2014, well it’s only begun so I have incredibly little to say about it, yet, give me a couple of days and I am sure that that will change, but of course a I hope all of you have a Great New Year. I didn’t make it anywhere close to the bells, unfortunately health has no respect for tradition or anything else really, in fact you are the first people I have wished a good New Year to so far, not to surprisingly all I can hear just now is snoring and until that stops, well I haven’t anyone to say it to. No that’s not self pity, just fact. I thought that the on line activity over Christmas would just about vanish as people spent time with their families and I guess because Christmas means more to me than New Year, I was shocked to find that it rose and went beyond anything I was used to. Today for the first time in ages I am on time to my normal routine, twitter died away around 6:30 last night and has stayed low ever since, not dead by any means but really really quiet. I guess the rest of the world sees New Year as the more important of the two, I suppose I haven’t ever really seen it as a big deal other than when I was DJing, as New Years Eve meant HUGE money and the only time that I have ever enjoyed a New Years party. I expect we all actually celebrate and make the most of the days that our families also made the most of, the only memory I have of New Year from my childhood was my Father sending me to bed in tears year after year, but telling me he would see me “next year”, to a little girl who just didn’t really understand the concept of New Year, it was a really nasty joke to keep playing. My Mother always had to step in and comfort me on my way upstairs as I just couldn’t grasp it at all, I fully remember it happening for 3 years, but I bet he tried it for more years than that. Some parents seem to get a kick out of being cruel and he was very much one of those who found the strangest things funny.

I woke up this morning actually feeling as though I had been out on all night drinking, my body just wasn’t keen to move, even to reach out and hit the alarm felt like I was asking it to reach out and touch the ceiling. I honestly think if I hadn’t an urge to go to the bathroom, this morning was the closest yet I have got to just lying back down and going back to sleep. I’m not sure how you can have a hang over without even having a drink, but it really felt that way. I seem to have developed over the last few months a new pain, possibly more of a sensation that is now beginning to get annoying. I noticed it first at the side of my right breast, almost a stinging sensation that there was nothing there to have caused it, but it kept happening and eventually appeared on the other side of my breast as well. Over the weeks the stinging turned in to sharp pains that would catch me out at times as thought I had suddenly been stabbed. On Christmas Eve it suddenly appeared identical to the right side but on my left side, no build up just the full stabbing and stinging routine already perfected by it’s friend. I am 99% sure that it is my MS as I have gone through the same thing in different places from time to time, what is new about this is the fact it has stayed for so long and is getting worse rather than going away. Periods of pain are totally normal and they do move around, it is almost as though one nerve perfects something and teaches an other and so it is passed around. Some nerves embellish it, others just forget about it and other try it and suddenly stop, as thought they just can’t be bothered. For this to have gone on for months and to have spread around the same area, increasing and decreasing depending on the day, is odd. I know that it follows quite closely the line of where my breast meets the rest of my chest, as the stinging sensation has driven my mad for weeks, I have been constantly washing, drying and putting creams on, just in case there was something other than my MS behind it all. There was nothing to see, feel or smell, but it could have been caused by sweat rotting the skin, but with all the care I could manage to get rid of it, it just kept going.

It is all to easy to just put everything down to MS and I have learned that on occasion it has nothing to do with it at all, so I try things, I fiddle about and see if I can make a difference, before I give in and say, OK you win. In this case I actually wondered for a while if it was possible for it to be a range of other things, including of course the female fear breast cancer, but nothing else had changed, just this stupid stinging and stabbing pains from anywhere around where my breast turned into the rest of me. I guess both men and women will worry more when areas of our body we have been told all our lives to keep an eye on, do suddenly start feeling or doing something that is just wrong. It is one of those things that having an illness like MS just makes it more scary as we have strange things happening to our bodies all the time. If we went to the doctor every time something new happens, well to be honest we would be better having our own pet GP in the cupboard, as it would just save everyone time. For our own sanity it is one of those things that you simply have to teach yourself to work thought and check everything that is actually happening, against the list of true symptoms of your nightmare, against the known symptoms you already live with. Yes some might say that that is dangerous, but you have to draw up a system that you are happy with and yes there are dangers there, but there are dangers in all life. MS or not, we all have to gauge when we seek medical advise, MS just makes it that bit harder and that bit more unlikely that it is actually anything more dangerous.

No one can be 100% sure about anything, unless of course you are a total specialist in everything under the sun. Like it or not the best any of us can do is work with what we know and use it all to decide for ourselves. Chronic illness just makes it all that little bit more fun and far more interesting on an intellectual level, there is one thing for sure, it won’t leave you bored for any great length of time, that pain in your breast you have today, may well reappear feeling exactly the same in your foot tomorrow.