Tag Archives: sad

Sad, Sad World …

tedReally?

What is it with MS?

This melancholic feeling has descended like a lump on my life. And I hate it.

Yeah, yeah, life is hard with MS, but I mean, really?

It started when I drove home from work (a very good day, as it happens).

I sighed. Then I sighed some more, from deep within. And I felt a little bit sad.

Gah.

(lump on chest)

I got home, made a coffee and thought about it, then I sighed a lot and felt a whole lot sadder.

MS. A license to feel like crap. Except I didn’t want to.

I struggled against it. I organised my scarves (a tick on my to-do-before-campath-list). I shuffled through my herbs (another tick).

I cannot say how this melancholic feeling descends. It really is out of the blue.

Life trucks on in a great way, bizarrely- I sent my book off for an award and I bought some Brazil nuts for breakfast.

So what is this stoopid MS nonsense?

Tagged , , , ,

Walking That Lonely Mile…

only the lonely

A couple of months after MS first appeared, I had a conversation with my partner, telling him I knew the months/years ahead would be hard and I would understand if he wanted to leave.

He did.

Perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised.

A study from 2009 indicated that women with cancer or MS were more than six times as likely to become separated or divorced within an average of six months of being diagnosed as were men with similar health issues.

In fairness, our relationship at that time wasn’t as strong as it once was and this could have been the proverbial straw. Following his abrupt departure, I slumped on the sofa, too stunned to cry.

My entire life was falling apart and just making an effort to get through each day was made more difficult by MS dragging me backwards, numbing my limbs, forcing me to sleep and making every step fraught with anxiety. I wasn’t walking a lonely mile (or several), I was stumbling blindly along a malignant deviation of the path I thought I had once been on.

Looking at it positively with hindsight though, by becoming suddenly single I now ‘only’ had to worry about myself and The Teenager and how we would deal with MS. In all honesty, it was perhaps easier than patching up a rocky relationship that seemed to be springing lesions as quickly as my brain scans did.

Looking at it in the depths of despair, it was truly, gobsmackingly wretched. My self-worth was rapidly plummeting, I spent night after night inwardly howling at the unfairness of it all. Who would want me now? I mean, really? Divorced single mother, wrong side of 35, oh and by the way, I have MS. Form an orderly queue and sign up here if you’re interested.

Two years down the line, thanks to a Campath-induced remission, I am slowly getting back on track. It’s been a horrendously lonely time and I probably wouldn’t have started this blog had I had a partner at my side. It would have been lovely to have someone to offload to, to share the journey (awful word) with. On a practical level, it would have been brilliant to have another adult in the house when times were bad and I battled to maintain our normal routine.

I’m learning to live alone. It’s not easy. At times it’s achingly awful. But I know that when the right person comes along, I will be in a much stronger frame of mind. Form that queue, and don’t mind me while I cross my fingers…

Tagged , , , , , ,

It’s Only A Number. Isn’t It?

Oh joy. I will be forty 39 plus 1 in less than half a year. I won’t be celebrating, but rather I shall be holding a memorial service to my first 40 years, along with lashings of wine and copious amounts of cake.

To help me feel even more inadequate than usual, The Sunday Times Style magazine thoughtfully published a list of ’40 Things To Do Before You’re 40.’Here’s some of the ones I haven’t done and have no hope of doing before August:

  • Get an accountant – ha ha thud. That’s me laughing my head off.
  • Bin all your tights and replace the lot with Falke – unfashionable me has no idea what/who Falke is. Hopeless.
  • Have a kinky dream about a colleague – the builder? Seriously?
  • Go to Glastonbury – nope.
  • Host an afterparty that people still talk about years later – what the heck’s an afterparty and why have I never been to one?
  • Stop wearing lycra – never.
  • Spend a year with an incredibly flat stomach – and give up Maltesers and toast? Crazy.
  • Unwrap a diamond – not unless it’s a Diamond White cider party pack.
  • Grow your hair so long that it covers your nipples – one word – why?

But here’s some I have done:

  • Decide whether you want children – yup, I’m keeping the Teenager.
  • Be able to order wine confidently – ‘Cheapest bottle of your house white, and make it snappy, my good man.’
  • Pull an all-nighter, drink sambuca, dance on the tables, then go straight to work – too many times to mention.
  • Live abroad long enough to get a taste for the local breakfast – those were the days. Sigh.
  • Witness a birth – I was definitely there when The Teenager was born.
  • Perfect your signature roast chicken – Waitrose, I love you.

Don’t you just hate these lists? Here’s my kind of list – recently-announced top 5 snacks in the UK (drum roll….) bacon butties came out top, no doubt helped along by my recent alarming consumption of them. They were closely followed by cheese on toast, sausage rolls, Cornish pasties and Scotch eggs. Now that’s a list you can get your teeth into…

Tagged , , , , , ,