It’s been a stressful week and stress plus MS equals a spike in symptoms.
I have tried everything to stay serene and in control – deep breathing, chocolate, mindfulness, two episodes of Mad Men.
The deep breathing made me feel a bit silly, the chocolate nudged the scales up, The ‘Power of Now’ was the ‘Power of Not-Right-Now’ and as for Mad Men, well, two episodes are never enough.
For me, it’s mostly an increase in nerve pain. Ever tried describing nerve pain to the uninitiated? Burning, tingling, numbness, crawling, aching doesn’t even begin to cover it.
Tingling sounds delightful, numbness sounds painless, crawling sounds weird and we all ache, don’t we? Just like we all get tired.
It’s been driving me round the twist all week and as always with MS, it doesn’t come alone. It’s the great MS special offer – ‘get one symptom, get three free’. So, as well as the nerve pain, there’s the fatigue, the wonkier walking, the hands that’d be better suited to a Greek taverna. Smashed plates? Yup, as well as my last proper grown up wine glass and yet another chip in yet another bowl.
I lay awake most of last night listening to Izzy miaow loudly. For a tiny cat, she’s got a huge set of lungs. The Teenager got up and shut his door and I was left to ponder the cobwebs on the ceiling and listen to a group of drunk woman sing ‘Simply The Best’ outside my window at 1.30 am. The pain was excruciating and made even more unbearable as my legs started to jerk and twitch.
I wasn’t sure if it was like being possessed by a malevolent spirit (The Exorcist sprang to mind in the wee small hours) or being stretched on a rack. Only problem was, I couldn’t get up and go downstairs as new cat Izzy would think it was perfectly normal to sit in the kitchen listening to the shipping forecast before sunrise. I was trapped and the women outside moved on to a Tom Jones medley, a tortuous backdrop to insane pain.
Action plan for the weekend – rescue ‘The Power of Now’ book from the corner I flung it in to, lie on the sofa with a huge bag of crisps and a relaxing face-pack on and chant, ‘this too shall pass’ over and over and over again…