A new blog a new start

After writing for a number of years about accessible toilets and then having a major relapse, four years on I have decided to create a new blog and write about my personal experiences with my mate MS. If it wasn’t for MS I wouldn’t have experienced many of my adventures. My care company suggested to me that I should start writing again so here goes and I hope you will find it of interest, if not amusing! 

So who am I? I am a 53 year old happily married woman living in Buckinghamshire. I was diagnosed with MS 22 years ago. I am now in an electric wheelchair so this is me!

My writing skills are not as sharp as it used to be so please bare with me, in fact I am hoping that by writing this blog regularly they will start to improve. In the meantime I would like to share with you a letter a friend wrote to his MS. Jonathan Wheeler is so articulate and I think he hits the nail right on the head with this: 

Dear MS,

Its been about 30 years since you came to stay, almost unannounced apart from a couple of fleeting, coy visits in the years preceding your moving in full-time. And even those visits you paid were almost incognito, because you never actually declared yourself. You left me guessing as to who had left that tingling or that foot-dropping gift on the doorstep of my life. I know now that these temporary episodes were your little calling cards, and that you were planning to move in permanently in your own sweet time.

 

Thirty years! How’s it been for you, my uninvited lodger? I hope you’ve found your time within me to be productive, happy and fruitful. After all, it would be a shame in neither of us was getting much joy out of our relationship. I’ve no idea why you chose me as your ideal host – and it would be nice if you could inform me. Or perhaps you won’t ever tell me, because you like being mysterious and ever so slightly menacing. You came along unexpectedly and almost unannounced, as I say. But I know you won’t leave that way, or leave at all, in fact. Ever.

I was going to suggest that we have a review of our relationship. After three decades, it’s probably time. I’ve been remiss, we’ve never yet done this. I admit, I’ve always adopted the “ignore and deny” approach towards you. If that’s offended you, I apologise. But you must see it from my view, surely? You gatecrashed my own personal party, and then proceeded to throw out all the other guests, and that peeved me.

 

My tennis playing, my badminton, football in the garden with my son, my bike riding. They all left my party – pretty much without even a goodbye. Some guests murmured apologies as they made their excuses. Hope was particularly reluctant to leave, I remember, but leave she did, holding hands with her dear friend Anticipation. I miss them. Joy and Peace stopped dancing too, and didn’t even look back, the fickle creatures.

 

To be fair, you must be given your due. Credit where credit is owed, of course. You didn’t arrive alone. Your best friends came with you to my party – which rapidly became your party. You brought along Worry, Anxiety and Discomfort. Over time some late arrivals came along too, waving cheerily at me as they came through my door. Pain and Frustration began to dance and joke with each other and with Lameness and Weakness. Quite the quadrille, those four can perform.

 

My party is getting quite crowded now, the noise ever louder. But, despite the festivities and the crowd, I find myself spending more and more time with your quiet companion called Loneliness. Thanks for bringing them along. They are the icing on the cake with which you tempt me, because you know such treats are poison to my wellbeing.

 

I don’t know when you will be leaving, MS, but I know you will be the last one to go. And I’m sure you will turn out the light as you exit.

Jonathan Wheeler

So that’s it for now folks, watch this space and I will be back in a couple of days time xx