Category: life stuff (Page 28 of 28)

2004. It started with a bout of double vision, headaches and falling over that could not be attributed to alcohol, or needing new specs.  My GP sent me to an ophthalmologist at the Royal Victoria Infirmary, who ran a battery of tests involving flashing lights and buttons to click.  He then pronounced my eyes perfectly healthy, so I should probably not delve into it too much in case of “consequences”.  Pat me on the head, run along now…

I asked to see a neurologist, and was sufficiently concerned to pay for it.  By the power of the private sector and the Nuffield’s own MRI suite, I was consulted, prodded and MRIed in one sitting within 48 hours of requesting the appointment.  Woo-hoo.  The consultant tried to break it to me gently that there was some kind of imflammatory condition going on, and I looked him in the eye and said, “It’s MS, isn’t it?” Continue reading

MS.  Scary, huh?  Actually, no.  It frustrates me, limits me, makes me insanely angry, weepy, tired and clumsy in varying degrees, but it doesn’t scare me.  Maybe it should, since it could potentially get quite grim, but I invite you, gentle reader, to note the “could” and the “potentially” in this sentence.

I don’t know what’s going to happen.  No-one does with this disease.  I could talk in percentages and trends but the simple fact is I don’t know where it’s taking me.  Some people would find that kind of uncertainty alarming, but if I let myself get worried about every uncertainty in my life, I’d never get out of bed.  Whilst that idea has its attractions, the facts remain that I have a job, bills to pay, novels to write and friends to see and I can’t do any of that with the duvet pulled over my head in case the sky falls in.

Frankly, if the sky’s going to fall in there is nothing anyone can do about it so why worry?  It’s just wasting energy that could be more profitably spent working out what went wrong with Chapter 34.