My bank has sent me this silly little thing they call a token, it’s about the same size as a credit card and looks like a calculator but there are no plus or minus symbols. I haven’t been to their site yet to find out totally what it is for but the literature says that without it, I would be no longer able to pay for anything on line over £300. As I said I haven’t activated it yet or read what their web site has to say, but I know one thing already, this was designed by a healthy young person with great dexterity and eyesight, a tiny strip screen and buttons so small, I know without touching them, I will have problems with it, it just shouts youth loudly. I know I may be shouting accusations which are totally unfounded, but experience tells me I am right before I go any further. I have actually found many things that are just to fiddly, I do have a mobile, it’s old now and hasn’t been used for years, but I hold onto it just in case I land up having to stay in hospital. I hold on to it tightly as it is one of the few that I have found with larger buttons and ones with a clear click so you know you have touched it and can’t double click with ease. It may be old but I know those modern touch screen monsters would drive me up the wall. It’s bad enough when my fingers double hit, or more, on a key board, something that happens a lot due to tremors, I hate to think where I would land up using a touch anything. It actually really surprises me just how companies keep designing things without thinking about the sick and elderly, especially as we are being constantly told that there are more people in or heading for retirement, it’s a huge market being ignored. I will let you know once I have activated this strange little gizmo as to if it is something I can use, or if I can’t what the bank can do to help. That actually may be the more interesting question of the two to be honest, will the bank care or have an answer at all. It’s bad of me, but I can’t help just wanting to tell them I can’t work it, even if I can, just to hear their answer, bad of me I know but I can’t help being bad occasionally.

I have wondered for a long time now if something small and irritating is shared by other with MS or Fibromyalgia as although I have never seen it listed anywhere as a symptom, but I do actually really believe now that one of my illnesses is behind it. For many years now I have spent millions of hours chasing a itch around my head, with nothing ever showing, as in irritated or scaled skin, just skin dying to be scratched at. I have ruled out all soaps, shampoos, make up and creams, perfumes and everything else that could be behind it, I’ve ruled them out as this has been going on now for years and like everyone else all those things change frequently. I can actually also rule them out as the itch is below the skin, not right on the surface. Why I think it is part of one illness or the other, is actually simple, the itch always starts as mild tingle or fluttering sensation, I can ignore it for a few minutes as it builds in strength, but eventually I have to scratch. I scratch it or rub it and it goes away, but reappears a somewhere else just seconds later. It can be anywhere on my head, under my hair, on my lip, eye, ear, cheek or brow and once started it will keep going for hours. It isn’t isolated to my head, but that is where I feel it most often, my hands are the next most common place, but where ever it is I can’t help wondering if the route of the problem is once again nerves sparking for no real reason, other than to drive me mad. I also know that it is happening when I am asleep as I frequently wake with scratch marks where I have either broken the skin with a sharp piece of nail or my rings. I’d be interested to know if other have this too, as I can’t help wondering if it is another thing I have lived with without mentioning, something I would guess most other probably would do to.

I know on the surface that constant itching is something that wouldn’t cause any real damage but I actually landed up having to have my left earlobe cut off. I had for years always worn multiple earrings, my left ear was pierced 35 times and I wore cubic zirconium earrings in every hole, the appearance was as though my ear was encrusted with diamonds, from the very top edge to the bottom. As my dexterity got worse I had to stop wearing so many as I was finding it harder and harder to put them in and out, I started wearing larger stones that covered two or three of the holes, but it would itch at night and because I couldn’t get to the itch I started pulling at it and I often woke with drops of blood on my pillow case where I had ripped the skin connecting a couple of holes together. Eventually I stopped wearing earrings at all but I still kept scratching and pulling at it, more and more rips appeared even though I was using medical tape to hold all the threads of skin together, as that was all that was left, huge holes with ribbons of skin. By the time I was sent to see a consultant about it, it was in his words “the worst state that he had ever seen” and he took pictures to show other doctors in training. It was actually in such a state that repair was impossible and all he could do was to take a pair of scissors and cut it all away. I have to say it goes down as one of the oddest things I have ever had done, lying on a table listening to someone cutting away my earlobe, as it made a sort of scrunching sound as he kept snipping. I don’t wear earrings any longer, but I do still scratch and pull at it, but now without the fear of pulling off half my ear. I guess that goes to show that you shouldn’t ignore even something as simple as an itchy piece of skin as my may well actually lose it completely.