I didn’t realise it until a while after I wrote it, that I was opening a new chapter in my MS. I mentions that I was having gentle spasms, I can feel muscles getting tight but without reaching those solid painful climaxes I am all too families with. The first one I noticed what my stomach, at first I thought it was some kind of reaction to my eating or drinking something, which is why I went into blind fear that I was about to go back in time to not being able to eat, but it wasn’t the only place, just the most noticeable. Of course, once I was focused on it I felt it happening more and more and it had nothing to do with eating or drinking at all, like all other spasms there is no trigger other than the one my body has invented. I started keeping a mental track of all of the mild spasms all over my body and I was losing count over and over again, there are just too many. Don’t get me wrong here, I have had mild spasms for as long as I can remember but not like these, most spasm grab hold and don’t let go for anything between a minute to up to 10 minutes or longer at the worst, but these mild ones can be anything from maybe 5 seconds to a minute, except when I am lying down, then they just set in and stay as has been happening for a long time now. They aren’t totally pain-free, most of them are but I have had several that seem to tighten to a sharp crescendo before fading away, normal spasm aren’t sharp, they are intense and a solid pain like cramps are, these are needle sharp, then gone.

The morphine and the antispasmodics don’t stop spasms but they reduce the number and the rest well they take away the true pain, I know what a spasm without them feels like and if I was feeling that all the time, I wouldn’t be able to function. Normally these days I feel them suddenly grabbing hold and an ache that deepens and deepens, the majority are held at a level where I don’t even bother to react at all, I have lived with them for so long I know there is nothing that I can do and making a fuss or madly massaging them serves no purpose unless they are the most extreme version. I am convinced that the morphine doesn’t only take the pain away, but it also has a relaxing effect that keeps them at a point where living with them is more than possible. Something has changed and has allowed this new form to appear, as I said they aren’t totally new, I have mentioned the ones I get in my chest that feel like wearing a lead waistcoat when lying in bed, what has caused them to now happen all over my body and all day long is a puzzle and I bet I never find the answer, but they are here, real and annoying. I started keeping a written count when I began this post and I have already now had 8, 2 in my legs, 2 in my chest and the rest purely my stomach itself.

New things appear and with luck they go away, that does happen, just as it happens to all of us, I doubt there is anyone alive who hasn’t had an annoying twitching muscle for a few hours or even a day or so. Just as suddenly as they appear, they disappear and are forgotten. What I have found living with MS is that new things appear and disappear only to come back again some time later in a more powerful version that you don’t forget and probably doesn’t go away again, if it does it’s just for a rest. It is one of the problems with my sort of MS, it is constantly progressing but I also get relapses, not usually as dramatic as those with the normal relapse remitting, well at least not from what I have read. Once their flare is over, almost all damage that has been done is repaired, for some there is lasting damage but it doesn’t progress until the next flare. For me it is very different, I am on a constant downwards slope, there are good days and bad days but always downward, in the past healing did happen but slowly and never returning to how it was before, nothing has healed at all in the last 6 years. I get sudden peaks of activity, flares if you like, extreme exhaustions seems to always be part of it and either while still exhausted or very soon after something changes or something totally new appears, remaining as just part of the mix.

I knew as soon as I found myself unable to deal with the small amount I do daily a couple of weeks ago, that I was in one of the active phases and that something would happen it was just a matter of waiting to see what. The first thing I actually noticed was that once again my eyesight has taken a dip, even with my glasses on, sat on the settee once again I can’t read what is on the screen unless it is in nice big bold letters. My dexterity took a slight hit as well as did my concentration, I am still wondering all over the place no matter how much I try to be fixed to one thing. I also noticed that I was getting more mild spasms in my head and neck, the place they have been for years, but I didn’t think much about it, maybe I should have as it looks as though they were the prelude to setting themselves free all over the place. I have been so caught up in the last couple of weeks with the ‘things’ in my mouth, that I haven’t been listening to the rest of me, I bet now that if I had, I would have noticed them as they started to appear elsewhere, rather than now when they have taken over. Like everything else there is nothing I can do about them, there is no point either in my talking to my doctor, telling him that I have annoying non-painful spasm, some of which peak to a needle sharp climax but otherwise do nothing else, isn’t going to get any help, as I am already on the medication that is given out to deal with them. MS is a constant circle of new things that travel on round the track all the other symptoms travel on, pushed on by newer things entering the circle which just gets bigger and bigger and each symptom eventually reaches it’s entry point where it either gets worse, or shifts on for another loop of the growing sphere. I’m sat in the middle of that sphere, seeing it growing like a party balloon around me and just waiting for one thing to many to enter, when it will eventually pop.

Please read my blog from 2 years ago today – 06/09/12 – Turning point

Sometimes things seem to happen for a reason, although those reasons aren’t always clear to start with, like losing one job and actually landing up in a better one, an example of events that all of us have been through at some time in our lives. I don’t think we ever see things as good, at the point, they are hurting us, as they say hindsight is wonderful thing. As we grow older what does happen i…..