It’s odd how you can feel so good and yet so bad at the same time. It’s been such a strange week, my brain has been the clearest it has been for a long while, but my body has been taking every opportunity to show me what life with chronic illness is really about. It’s perfectly normal for me to be wondering around totally uncertain of where I am going or exactly why, or just to be sat here staring at the screen with no idea of what I am supposed to be doing. Don’t get me wrong it hasn’t miraculously vanished, if only, it’s just the fog doesn’t seem quite so thick. I have no explanation as to why my mind is that tiny bit sharper, it’s, really an odd feeling especially as I haven’t felt it for a long time, but I feel it. The rest of me, well it all feels as though the improvement in my mind has been paid for by a down step in the rest of me.

Every day in the past week I have been fighting with a body that just doesn’t want to behave. My legs have been a constant problem, letting me down over and over again. I have to date been good at covering any issues, but Adam has twice spotted that I was unable to move simply because one or both of my legs weren’t able to take a step in safety. Once again the worst point is when I first stand up. I may have made it from sitting to standing, but there is either no way of taking a step or I get a spasm in my lower back that shocks me into inactivity. It is as though I am frozen to the spot and I have to hold onto something as the pain has a habit of shooting right through me. It honestly isn’t possible to move at all, I have tried in the past and the result is either no strength in my legs, meaning that I am either in danger of or do actually fall, or I cause the pain to get worse. Neither are exactly my first choice. I can’t even sit down again, all I can do is stand there and wait for it to pass, as it always does. At times, standing up has even triggered a similar effect in my arms, which is really not helpful as I honestly need them to steady myself. That usually only happens when I have been sitting on the settee, hunched forward to make it easier to breath.

This whole week has been one without strength. I have lost count how many times I have been defeated by a ring pull, or even more pathetic been unable to remove the paper seal over the top of the milk bottle. The most stupid things have become a battle zone. Add in my normal poor dexterity and at times I have just wanted to give up. My left arm has been weaker than my right for a long time, but both are of little real use at all just now. A small package arrived for me the other day, it arrived in one of those white padded envelopes which have a red stripe to pull to open it. After four disastrous attempts, I had to take the scissors to it, it took me several more attempts with them, simply because I didn’t have the strength to even use them. Once through the envelope, I was almost at screaming point to find the enclosed item, inside a thick sealed plastic bag. On the scale of pathetic, I felt as though I had fallen off the end. Even on those things that don’t take strength at all, I have struggled badly at times. You don’t think about strength and things like feeding yourself or typing, but when your muscles fail, it affects everything.

The one thing that no one but me could ever notice is my eyesight. Having said that, I think Adam did spot it the other day. I was simply trying to read something of the TV, sky has this horrid habit of backing everything in blue then putting small yellow or white print over it and even with my glasses, I now struggle big time. Experience has told me that the option can’t really help anymore than they already have. I can’t use my glasses here at my PC as if I do, they turn the screen into a worse fuzz than it normally is. I do have glasses to use when sat here, but they mean I can’t see the TV at all. I haven’t been able to make out faces on the TV that well from sitting here for ages, recently they have vanished even more. Now if two people have similar hair, I have no idea which is which any longer. Bifocals just don’t work for me so I am left living in a fuzzy existence whatever I do.

Everything just seems to have taken a step-down and has managed to make itself known. It’s not like I have suddenly developed something major or new, just everything is that bit worse. My chest is tighter, my breathing more difficult, my stomach is once again causing pain that stops me dead and just because it can, it takes my breath away. The Psyllium may be letting the contents of my intestine move forward and eventually out of me without effort, but it hasn’t dealt with much of the pain. It doesn’t matter which part of my body that you might choose, all the pain levels are just that little higher than it has been for a while. It’s not like I want to dive into my Morphine for a booster, it’s more like my slow acting Morphine isn’t quite holding it at bay. Every sensation that can be felt has triggered at will. Pain, burning, pins and needles, numbness and anything else you can name has appeared in the past week. All of this together has been the reason behind the searching I have been doing over the past few weeks into what it is that drives me and how I feel about it. It has had a really positive effect, one that both Adam and Jake have noticed and found it so marked that they had to mention the fact that I am bright and chirpy respectively. It doesn’t take a genius to work out where that has come from. My mind is once again at rest about where I am and what is happening to me. As I said, “It’s odd how you can feel so good and yet so bad at the same time”. It is odd, but when your mind and your body are in such totally different places, understanding it isn’t that hard.

I really did need to recenter myself if you like. It’s too easy to just forge forwards, to not questioning what is happening or checking how we feel about it. I hadn’t stopped for a while now and just asked the simplest question of all “Am I happy?”. I wasn’t, I was letting myself disappear under the pain and trials of my life and I wasn’t listening to me. Not my body, I listen to it all the time, but I wasn’t listening to me and I was vanishing under it all. Yes, I am brighter, I am more chirpy because I am here again and in control again. I know where I am going and what is happening, I can’t control that, but I can control my happiness. There are so many elements required to be happy, being in control, having plans, setting goals and having achievements and not one of them is affected by our physical pain, weakness or strength. All of them come from our mental well-being, something that is easy to ignore, especially when you live within a fog.

Please read my blog from 2 years ago – 01/08/2013 – Just not getting there 

6am, I was awake, I am never awake that early but a pain in my left heel was screaming at me and 2 and a half hours later, well it calmed down but it is still there. I am making a huge guess here, but I think it is pressure point pain. I have had spells of it before but never in such