When things get difficult looking after ourselves, I am sure most of us have splashed out and bought something we believe, will make things easier. Well, I did that the other week. I thought, that the new battery operated manicure pedicure set, made by Scholl, would take away some effort on my side. I also hoped that it would have another bonus, it’s added length would allow me to reach my toes, so I could tidy them up between the visits from the podiatrist. I just wasted my money. It has been in my draw for a few of weeks, as I had ordered it just before the podiatrist visited me last. When I told her what I had ordered, she put something in my head, that I quite simply hadn’t thought about. She was concerned that it might damage the skin on my toes. Firstly, as my eyesight isn’t great, seeing which is which, wouldn’t the easiest thing, but she was also concerned as my toes have little feeling in them. When she left the house, I felt deflated and as though I had wasted a pile of money even before I saw the thing. When it arrived Adam put a battery into it for me and I closed it away in the draw. That picture of bleeding toes was so clear in my head, I had decided that I wasn’t even going to try using it on my feet.

This morning, I discovered that my fingernails were now at a length that meant typing was becoming painful to a couple of my fingers. Typing purely with your nail, sends a shudder right up into the nail bed, ideally, it should be a combination of both nail and finger, so it was time to do a little filling. To my horror, it was totally useless. Last year, I bought a glass nail file that turns your nail into powder with every stroke. The School gizmo was of no more use than an old fashioned emery board. I quite honestly feel as though I have been conned and there is nothing that I can do about it. I am sure that I would simply be told that there are millions of satisfied customers and that would be that, especially as I bought it over a month ago, but when you have splashed out £27 for something that was supposed to help, conned is the only feeling possible.

The longer that I am disabled, the more I find this sort of thing happening. It is not as though I am normally the type of person who falls for advertising, but the problem is, that being housebound means I can no longer go to a shop, where demonstrators allow you to try things, or even discuss it around the office, as I would have done in the past. All I can do is buy and try it myself, and that can be very expensive. Yes, I know that there are sites out there who allow you to return items if you’re not happy with them, but not on items like this, they normally come with that warning, that once open, you can’t return. Other say that either you have to pay for returning an item, plus it would be yet another job for Adam, trudging to the post office with unwanted boxes. I love shopping online for a million reasons, but for some things, there is always that element, that puts a spanner in the works.

I can remember when my grandmother was elderly, despite her having accounts with her favourite shops, shops who would have happily sent her anything she fancied, she still sent my mother. It didn’t make much sense to me back then, at best I thought she just wanted to see us and this was as good an excuse as any, but I am now beginning to really understand. There is an element that enters your life, one that makes certain things just seem too difficult, or too much hassle. I totally get why she didn’t want to sit on the phone placing orders for this or that, especially if it was something she wasn’t sure about, like the above. She was not just phone phobic, like me, she also didn’t want the hassle if things went wrong. She was lucky, she had brought up a mini-me, who could and did do it all of it for her, plus she knew her taste and needs precisely. I have noticed this element growing and growing in myself. It is now at the point that when I broke one of my juice bottles and needed a replacement, I couldn’t even find the will to order it online. I use those bottles daily, but this factor, which I guess is really a cycling “What if?”, set off in my head every time I thought about it. It took me over a week to put those “What if’s” behind me and to just get on with it.

I freely admit that I am beginning to find so many things, just that bit too much. The effort required to do things at times just swamps me. It’s not as though I would be doing anything else, but the hassle of doing what I should, or even what I need to, is tremendous. Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t laziness, it is nothing like that, although to some it might sound like it. It is a combination of things that have somehow joined themselves together. It’s fear of getting it wrong, and of unexpected things getting in your way. That the website will be unclear, or confusing, and you will have to keep going round in circles. That my brain won’t let me think clearly so that I read all that it says. It’s knowing that when whatever arrives, you have to get to that door, before the delivery driver, decides your not in. It’s the fighting with a parcel designed to stop a gorilla from opening it. It’s a tiredness so deep that even though the task is simple, it feels exhausting even before you start, and the more you think about it, the more tired you become. All of that is sat on your shoulder, laughingly saying “Really, you want to do this?”, and not just when I’m thinking about shopping.

What happened to life being simple, to doing things without thought? As my health slips and I find myself more and more not just feeling disabled, but disabled by life itself. I never used to give up, nothing fazed me or even worried me, but as my health fails, it now appears, that so does everything else. From someone who was once a professional solution finder, I have become the person who sees nothing other than possible problems, ones not  caused by my health, but fixing them, would take a cost on my health, that is a price too high to pay.

Please read my blog from 2 years ago today – 17/05/2014 – Pain breakdown

Well, it looks as though the good weather has arrived, not for me a good thing other than the fact that I am no longer spending money on keeping the house warm. It is one of those no-win situations that goes hand in hand with living in with MS, being transformed into an orchid. I can’t stand the cold and if it is too hot, I am whipped out by it, given a choice, well if heating was free I would prefer a never ending winter, that way I control what happens to my body and not the weather gods. Although I can never win, it is actually one of…..