Smiling through life with MS
It's day four of Lemtrada, I have one more night in hospital and one more night of treatment, and the rash is here! I currently look like I have the neck of a 16-year old boy after his first experiment with his dad's razor. It started with itchy arms when I woke up this morning,… Continue reading Lemtrada: day four
It's getting a bit like Groundhog Day in here. I woke up at 4.30 this morning and just couldn't get back to sleep, I think thanks to the steroids rather than any disturbance on the ward. I put my Calm app on my phone and listened to a story about the Nordland Express in Norway,… Continue reading Lemtrada: day three
My last two entries were quite short and I didn't go into much detail because I was tired and a bit too spaced-out to get my thoughts in order. So I'm writing this a bit earlier in the day, and hopefully I will remember all the things I meant to say! I'm now hooked up… Continue reading Lemtrada: day two
It's been a long time coming, nine months to be exact, but finally I am here in hospital ready to start Lemtrada tomorrow. It's not lost on me that I could have gestated a baby in the time I've waited for my lymphocytes to recover from the bashing that two and a half years of… Continue reading The last wait
"What is that which has one voice and yet becomes four-footed and two-footed and three-footed?" This summer was challenging. In April I started relapsing, my fatigue becoming overwhelming and my walking getting markedly worse. I tried high-dose steroids to treat the relapse for the first time, but they didn't make any difference to my symptoms… Continue reading The Riddle of the Sphinx
When I was a child, Christmas was my favourite, favourite time of the year. In fact, the whole slow sweep from October into the 25th of December was joyful to me, gradually gathering momentum until The Big Day. I loved the presents, of course, but more than that there was something ineffable about the nights… Continue reading Coming back to Christmas
I've always been a hypochondriac. When I was about 8 or 9 I remember listening to a tape of Jacqueline Du Pre and my mother explaining to me how she had been cut down in her prime by this awful disease, MS, that gradually makes you unable to move until finally you're completely paralysed and… Continue reading How to cure hypochondria
Physically, I wobble, and I always have done. I'm one of those people that always tends to be disorganised and untogether so I've always seen my lack of coordination as an inevitable consequence of my being too distracted to walk properly or to make the effort to get fit and strong.Physical wobbles are a part… Continue reading Wobbles
So many thoughts have been racing through my brain since this all started, it's hard to know how to put them all down. But just as there seems to be a waterfall of thoughts rushing too fast through my mind I am also suddenly so much more attuned to the things around me - the… Continue reading A Poem
I've been thinking about blogging for a while. I'm a bit of a cliche, to be honest. Middle-aged, under-employed, having a bit of a midlife crisis; blogging about my life seemed the logical thing to do, the problem being that I just haven't ever had that much to say. I did think idly about starting… Continue reading A Reason for Blogging
