I’m just back from a mini-mini break, to Nottingham.
I tagged along with the Boss as he was taking his son back to Uni and what better way to ignore my looming Dissertation Deadline than to hitch a lift 150 miles away from my laptop?
I’d packed my little case, issued a stream of instructions to The Teenager (keep cat alive, lock door, don’t lose your key, etc) and had an hour to spare before I was to be picked up.
Then.
Aw, really?
That awful, prickling, niggling sensation. The one where you can almost physically feel the shutters roll down, one by one. MS fatigue. Out of the blue. It smacked me on the head so hard I felt sick. I had to sleep. I couldn’t move, so dozed sitting upright with Jeremy Kyle on pause (just when I was getting to the paternity test bit). I managed to bank enough minutes to look semi-decent for the journey, although my hair was a bit wild and my eyes were drooping.
When we hit the M50, I fell asleep. We stopped for coffee half-way and I was too tired to eat more than a bite of my KFC. Back in the car. More sleep.
Nottingham, took student out for a burger, then back to his accommodation. This morning, after a long sleep and a four-shot coffee, I promptly fell asleep in the car again and pretty much slept til Wales.
What can I say? Nottingham seems nice. But I’m still, after five years, struggling to accept this tiredness as a symptom in its own right. My walking was all over the place, I can take that. I can also accept the need to grasp my coffee cup extra tightly. I will probably have to get my boots re-soled again after all the tripping. But sleep? That’s the tricky one. It just seems such a waste.
As I drifted off outside Worcester, I tried to argue with my exhausted brain. Sleep would make me feel better. It’s MS-normal. It’s ok. But I’m not convincing myself.
I guess it’s the randomness of it – like all the other MS symptoms – but this one is so absolute. You completely remove yourself from life and that scares me. If you have foot-drop, you can still get out, albeit in a more comical fashion. If you drop a cup or bang around in the kitchen, you can make a joke out of it. But sleep is an alternate state and there’s nothing I can do about it.
For someone who has to stay in control, bring up a child, run a house and all that goes with it, to have to absent yourself from life and, in effect, become unconscious against your will, that’s a lot to take on board.
