I was off work for a week during the dramatic escalation of Coronavirus here in the UK and had felt quite cocooned, my usual MS problems combined with a trapped nerve I was receiving treatment for having kept me at home.
Going back to work was unreal: it was the same building site, luckily secluded with only one other person working, but everything was different. I looked around, remembering the Good Old Days when my main concern was picking up milk on the way home. It was utterly impossible to take in, that the world had changed so much and in such an unexpected way. Driving back through an emptied capital city just reinforced this. Life would never be the same again.
I cried. I cried on site and I cried when I got home. Watching the news and seeing country after country across the world close down was utterly beyond comprehension.
Fast forward a couple more weeks and my son is now home from University, still studying online and now working as a housekeeper with the NHS. He makes his bed in the morning and cooks for himself but I am banished from our living room when he works out, huffing and puffing with my weights and kettle-bell that served just fine as a doorstop for many years.
There is much talk about the ‘new normals’ – something all of us with MS have had to adapt to over the years, regardless. It is heartening to see so much online and, wow, accessible. For once, the world is perhaps coming to us. So this is a very unreal situation for those of us who are quite at home with being, well, at home, because we have to.
For me, I have strategies in place. Concentrate on small pleasures, make a list, watch the clouds go by. Now we are all doing the same thing, it’s quite wonderful. The media is full of ideas, hints, tips, opinion columns, all aimed at Me. Us. Suddenly, museums are open, there are online lectures, I can travel the world, dip in and out of talks with the cream of authors. In a way, it’s amazing.
Yet, can this last? If you are on furlough, are worried about your job or have you always been at home, what happens next? Will these wondrous interventions such as tele-medecine continue? What we thought could take years, has taken place in a matter of weeks.
So, it looks good for us? Or does it? The benefits system has yet to catch up. A lot of us cannot access carers. There are no groups, no access to the work we once took pride in. Where do we figure in this seismic change?
We cannot be forgotten during this. I know there are a huge amount of fantastic interventions in place, but there are always people behind the figures and we cannot forget this. I can’t think of a time that is more pressing for an understanding of MS, bar my dad being diagnosed back in the 70’s.
MS charities may go under but we need them more than ever. Engage, if you can, take part in discussions with them and if you have the energy, fundraise. They need us as much as we need them.