guys who have followed us from the beginning of this blog, way back in October 2012, The Teenager will officially be an adult in just over 8 hours. The Teenager has a countdown going and I’m reminded every half hour or so …

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Aug 17 2017
14 Comments
The Teenager

The Teenager Is Off To University!

awesomeNever have I been more proud of The Teenager than I am today.

He got his exam results and has secured his place at University.

When MS first raised its ugly head, he had just started out on his high school journey. When I think back to what he had to endure, I could cry.

He witnessed my first proper relapse in all its frightening, bewildering intensity. He saw me lying on the sofa, hour after hour, unable to carry out the most basic tasks. He asked around his friends for lifts to rugby, to football. My friend went in my place to Parent’s Evening.

He knew about the vicious bullying I was experiencing in work, culminating in my dismissal for MS. He heard about the legal proceedings, in amongst worsening relapses. And all the while he was trying to forge his own identity as a Teenager. A hefty burden at the best of times.

It’s always been just me and him, since he was a baby, and I’ve always tried to be independent, fearless and positive. MS changed all that. We both took a huge dip. It knocked us sideways. It took a while (years), but we got through it and we came out stronger.

Regular readers will know him really well – you’ll have heard about our fair share of ups and downs, run-ins and tantrums. I hope you’ve seen though, as I have, how he has grown in to quite an incredible young adult.

I know most parents boast, but if there’s ever a blog post for me to do that, it’s this one. He’s a totally amazing individual, with a real sense of who he is. He’s considerate yet determined. All fears I had that he would internalise the emotions he was experiencing with the MS have been laid to rest. I can only watch in wonder at how he goes out and grabs the world with both hands.

We had many quick text and phone chats this morning about his impending move to Bristol (according to The Teenager, ‘far enough away to be an adult, close enough to be handy’). I’ve been issued strict instructions for Drop-Off Day:

‘Mum, right, you can take me there with all my stuff and help sort my room out. You’ll make it nice?’

‘Of course, dear.’

‘Then I’ll have to say goodbye. You won’t cry, will you?’

‘If I do, I’ll do it in the car, don’t worry’.

‘Good. ‘Cause then I have to go to the kitchen and meet everyone else’.

‘I know. Do you think you’ll need an egg timer?’

‘Muuuuuuuum?! I’ve got a list of stuff to get, like don’t worry’.

‘Ok. How many shower gels do you reckon you’ll need?’

‘Muuuuuuuuuum’.

Today is beautiful – we made it. He made it. And in a way, The Teenager had a far bigger mountain to climb than me. I’d lived my life before MS came. He had it flung at him far too young. But he took it, dealt with it and succeeded despite it.

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Aug 07 2017
6 Comments
Media

The One Where I (Might) Dress Up As A Christmas Tree …

treeHere’s the thing.

I really, really want to fund-raise for MS.

But I don’t want to skydive, fire-walk, be silent for a day, climb a mountain or zip-wire. I’m not brave enough (or quiet enough).

So instead, I’ve decided to dress up as a wobbly Christmas tree and record a song.

My partner-in-crime is Dan, a fellow MS Society Council member. Every time we get together, we rework Christmas lyrics into songs about MS as, handily, the letters M and S both appear in ‘Christmas’. Bear with.

All we have to work out is where to record the song, who can record us for a short accompanying video and how we can unleash this on the public.

The filming part should be easy – I’ll be a Christmas tree and Dan can be a reindeer and we can lob snowballs and tinsel at each other (from the comfort of chairs, natch). Or we can be really cheesy and wear matching knitted Christmas sweaters and sit by a roaring log fire, toasting marshmallows and drinking eggnog. Sort of Val Doonican-esque.

And now it’s over to you guys. What do you think? Should I embarrass myself (and The Teenager) for life?

Can we raise vital funds and still keep our dignity intact?

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