Despite Adam being on holiday again today, there is a strange silence, he is actually in bed snoring rather than on the settee. I have to admit his being here at all had me lost as to what day it was when I got up, mind you, it doesn’t take much for me to lost so that wasn’t really a surprise. I have noticed this weekend something strange that I am still trying to work out why when he is asleep I select my TV viewing by what I know will least annoy him? It’s mad the things we do because of those we love, I will sit and half watch programs that if he was at work, I might not watch at all, just in case he wakes up. I think it is actually the fault of my mother as she ran the house and all us kids as thought dad was in the house all the time. I grew up believing that the man of the house had to be kept happy at all times, believe me even 40 years on those type of ingrained behaviours are still hard to shake. Childhood is actually a really tiny part of our lives but it isn’t until you are an adult that you understand how those few short years really do shape the person you grow up to be, even when you work hard to be the total opposite.

I found myself lying in bed last night, trying hard to shake off the pain and just slip into sleep, I did give in and take my booster tablet but I am really beginning to think that I am not far from needing my daily dose adjusted. Despite my reluctance to take my boosters, I am having to give in more and more, it seems that the normal dose just isn’t holding things at bay as they used to. My arms are really the big problem just now, I can’t find any position that allows me comfort and when not typing I am spending more and more time massaging them and trying to disrupt the pain patterns. From my fingertips to arm-pits, there is pain shifting around throughout every day. Me being me, though, I won’t be phoning the doctor today it will probably take me another month at least before I eventually give in totally. I know where that comes from without any thought, nothing to do with my growing up, just down to so many doctors dismissing me over the years that I have eventually learned not to call them until I felt I could prove totally that I really need their help.

We keep seeing that more and more people are going to their A&E departments when they are ill rather than to their own doctors, something that I really don’t get at all. I have watched and watched interviews with people who I just don’t understand why they want medical attention at all, from what I have seen, the majority of them have no reason to be anywhere at all, other than home or work. Headaches, splinters, strains, cold and flue, require no attention from anyone other than the person who has them. I wouldn’t dream of going to A&E unless I thought I was dying, in fact, the last time I was there, I landed up staying there for 2 weeks. Other than that it has been at night when I have had no other options available and my breathing has been hard due to either bronchitis or my Asthma and I needed a nebuliser. With our national health being strained at the edges, it just doesn’t make any sense to me to bother them, with what are no more than a minor irritation that will sort itself out. Sorry for the rant but the NHS is very precious to those with chronic conditions, without it, I and millions of others would have no medication to make life more comfortable, as the real cost would be outside most people’s budgets.

I know I don’t complain often and I have often wondered where that part of my nature has come from. I seem to just accept whatever is happening in my life, from childhood onwards. Sometimes I wish I was actually more able to stand up for myself, to put my side of things when it comes to how I feel and how I am affected by something. I often think if I had been more able to fight my corner that I might have been diagnosed years before I was, but I just accepted and went on with life while inside screaming for help that never came. The question I get most on twitter is how I am I so happy all the time, I’ve tried to answer that in the past but the real answer is never there because I honestly just don’t know. I am not angry or bitter towards anyone for what has happened to me, no one can change it or cure it, so I have to make the best of it and I think I do. I remember many nights before I was diagnosed, where I lay in my bed crying and crying because the pain was out of control and no one was believing or helping me. Even back then I still didn’t blame anyone, it was just the way it was and I had to live with it. Now the pain is controlled but still nothing has changed, I am still the one who has to live with it. It is probably the biggest blessing I have in my life that my nature is the way it is, I don’t know how it must feel to be angry all the time over something that can’t be changed, it is something I have never honestly felt about anything.

I wish I could swap bodies with others, not forever, just for a few hours so that they can feel what I feel so that they could really understand the life I live. With others, I wish I could share my mind and let them see just how easy and satisfying it is to be able to accept, to be happy to be just what they are, without wanting or needing anything more. My life has clear lines that split it into sections, all very different from each other, all with problems all of their own. All of them with the same acceptance and the same happiness covering everything, the pain and problems, the things others just don’t understand. All I can hope is that it comes across in what I write and that some will pick up tiny pieces of it and add it to their lives, finding some of the happiness I find in just living.