Nov 06 2015
8 Comments
My Ramblings

That’s No Lady …

ladyI have a problem in work, and it’s not The Boss.

Well he is, but I have another one.

As I’m often to be found on a building site trying to make sense of architectural plans, tripping over wires, getting my hands dirty and generally mucking about with the lads, people sometimes forget that I am actually, ahem, a lady.

Yup, it shocks me too.

So it was with interest that I perused the recent article courtesy of ‘Country Life’, ’39 Steps to Being a Lady of 2015′.

I wish I hadn’t bothered.

Of the 39 steps, I tick only around a third, as I:

  • Never wear shoes I can’t walk in – er, yup. Tick. Huge tick.
  • Would never have Botox – I quite like smiling.
  • Would never own a handbag dog – my cat would disown me.
  • Can handle a sports car and a sit-on mower – does a JCB mini-digger count?
  • Know when a man is spoken for – aren’t they all?
  • Offer the builder a cup of tea – oh yes, and cakes, biscuits and bacon butties. 
  • Cook perfect, crispy roast potatoes – I can, I just choose not to. 
  • Know songs for long car journeys – ‘The Laughing Gnome’ by David Bowie and ‘500 Miles’ by The Proclaimers. Sorted. 
  • Knows how to let a man think it’s his idea – it’s why I’m so good at my job …

Otherwise, I fail miserably. Mind you, some of the points make me wonder exactly what a ‘lady’ looks like in 2015:

  • Can paunch a rabbit, pluck a pheasant and gut a fish, but allows men the privilege – Downton Abbey lives on.
  • Can imitate Piglet and Pooh voices for a bedtime story – back in the day, it was ‘Bob the Builder’ and ‘Pingu‘.
  • Knows when to deadhead a rose – when it falls off?
  • Knows when to take control in the bedroom and the boardroom – hmm. I don’t have a boardroom.
  • Owns a little black dress – nope, I have skinny black trousers and natty flat shoes.
  • Always has a hanky – I truly fail to see how this could make anyone a lady.
  • Can silence a man with a stare and make a dog lie down with a hand signal – and vice versa – if I had this skill, my life would truly change. 

So it seems I am nowhere near being a lady. But you know what? I don’t think I’m missing out. I like handling a massive SDS drill like I was born to it. And I love driving a digger. But I also like shopping for a gorgeous new top and taking two hours to get ready to go out.

MS has pushed me to my boundaries and beyond. It’s only now, at my age, that I am discovering that I really can be … me?

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Nov 04 2015
4 Comments
Work and Studying

Right-Hand Woman

armThe boss is suffering.

Not just any old suffering – this is full-blown ‘I’ve broken my right arm – I’m a builder, a builder! – and I’m wallowing‘ kind of suffering.

Add in a lot of cursing and sighing and you get the picture.

We met for coffee before work this morning, as usual; a kind of mini-debrief to go over what I’ve missed as I ‘only’ work part-time.

In the shuffling coffee queue, when I was debating whether or not to have a chocolate twist, I asked him how his arm was. Mistake.

‘Gah. Ah. Ouch. Am in sooooooo much pain.’ He holds his grubby cast up so I could see it. Eww.

‘Have you taken anything?’

‘Taken everything. Nothing touches it. Could you pop two sugars in my coffee and stir it, ta?’

‘How are you feeling, you know, in yourself?’

‘Horrible. Lousy. D’pressed. Can’t do nothing. Have to shower with my arm in a plastic bag. Dropped my fried eggs on the floor last night. Can’t type. Can’t … do nothing. And the nerve pain. Gah. The pain. You wouldn’t understand.’

I let that one go.

‘What did you do with the eggs?’

‘Huh? Oh, I just somehow scooped them back on to the plate, painfully, dusted them off and ate them.’

Lovely.

Later on, in work, we were having our early-afternoon coffee  and carrot cake, chatting through the project when he suddenly laughed and said, ‘that’s really weird, it’s like we’re one person’.

Hmm. The boss is a good friend of mine, but I wouldn’t go that far.

‘Yeah, it’s like, I’m invalidated, invalided, whatever it is and so are you, so we’re like half a person each. Half and half is, like, one person, innit? We’re down one whole person. S’funny.’

Well. I waited for him to stop laughing, then stopped myself from replying.

I’ve always said laughter is the best remedy when it comes to coping with life-changing events. I have a laugh in work and I know I’m fortunate enough have a flexible, fun, inspiring job, working with my best friend. He was only responding in the same way I do, joshing at himself. Ok, and me, but you know what I mean.

The owners came over shortly afterwards to have a look around and made the mistake of asking how he was.

He held up his grubby cast. I put my earphones in and got on with work.

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Oct 31 2015
12 Comments
Symptoms and Treatment

Identity Theft

thiefMS is a dirty, rotten scoundrel.

A thief.

As soon as you surrender your details – your symptoms, your weird feelings, your wonky emotions – MS snatches it all and steals your identity in return. You are now a victim of MS Identity Fraud.

The person you thought you were – independent, strong, single-minded – gone – and it’s up to you to work out how to put the falling pieces of your life back together, just when you’re at your most vulnerable.

If allowed free reign, MS will take your future; you know, the one you had all mapped out. It might take your partner, your job, your security, and of course, your health. Sadly, I speak from experience.

I’d like to think I’m trucking along just fine after those awful Two Years of MS Oblivion, but sometimes, just sometimes, MS still has the ability to knock me sideways. Like yesterday.

I was on the sofa, natch, when all of a sudden my arms and hands started trembling. I wasn’t too worried to start with as I get numb hands on a regular basis and thought MS was just shaking things up a little, quite literally. Then I stood up.

My whole body was trembling and I couldn’t stop it. My head was jerking, I could feel my chest moving and my legs soon followed suit. Tremors, all over the place.

I pushed down the panic and started to make dinner. I stabbed myself in the hand trying to dissect some lettuce then dropped a plate on the floor. I sat down on the sofa again, panicking a lot more now.

I did the first thing I could think of, call my mum.

‘Muuuuuuum, something really scary is going on and it’s got nothing to do with The Teenager.’

‘Oh dear, has that cat of yours brought in another dead bird? You ok?’

I explained the whole story, this new symptom. She told me my dad sometimes had symptoms like that and I was to try my best to stay calm. Deep breaths. Did I want her to come down?

I just wanted to crawl in to bed and block out the world, but it was only 5pm.

‘Muuuuuum, I keep stabbing myself with the kitchen knife.’

‘Ah. Probably a good idea to put that down for now. How about some cheese on toast?’

We talked a bit more and I felt better, but in the back of my mind I was thinking, pah, for all my positive thinking and getting on with life, MS still holds all the cards.

Around half an hour later, as quickly as they had arrived, the tremors stopped. My panic hasn’t.

What if it happens again?

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Oct 28 2015
6 Comments
Symptoms and Treatment

Mind The Gap

get well soonSeven weeks post-third course of Campath (Alemtuzumab) and things were looking up.

If you discounted the cold sores, the bonkers fatigue and the two-week long head cold I just couldn’t shift, things were absolutely fine.

I’m back in work (although naturally The Boss would disagree), and I’m back in Uni for my second year of the Master’s.

Mind you, I’m still wrestling with the experimental writing module – my mind whirls off into weird and wonderful stories ( … this is a dot. A lovely dot. A dot that wanted to be a comma, blah blah) rather than concentrating on Virginia Woolf and her pals.

Then disaster struck.

First, The Boss was fiddling with his ladders on the roof of his van last week, slipped on some rain and fell over, breaking his right arm pretty spectacularly. Cue a plaster cast, a very, very sad face and the realisation that, as a building company, we had to come up with a plan and fast.

Second, just as I was holding a drainage pipe in place, I was whacked over the head by the most overwhelming MS super-charged cricket bat that I felt physically sick. I staggered to a pile of insulation sheets and collapsed in a heap.

I panicked. It couldn’t be a relapse but my speech was wonky, my balance was shot and my head was floating somewhere around in the stratosphere.

I left work early, holding back the vertigo and nausea and somehow got home, wondering how best to prepare for the Uni lecture that evening. Answer: not much. Just getting there would be an achievement.

The minute I got out the shower and had wrapped my dressing gown around myself, The Teenager pounced, holding out his laptop;

‘Mum, mum, mum, mum. Have you heard of The Ramones? Have you? Like, listen to this.’

‘Oh, very nice. Lovely dear.’

‘Yeah, great, innit? And this, there’s a weird guy dancing, look.’

‘Oh right. Yes, that is a bit, um, odd.’

‘Hang on, listen to this song, really funny and can I have some money for the cinema and can you drop me off a bit later? I drank all the milk, sorry.’

I have no idea what’s going on.

But I do know one thing – The Teenager wants a ‘Ramones’ t-shirt for Christmas.

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Oct 20 2015
10 Comments
Symptoms and Treatment

Brain Fog? Pass The Champers …

ChampagneAccording to a newspaper report last week, now that I am Middle Aged/8 Years Away From a Saga Cruise, I am prone to brain fog.

No, really?

MS got there before – my brain is well and truly fogged up.

But help is at hand – a practical list of things I can do to slow down ‘the inevitable decline‘. I chortled and read on, forgetting I had a casserole in the oven (it was fine after I scraped off the top layer and threw out the burnt pot).

If I want to hang on to the rest of my brain cells, I should consider:

Turning off my phone – apparently Twitter gives me a hit of dopamine, just like a gambler in Vegas. And the problem is ..?

Switching off the TV – watching it increases my risk of brain fog by 20%. Reading, on the other hand, reduces it by 5%. What if I put the telly on silent and read the subtitles instead? Clever, eh?

Drink a glass of champagne – enough said. A most excellent idea, no studies needed.

Spice it up – add turmeric to just about everything, as it’s been dubbed ‘Miracle Gro’ for the brain’. I should add it to tea, salads, curries, casseroles (when I buy a new pot), shampoo, the air-con in my car. The list is endless.

Change your thinking – I must aim to do something new every day; something that gives me pleasure, power, pride, passion, and every other word beginning with ‘p’. I am currently Productively Pondering Possibilities.

Enjoy coffee – hooray! Ah. Without milk. Hmm. I drank black coffee for over 20 years in a vain hope of appearing semi-intellectual and interesting. It didn’t work (neither did the beret or prescription-less glasses) so I started adding milk when I hit 37.

Go to bed by 11pm – at this point, I gave up. 11pm. 11pm? The last time I was awake at 11pm, I was woken by the pesky cat yowling at my bedroom window with a recently-deceased mouse at her side. My idea of cognitive improvement is remembering to put the electric blanket on by 8pm.

Perhaps I have to face facts. MS has mushed up my brain. At times it’s funny – there’s a whole host of anecdotes about my inability to remember conversations, diary dates, shopping lists. Sometimes though, it’s a little sad.

Time to crack open the bubbly?

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