I never thought until today just how many who read what I write will actually not understand every word of it, I suppose it is a position that is compounded many facts. I am aware that I have a large number of Americans who read and although we share a language we also speak very different forms of it, add in that I have lived all over the UK and collected a huge mix of colloquial phrases and words, well I guess it could get to the point quite often where a dictionary could easily be required to assist. Just be grateful that this isn’t a podcast as my accent is a well mixed and varied collection of Aberdoinian tempered by elocution lessons, then years spent in an English environment, before the same time over spent living in Glasgow. It used to happen all the time when I was a DJ that the people of Glasgow would ask me which part of England I was from, when I said the same part as you, many just wouldn’t believe it. It is so wrong but out of all the money spent on my education, the one thing that has been of any use to me and has alone meant I could find employment before others, those elocution lessons where worth there weight in gold. These days it is no longer fashionable but I would strongly suggest everyone has them, even when your accent isn’t that strong, mine never was but it taught me to pronounce words so others could understand me, not to hide the fact I am Scottish.

The temperature rose again yesterday, not anything like it did the other week but enough to have left me feeling rather wiped again. Combine that with the fact that I still don’t seem to be regaining my strength and I wasn’t really at my best. I haven’t felt as though I can lift anything or move anything around since the really hot spell last month, even the simpler acts of lifting a bottle of coke to top up my glass is getting harder and harder to do. In the last few weeks I am also finding it harder to manage to dry myself after my shower, I have found so far that a three towel system is working the best at the moment. We have these wonderful huge towels that I bought when we refurbished the bathroom a few years ago, but I am now find them terribly heavy. The best system I have managed to come up with is to simply wrap myself in the large towel, then tucking it so it stays in place. Then I tie my hair up in a hand towel so that it no longer drips all over me. I use the third and final towel, another hand towel, to dry complete anywhere the patting has failed. It is becoming a bit of a fiddle but for now it works, the real problem is that after the energy of showering has been used, well there is little left to even lift the towels, far less to be able to make full use of them. If it was possible to break the process down into sections without freezing somewhere along the line, I wouldn’t have a problem, but few things are that easy these days.

While I as drying myself I have once again also managed to find some kind of, well I would say rash but it’s not, they are hard tiny rash like bumps, almost with a feel of being scabbed over. I haven’t at any point found or felt itching, bleeding or weeping, so to find them right in at the top of my leg, it’s some I can’t remember ever having anything like. Having that in mind clearly they are not something to worry about, now covered in Savlon, I will wait and see what happens. The less flexible I become, the more of these strange things just seem to appear, probably because I can no longer take care of my body as I used to. I can’t help but wonder what the future will hold as I am in little doubt that this is just the start. Finding that made me check anything else I could reach or see, my array of bruises, lumps and marks of the last few months are still there. I have never known bruises to remain so long, but they aren’t getting any worse so I suppose that at least is something to be pleased about. One thing I wish I could check and that is my weight, our bathroom scales aren’t working, they require a new battery but I can’t open the fiddly back piece to get it out, just so I can find out what it is and buy a replacement, I will have to ask Adam again. I do try not to look at myself in the mirror more than I have to, but I am under no illusion that I have lost any weight, it would just be nice to confirm how bad things are.

Our own images of ourselves always seem to be distorted from the actual facts. The more I know that my body is nothing like I would like it to be, I can only use my imagination to undo the damage that has been done. I can’t bare to see myself if the truth is told, but there is nothing I can do about it. The less able you are to exercise, control your diet or simply be a real normal human-being, the faster your body destroys itself. It is probably the cruelest thing that illness does, I can stand the pain and so on, but not being the me I had imagined myself to be in my 50’s, hurts just as much. This isn’t vanity, it is more basic than that, it is a feeling like someone has stolen part of me. We all rely on the image we portray to the world, when the tall slender woman I was has gone and in it’s place something that has little to no comparison to the past, well it’s really hard to know who you really are. Who we are is more than image, but believe me it is a bigger part of us than we would all like to admit. So as I said, illness has stolen a huge part of me and unfortunately left me with something uncontrollable and I hate being beaten.