My cough has been really rattling for the past couple of days, I have to say when it first changed I was really pleased as it felt much freer and I felt as though I was managing to start clearing it. Today well once again I woke shattered and my breathing was more underwater than above it, one of the strange things I have always found with coughs is the opposite from what everyone always tells me. As lifelong smoker, I know without a doubt that it aggravates everything and makes you cough more, a good thing as that means it clears the phlegm and it does it without any discomfort. The e-cig that I started using a few months ago to help save money, is causing the most awful ripping feeling with every puff, as though it is setting my airways alight, not nice at all. So I find myself caught, still wanting to save money but not wanting to use the one thing that actually does that, so yes my cough is actually making me smoke more! Life just keeps being a string of contradictions and without any sense to any of it, I am going to wait and see how things are on Monday, if it isn’t showing any real improvement I am going to have to call the doctor. I really hate taking more antibiotics than I absolutely have to, just knowing that my health is on a downwards slope puts me off taking them, as I may well really need them in the future, so any resistance to them has to be kept as low as possible.
I know all to well that I have at the moment a mild dose of bronchitis, I have had it so many times that I know the difference, but it doesn’t take any brains to know that is why I am exhausted and in pain all over the place, at levels higher than usual. MS doesn’t miss a trick, and it isn’t missing this one, the temptation to just withdraw to my bed and stay there is high, believe me. I have very much gained the impression that my body is so busy ripping itself to pieces that when it comes to actually fight what it should, all those nasty little bugs, it just doesn’t even try to. My autoimmune system has picked the thing it wants to fight with and nothing will make it think differently. Being stuck here in the house my chances of getting any of the bugs that are going around is slim, especially with Adam working in a hospital where numerous times a day he uses all those hand gels that most of us wouldn’t even see far less use. I’m not sure if that is really a good thing, or a bad thing, simply because I haven’t had to fight off anything by myself for many years now. I worry that if I did become really ill and I did have to spend time in hospital myself, that I would then pick up from other patients and visitors all those bugs I have managed to miss. I do really live in a bubble, protected from everything that most of us get, fight and is gone, my immunity to the new bugs out there has to be zero. I know that Adam worries about it often, whenever there is a warning at work about something like the winter vomiting bug, he goes into overdrive with the gels and hand washing. Any bug pulls me down and not just in the way it would others, once my immunity is compromised my MS starts to run wild taking the opportunity to cause more pain, more fatigue and putting me in danger of a flare.
It is so strange looking back on my life as I have the time to do these days and pick out now with ease the flares I went through but never knew at the time what they were. I remember clearly one summer where I spent nearly all my time sitting in the kitchen, with the back door open so the kids could run in and out and I could keep an eye on them. I spent all my time sitting on a chair working on an embroidery when my hands let me and doing nothing when they wouldn’t. At the time the doctor told me I had depression, I was depressed but who wouldn’t be when they were in so much pain and too tired to just be able to take proper care of their kids and not a single person listening to me. Things got that bad that summer that I was eventually taken into hospital but not because of the pain or exhaustion I was admitted to hospital as they thought I was a danger to myself. I was, they were right about that, but only because no one listened. I became so withdrawn because of it, that they were on the verge of giving me electric shocks to my brain, it was just luck that meant I managed to miss that experience. Now I know what was happening and I can run through my life from aged 21 to today and I can pick them all out with ease, which also means I can now, by myself, make sense of my life and the things I did and didn’t do. Some people say that looking back too much isn’t good, I disagree, looking back and finding that you weren’t mad, or delusional does a lot of good.
The change in my MS meant that they diagnosed it at last, but they also gave me something so much more important, they gave me back my sanity and a life that at last makes so much sense. I am still in danger of flares, although they seem to be further and further apart, I know just live on that downward path that progression spells out so well, a flare for me would not have the recovery that they did years ago, a flare would destroy what it wants to and progression would pick up again at that point. So how do you steer clear of a flare, I don’t know, but it seems to help to stay healthy, to not give it the in point to take over and to keep your fingers tightly crossed. Well, I would if my fingers could actually carry that act off, so it’s now a mental cross.
Please read my blog from 2 years ago today – 07/03/2012 – Flare
Two Rooms Plus Utilities 