You know when you wake up with a brand spanking-new MS symptom?
That heart-stopping moment when all your worst fears come crashing in on you?
Yup. This happened last week. A normal morning – coffee, cat, catch-up with paperwork, countdown to waking The Teenager.
Except that morning was different. My foot refused to play fair. It gave up the ghost, schlepping behind me like a stroppy Teenager (and boy, do I have experience of that).
Panic rose and I quelled it. The next day, same thing. And the next. A new symptom. Probably every person with MS’s worst nightmare.
I decided to beat it at it’s own game, determinedly lifting the naughty foot with every step. Only problem was, I looked ever so slightly odd. Exaggerated. Like I was walking in slow motion to the ‘Chariots of Fire’ theme tune.
I ran it past the MS nurse (the problem, not my foot) but declined an appointment. ‘I’ll be fine!’. I ran it past the chiropractor who urged me to call the MS team. ‘I’ll be fine!’ I put it out my mind. But it stayed and I dragged my foot round the house. Finally, I took the offered appointment.
What’s worse? Being told it may be a relapse or it may not be a relapse? It doesn’t really matter either way, I won’t take any more steroids. I can’t bear the thought of waking up at 2am and having a strong compulsion to dust all the lightbulbs and clean the skirting boards, such is the bizarre energy those tiny tablets give me. Plus they destroy taste buds. And I pack on the weight no matter how many edamame beans I eat.
So I am in a kind of weird limbo. I worry that the endless relapses have found a sneaky way through the Campath treatment I had. I worry about my mobility – the defining point of being accepted as ‘relatively normal’ within societal boundaries.
Above all, my dodgy, annoying, schlepping foot has dominated the last week. I am panicking. Ever so slightly.
