Smiling through life with MS
"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
Anxiety feels to me like a bag of eels, somewhere in the pit of my stomach. Twisting and rolling, it threatens to burst open and tumble the contents out of my mouth with the scream I can barely suppress. That was what it felt like as I stood outside my local hospital on a grey… Continue reading The Beginning
Falling & Laughing 