Take ten people and ask them to read the same page in a book and you have a good chance of finding a different 10 views, despite them having all read the same thing. Humans rarely agree totally with each other and even as the one writing this blog, I oddly enough often find when I read an old post back, that I see something there I never intended, even my own words can paint a very different picture than I thought possible. All too often what I intend as being nothing more than a description of something, for example, pain, I find when reading it back that I have put in so much of my personal emotions, that the true purpose has become lost. No matter how hard I try, I don’t know any other way of writing without it sounding like a medical thesis, a problem that goes hand in hand with being human, we are, after all emotional creatures. That is the problem when it comes down to passing on anything that is happening to ourselves because we are the one involved we have to feel something of an emotional response. I remember years ago someone asking me how I felt when I was eating, not only a strange question but one I found and still find a really hard question to answer. It is easy to say how it feels to eat something you really love or something you really hate, but how does the actual process of eating feel, I still can’t answer. What I can answer is that all pain, all of the physical sensations and all the other things that go with an illness, provoke a reaction. Emotions can’t be taken out of it and just like the 10 people reading the book, each of us who has even an identical illness will explain it differently.

No matter what I have done to try and make things better, to rest and take it easy and to give my body a chance to heal, even slightly, I have failed. I was asked again the other day about special diets and the possibility that some of my drugs could be causing some of the symptoms I have. Yet again I explained my view that you have to choose what you have faith in, be that doctors, diets or cures, then stick to it. I try hard to not be emotional or forcefull with my opinion, but again like the illness itself, the treatment of it is also a personal & emotional thing. Alternative treatments to me seem to be nothing other than an emotional cure, just like anything you believe in, if you believe deeply enough, I think it will help to some degree depending on both the illness and the person. I know without trying anymore “Cures”, that they won’t work for me, as I can’t find any belief in any of them, for me that means they will fail.

I don’t hate having MS any longer, I used to hate it from the very core of myself, but I rarely ever said that or showed it in any way at all. I hated the fact that had all of the life possibles in the outside world taken away from me. I hated all the other conditions I have, the fact I live in pain, the fatigue, and the exhaustion, the loss of ability to do even the simplest tasks. I like everyone went through that period of hate, but it is something that you have to let go of, as all it does is eat you away and make it doubly hard to learn to live with it and to live well. I could have sat here hating everything, cursing life itself and ripped myself apart, leaving just a shadow of the real person I am, it takes a conscious choice to stop it right there and start changing with my health. To me that is the point when you need all the strength you have, otherwise, you will fail. It takes your entire reserve of strength to make the decision and to then carry it out, day by day moving yourself back into life and away from being a zombie victim. Being a strong person is one thing, being emotionally strong is a totally different thing, to actually harness and use all those negative emotions but in the opposite direction, takes months not days. From the day, I stood up and stopped wallowing, to the day that I could say proudly that I had accepted my position and I wasn’t going to give in, took over a year to complete. I continued to work through it and my health continued to get worse, but I taught myself to smile again, not just when needed but all the time, just because I am me.

I had read the same book as all those others out there with MS and my version of the story is highly emotional, highly determined and totally now also on my terms. I can’t stop it doing what it does, I can’t stop spending time with tears over the life I lost, but I can proudly say I have MS and I am not a victim of it, just someone living with it. Life is an emotional roller coaster, mine has found an unnatural number of lows, every one of those lows is critical as without those lows, I probably wouldn’t be able to see just how wonderful my life still is. I can look at my life and say without a single doubt that my life is good, happy and something that I have no intention of losing right now, just because I am ill. I still have so much to do, even though it’s limitations are growing daily. I, for now, have no intention of giving into my health or my emotions, which has been made that bit harder, thanks to the damage to my brain.

MS demands that we have to take the right medications for the form of the illness we have, once found through trial and error they make a huge difference to how you feel, but the biggest change that we can all make to our health is to simply acknowledge our emotions and learn how to use and understand them to our advantage. It all sounds easy, but the easiest things are often the hardest things to do effectively, but I honestly believe that it is incredibly important for any of us to not just survive illness, but to live well with it.

Please read my blog from 2 years ago today – 15/06/12 – The Medics descend 

If life was predictable then it would be boring, right? Well, I would really like some boredom right now. I had a call this morning as I expected from the District Nurse, I have agreed for her to come here on Monday to try the suppositories again as they worked better. I also agreed to my GP actually coming to my house mainly to examine my stomach, just to ensure there is nothing he can…..