Lately due to reading my old posts from two years ago, I have been wondering how it is that for two years I have written daily and not only daily, the posts have become longer rather than I would have expected shorter. Logic says that once I had spoken about all the symptoms and how they effect me on a daily bases, that unless something changes dramatically, what do I have to write about that I haven’t already said, it seems to be a lot. That logical step I guess would be the one that anyone who hasn’t lived with chronic illness would actually take, it’s easy to see illness as just symptoms and physiological reactions, but there is so much more than just that and not just the balance of the two. Illness does actually change daily, it is never exactly the same and for me especially having a progressive illness, those changes will keep happening for the rest of my life. One of the greatest things I have learned about being ill is that it makes you examine not just your entire life looking for clues for what was the true start, or the trigger for your present existence, but you examine it because it is a life you will never be able to step back into. When you can’t go out that door and be part of it and when the world has stopped coming to your door, there is nothing left that you can do to change it. I have heard a question being asked many times on TV, “if you could step back and give your 12 year old you, one bit of advice, what would it be”, the answer for me is easy, “Constantly plan your escape”. Advise that those who have been reading for a long time will understand, those who keep reading will understand it even more.

I don’t really have much to base this on, other than a few others have mentioned it and my own life also seems to back it up, but over the last couple of years writing and reading the reactions to my words, I can’t help wondering if there is a link to chronic illness especially those that are autoimmune and dramatic lives. To many have also lived through traumatic situations, ones that leave scars which will never truly heal. Which ever situation in my life I have spoken off there has always been someone one who also suffers from not just MS, but parkinsons, fibro, alzheimer’s, ME and so on, who contact me to say they too have been there and they too understand the damage that is done, especially it seems if it happened before they were 25. I know that statistically the fact I write about chronic illness, that they will be the ones who I speak to, but it just seems to me that the number who had survived a traumatic event, is higher than I would expect. For some it was a one off abuse or trauma, for others a prolonged situation they couldn’t escape, but there is for me at least a logical step that having survived, but still having to relive it over and over inside you, that your body could be triggered to attack itself. We all know that stress makes all our illnesses worse, so isn’t it possible that sever stress could actually be the trigger?

I said that I would advise the 12 year old me to “constantly plan my escape”, if I had, if I had never put trust in those I thought I could trust, just maybe I might not be living with the list of illnesses that I have to live with now. I blindly went through my life not just until I was 25 but until I was almost my 30’s, trusting and accepting things as they were because I couldn’t change them, a story I have heard over and over again but not only in my voice. The one whole I have in my theory is what caused it to change, what made my MS turn progressive, I had no stress in my life at that time at all, that I can remember. It may just be as simple that the damage was done and the future path to progressive illness was there just getting ready to take over. Autoimmune conditions are clearly self feeding once started, as believe me there is nothing more stressful than dealing with all the things it throws at us. Living stress free is our ideal position, but when you can’t work, you can’t pay the bills and the smallest daily tasks are frustrating to say the least, you are tied into a circle of stress that keeps feeding itself.

This morning I once again woke not long before the alarm, maybe 15 minutes, but what woke me, well to my surprise I was woken by my left thumb. You wouldn’t believe that something so small could actually produce so much pain on it’s own, but it did. I think I will be able to put my finger on the exact spot where the pain was for days. It was so clear and so sharp that I found myself grabbing hold of it at the same second I woke, pain seems to make you do that, the most illogical thing possible, grab hold and squeeze? It was actually just in front of the knuckle a tiny spot with the power to make your entire body cringe in sympathy. My arms are clearly no were near ready to give me peace, last night was the same as several in a row, sitting on the settee, with my left arm on the armrest or sitting on my lap motionless in the hope that not moving might just give me some peace. Four hours from waking and everything I felt yesterday is here again, once more telling me just how easy it is for one part of me to diminish the rest of me into nothing of any importance at all. All I can do for now is pop those extra little blue morphine pills and wait for the pain to ease, something it doesn’t really seem to be happening today at all.

Please read my blog from 2 years ago today – 22/02/2012 – MS or Parkinsons? Checklist

A few days ago I was talking to a friend of mine who has Parkinson and some how we started talking about our symptoms only to find that we shared a large number of them. We both have the memory of a fish, both have mobility issues, we both have twitches and tremors that we can’t control, speech problems……