The new “normal”

Posted on April 6, 2016 by livinginalimitedword

It’s hard some days, just getting from the start to the end. Don’t get me wrong, I can do it and I don’t have any desire not to do it, it’s just hard. My energy levels are getting lower and with them, it appears that my minds ability is also. By around 7:30 in the evening, I am little more than a vegetable. Scintillating conversation isn’t exactly high on my list of things to do. I just sit there watching TV beside Adam, with the odd words passing between us, but none of it exactly stretches the old cerebral matter. By the time we are in the kitchen sorting out my meds, well some nights it might vanish. If I am honest, physically I believe that 8 pm is now the time I should be going to bed. I have more than once now, found myself slipping into a half-world of sleep just while I am using my nebulizer. When I have to, I can pull myself into what might be called awake, but it’s far from alive and I don’t have any answers for it. If there is one thing that I’m not going to let this damn disease take away from me, is my time with Adam every evening. It is more than precious to me, it’s what my days are about. (No matter how many times I have tried, for some reason, this page is refusing to hold onto the paragraph separation. I have highlighted each by starting in bold print. I apologise for the fault.)
My days vary a lot now, I have my good and my bad as I always have, but it feels as though the bad now outnumber the good, even when I don’t bring pain into the equation. It’s not like I want to spend my entire day in bed, but I just don’t have the energy I once I had. I am very aware of the changes that occur during the day. What it takes just to go to the kitchen to fetch some food, or to go to the loo, it often feels like it removes more energy, far more than any food will supply me. Even sitting here just typing at times leaves me drained. I can actually feel my brain fuzzing over like there is a blanket that is muffling everything and once it reaches a certain point, I just want to wrap it even further, settle into it and go to sleep. I don’t, but I have a feeling of not being quite here, not fully in touch with what is around me. I have lived with brain fog for years, but this is subtly different, this is warm and yielding, fog is just there and deeply annoying. This is very much part of the new “normal” I mentioned the other day, but that doesn’t make it any of it easier to live with. In fact, I think I am going to remove “easy” from my vocabulary, as I don’t think there is a single thing, other than going to sleep, that that word applies to any longer.
The warning signs, the beginning of my body moving into this new “normal”, was when I knew I had to stop walking. When I stopped walking it was because my legs were giving away under me, somewhat like melting into the ground. It wasn’t happening every time I stood up, I didn’t even happen every day, but it was often enough that I was now scared. Some might think that by not using my legs more than for just transiting from wheelchair to bed, toilet or another chair, that this would be a problem that now isn’t relative, I just wish that was so. It’s actually a problem that is growing. From once in a while, it is now something that I deal with several times, every day. The difference now is, I know when it’s going to happen. It’s rare in the morning, but it happens, as the day progresses, it’s a reality of almost every transit. Adam calls them my wobbly legs, which makes it kind of cute sounding, but from my side wobbly isn’t cute at all. By the evening, they are dancing all over the place, even when I’m sat down. When I do have to stand I find myself fighting so hard to stay upright, not because I’m scared of falling any longer, but because if I do, I know Adam is going to have just one more thing to worry about, the very thing my chair was supposed to take away. Even when he is taking my socks off for me at night, they make the whole job harder for him when I can’t keep them still. My legs are now as useless as they appear. I don’t know what I’m going to do when I can no longer take those four steps.
I suspect, that those who read regularly and even Adam to, at first, saw that as purely an issue with mobility. At first, even I tried to, but those thoughts didn’t last long. Mobility was the visible side, what was going on inside was far greater. It was then that I started having greater problems with both my bowels and bladder. Being able to empty either now depends on my ability to relax in ways I never had to. Controlling muscles are hard when they don’t want to be controlled. Relaxing is now the only way as all the muscles that once pushed, that added momentum, no long do anything other than producing pain. All I can do is sit there, relax and hope.
I don’t know when I last felt hungry when I last had the desire to eat. Some of that I am sure is down to the problems that I have both getting it in and out, but now there is no desire. The time for food arrives and I eat. Do I enjoy it? Well, that is a hard one. Sometimes yes, I enjoy the flavour, but no, I don’t enjoy food as I once did. I eat. I have never been a lover of really sweet things, but when Adam offered me some Maltesers the other day, I think both of us were surprised when I said yes. What I wanted was to let them dissolve in my mouth, as they have a unique texture. By the third one, that had worn off and all I had was this disgusting sweetness. I chose that as an example, as my reaction to all foods is similar. It’s not always a disgust at the flavour, it’s normally the feeling that I just don’t want any more. It always happens somewhere around the third or fourth mouthful. I continue because I have to, we all have to eat, that doesn’t mean we want to. I often eat simply because I can’t stand waste. If you put it on your plate, then you eat it. A rule that I was taught from childhood, but as an adult, I took it further, if you’ve bought it, you should eat it. When I’m doing the shopping, I often think about just not buying it, but there is this hope that I will feel different, that I will want to eat, and what then, I can’t go out to buy it, so I buy it in case, then I have to eat it, because it’s here.
I can go on isolating every part of my body and the problems that each brings, as there really is little of me, that I can find that works the way that it once did. I could analyse just how it feels taking a breath when you’re encased in an iron cage. How to learn again to breathe, no more deep breaths, just those the cage will allow. But it doesn’t matter what organ, which limb, or which muscle, every part of me is somehow governed by that blanket that has wrapped its way into my life. I have no get-up and go, no excitement about what tomorrow will hold as tomorrow will be just like today and the day before that. Yet, I’m oddly content, at ease with the fact that this is my life. I guess this is another way that acceptance works. You accept and slowly over time as you accept and you accept again, you become content with whatever life brings you. In time, there is even a great feeling of peace in my body falling apart, a peace that all logic says shouldn’t be there, but it is. It’s almost as though this peace and contentment is a gift to make up for the fact that with it, comes a lot of pain. I doubt that makes sense, especially as I have tried many times to put it into words, but whatever I type, always somehow reads back as wrong.
Life has changed, it’s changed forever in just four short months, and I see no sign of it slowing down. It is what it is, but there is still a lot to come. I know I haven’t hit the plateau yet, but I haven’t once felt as though I was falling, just travelling a path that I can’t change. In fact, that’s something else that has changed, how I look at it. I used to see my health as failing, that I was constantly on a downwards path, but “downwards” doesn’t describe it now. I guess that’s another part of accepting it now as I have. “Downwards” is negative and I don’t feel negative about this at all, I just feel at peace and content to keep going with it. Of all the changes, all the physical things that I now live with, this, is without a doubt the biggest. It was subtle at first, but it has just kept growing, especially in these last few months. I can’t explain it any other way than to say that I am now at peace, total peace with where I am and where I am going. Why it has changed, I don’t know, all I know is it along with everything else, has changed and it feels like the next natural progression.

Please read my blog from 2 years ago today – 06/04/2014 – It’s basic

The strangest things can make us happy, put a smile on your face and your heart jump with joy, even make you physically react with a positive action and exclamation of “yes”. I think this shows how my life has changed out of recognition, as that was my reaction when I opened the draw this morning to get a spoon for my breakfast. The dishes had been piling up for a few days in the dishwasher so yesterday I had to use a dessert spoon to eat my porridge, I know that is what most people use, but I like to use a soup spoon and when I saw one sitting there, well I reacted like an idiot, as I said, the strangest things make us happy. I have noticed over the last few years that it is more and more the small things, the things that I wouldn’t have probably even…..

Physically stuttering

Posted on March 2, 2016 by livinginalimitedword

I woke again this morning with the feeling I was on an alien planet. It’s a feeling I am unused to, but I doubt I will ever learn to like it. I have tried hard to work out what is behind it, but I fail miserably every time. All I know is, that it just appears out of the blue, and it’s far from something that only happens when I first get up. This morning Adam was actually still here, rushing about to get himself to work as he was already running behind time. He did his normal on seeing me floundering, he hustled me towards my desk and demanded that I sat down. It felt like only minutes after he left that the phone rang. It was Adam, now that he was at work, he wasn’t to double checking that I was OK, as he clearly wasn’t happy about having to leave me like that.

For a couple of years now, I have been having these spells, where I suddenly appear lost. Not only do I appear it, in a peculiar way, I actually feel it. Yes, I know where I am, but it is my movements that are lost, I don’t seem to have total control. At times, I will start to shake, it’s only slight, but my body seems to go into what I can only describe as a physical stutter. It’s as though, it doesn’t know quite which direction I should go in. I used to think that it only followed a change of mind as if my indecision, had become visible, but then it started appearing for no reason that I was aware of. I don’t need Adam to tell me how I appear, I am very aware of how it must look. If I saw someone going through it, I too would be ushering them to the nearest seat. I instinctively raise my forearms, as though I am ready to catch myself, and I know that I start looking confused and uncertain about everything. No matter where I am, standing or sitting, my body will start to tremor. Normally, I lose control of my legs, they start shaking uncontrollably, it’s like ever major nerve is dancing. When it first started, it only lasted a few minutes and would then ease, leaving me feeling not totally myself and with a desire to head to safety, otherwise known as my bed.

When Adam called, I did what I could to convince him that I had recovered, but my words and voice betrayed me, so I did my best to brush it off as my not being quite awake. In some ways, that is a good description of it, as though I’m not quite there. Don’t ask me where I’ve gone, but I’m not here. It’s now two hours, since his phone call, in that time, I have only recovered partially.

To be honest, I have been feeling this way a lot recently, just not quite myself and not quite at my best. Nor is it just today, that it seems to be pronounced and determined to stick around, making life slower and more difficult. In some ways, it is similar to an MS fog, as my brain is more than a little dim in its activities, but I’ve never heard a fog that has affected you so physically. MS fog is what makes us forgetful, to do things like putting your plates in the dishwasher, before you’ve even put your food on them. MS or even Fibro fog can cut you off from the world, leave you feeling as though you have no brain left, as you can’t remember even the most basic of things. I live daily with that Fog. No concentration, inability to add two simple numbers together and as for correctly writing anything that can be spelt wrongly, well that’s a given. I don’t think my brain has been clear for years, but it shouldn’t make me shake, it shouldn’t leave me feeling lost as to how I am going to turn around, as my body is determined to go the opposite direction and my foot is now stuck in mid air, as I can’t quite find the command, to put it on the floor. To me, that isn’t fog, even the thickest. I could be wrong, and if I am, please tell me.

We all stay quiet about these things. The things that make us doubt if we are safe to be alone, even though, we spend only seconds anywhere other than sitting. When we don’t feel safe, when we doubt our own ability and capabilities, who do you tell and how? Slowly over the last few months, I have been admitting I am no longer capable of so many things. First was asking Adam to sort out all my medications for me, to deal with my mail and to make phone calls for me. Then it was the move to my wheelchair, followed by my admission that I really do need grab bars in the bathroom, which I have now bought and are on their way. In the last couple of months, I have on a couple of occasions broached the subject with Adam, of bringing in help for me, during the week. I don’t know what help is out there, I haven’t the slightest idea, other than the MS nurse seemed positive, that I needed help and it is there. I no longer feel safe, whether that is in my mind, or it is factual I don’t know. What I do know is that not feeling safe, isn’t a nice place to be, and my tinkering, just doesn’t seem to be enough. No matter how much I have defended my independence in the last few years, I can’t help feeling that my health has reached a point, where it’s time to give in and at least take the first steps in finding out, what help there is.

Please read my blog from 2 years ago today – 02/03/2014 – Self, me, myself

I receive some of the sweetest messages on Twitter and many have taken a habit of not just using my name as you might expect, but call me by wonderful compliments instead, to list them would make me blush from ear to ear and not my intention at all. This morning though one appeared that didn’t make me blush, it made me smile and for reasons that the writer just couldn’t have known, he simply said…….

What is going on?

Posted on October 9, 2015 by livinginalimitedword

I’m tired this morning. That feeling of heaviness that makes your entire body just want to collapse and give up. It’s a tired that leeches all warmth, even when you sit in front of the fire to eat your breakfast, you’re still cold. Ten minutes of direct heat and the result, a warm front and a freezing back with nothing in between, and within seconds of moving, freezing again throughout. I didn’t sleep well last night. 4 am, when I woke desperate for a pee and feeling a pain I know all too well, that one that says somewhere in the next 12 hours, I will be moving my bowels. Why do they have to go through such an aggressive announcement period? Quite honestly, I don’t need more than a few minutes notice, just like everyone else in the world, but that would be too easy for my body. No, it has to ruin the one thing I need the most, sleep. Three and a half hours of lying in bed with only fitful sleep is enough to bring me right down the next day. Right now, despite the fact I crashed my way through the house in a desperate dash to get to the loo, once more proving that filing the top off my scab, has made it safe. Or the fact that I have had a meal and done all I can to make life right, all I want is more sleep, hours and hours of sleep. I may not run my life on a tight minute by minute routine any longer, but that doesn’t mean I can throw my day out the window, and just head back to bed. If I did, then the whole day will be a nightmare, followed by a night that wouldn’t be much better. So I do the sensible thing, I put up with the not so nice, to avoid the totally horrid.

This is the draining bit, the part of all chronic illness, that gives it, its bad name. Those days that often turn into weeks of feeling no more than half alive. I don’t write about them that much, as they are the drudgery of illness. Those parts, that none of us dwells on, as if we did, we would see no point to any of it. We brush it to one side and look for the good, even finding it and bringing out a smile for those around us. But inside, deep inside where it really matters, we are drained. To me, it is where life gets scary. It would be too easy to give in and to climb into bed and hide, in the hope that it will pass. No one out there, not even Adam, would blame me and that is even more scary. The world would allow me to wallow, in the mistaken belief that my health had reached a point where I had to stop and rest. The truth would be, that I was taking advantage of a situation and by doing so, I know that I would open myself up to feeling worse and worse. I don’t believe in this concept of fighting our health, but I do believe in not just giving in to it. Some while say, that it is a very fine line between the two, or that I am splitting hairs when I separate them, but it is an important difference. Fighting to me, implies an active aggressive act, something that I don’t have the slightest belief works. Aggression is a pointless response to anything that is bigger, stronger and more aggressive than you will ever be. It makes far more sense to stand your ground, work around it, with it and at times, even give in to it. You don’t beat a bully by becoming one yourself, any more than lying down and letting them beat the living daylights out of you, will stop them from coming back and doing it again. My body got the upper hand last night, leaving me feeling like death warmed up, but that doesn’t mean it has won, I’m still standing and I don’t intend to lie down.

Sitting feeling like a zombie isn’t a good idea either. For me, the only way that I have found that works and gets me through days like this is to keep going. It’s counter-intuitive, your tired, but you push yourself to do everything that you normally do. Even listing extra jobs, ones that don’t have to be done today, they could be put off, but by adding them to your to-do list, your plays the phycological game that illness really is. It is a constant case of outwitting it, rather than outmaneuvering it. By making life as close to normal as ever, there is just a chance, that you can jump your way out of the pit you are sitting in. I probably won’t have my shower this afternoon, but by telling myself that I will, well it means I have to keep moving, just to make the space required. If I slow down now, allow myself to just sit and stare at everything around me, or even just the screen, it won’t happen. I could be that zombie that wants to take over, I could sit here and type a few words here and there, eventually making my way to the end. Or I can kick myself up the backside and I can push those words to appear and my fingers to run, not dawdle. I usually land up somewhere in the middle, but that better than landing up still staring at my unfinished post an hour from now.

It is getting harder as time goes on, to find that inner strength to push myself. As I said the other day, my routine has been trimmed and trimmed and trimmed again. As there is a difference between the odd bad day, and a constant draining of life that doesn’t refill. You can’t push forever, that just doesn’t work any more than fighting does. Recognising which is which is hard. I found it almost impossible at first, and I probably did push for too long on occasion, but I did one thing right, I learned. Just as I told the MS nurse when he was here the other day, I know the point were outside help isn’t far away, but it’s not here yet. Neither is the point where I once more have to adjust my life again, but I have recognised from the last week, that I may need to start thinking about it. My body is screaming at me more and more that it just doesn’t want to play my games and the ones my illness is offering to it, seem like far more fun. Oddly, it is lunchtime that has reinforced those thoughts. The fact that I am not only content to stop and take a break, but happy doing it, is screaming at me. I knew that when I found myself within two weeks, mentioning it again. As you know my writing is more mental vomit, rather than thought out and considered facts. I sit here, turn the tap and brain flows out onto the page in front of me. Because I write that way, it all to often tells me things that I hadn’t either noticed or consciously considered. It threw it into my writing and has activated a train of thought that is clearly going somewhere.

I think I need more rest, not more sleep, but more rest. Time to just do, to be brainless and motionless. Time to relax. My body is forcing me to slow down in ways that I hadn’t expected. I thought that the next sign would be just like all the others, that I would go through a spell of being drained and washed out and never completing my day. That I would then like all the times before just trimming my routine and going on doing the same things as always. Suddenly, I have a need to do something different. To open up a new part to my daily life, but I don’t have the slightest idea what. I can’t spend an hour a day sitting in front of the TV eating. That would be disastrous in so many ways. My wheelchair has pushed me into making changes, ones that I wouldn’t have even considered without it. I am even finding an odd pleasure in my shorter breakfast break and my two 15 minute drug routines. I am at a loss as to what my body and mind are trying to tell me. I can’t stand just sitting around doing nothing, yet it seems to be what my body is responding to best and my brain, is trying to push me into doing. By being forced into doing things differently, I am finding physical and mental responses I never expected. I don’t have the slightest idea of where this is going, I guess time will tell.

Please read my blog from 2 years ago today – 09/10/2015 – Searching for the simple and normal

I made the single most horrible mistake the other day after my shower, I didn’t wrap the towel around myself tightly enough and I had the misfortune of being in front of the mirror when it fell away from my body, resulting in my…..

A gap in the fog

Posted on August 1, 2015 by livinginalimitedword

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

The Zombie Fog

Posted on July 16, 2012 by livinginalimitedword

My MS has delivered me today it’s favorite thing to try and cope today. It is one of those symptoms that varies hugely, ‘Brain Fog’ can be simple thin mist to a ‘pea-souper’ or as I think of it a thick custard and that custard is thick. I am having real problems keeping my brain in one place, I am flitting all over the place and typing is an interesting process, all I can say this thank God for spell check, without it I doubt you would be able to make any sense out of this at all.

There was a strange thing I caught myself doing a little while ago and I didn’t like it. On TV and in films you sometimes see people sat looking totally blank, zombied, for some reason they usually are sat their with their mouth hanging open, I was doing exactly that. Why? I can’t find a single reason for it. I don’t know how but I was staring into space and my jaw had dropped, as though the control muscles that normally hold your mouth shut had just switched off. one minute I was typing stopped to read what was on the screen and then suddenly I wasn’t doing anything, I had become that horrific image I have of people when everything has stopped, except the basics needed to maintain life. Clearly I pulled myself out of it but I am left with this fear that, that is how it starts, that it will happen for longer and longer spells until I can’t pull myself back.

I think that is my biggest fear and always has been from the day that I was told I had MS, this vision that I will be eventually a zombie that just sits there, having spasms and twitching. I expect that all of use with any type of illness that effects the brain fear that end, that is why I believe that we all have to stimulate our minds, especially when it doesn’t want to be. I may be wrong about this but I have been doing so from the point when my MS turned progressive and so far, as I hope is clear in my on line activity, I am still very much in control. Loosing more and more of myself is a scary place and I nor medicine are unfortunately unable to stop it. I accept the physical changes, as strangely they are reasonably easy to deal with, there is always a way round or a way to manage a physical problem but your brain, it is just a totally different thing. It isn’t just Self-determination, it goes further than that, we all fear that being locked inside a body that does nothing and not being able to make ourselves understood, what if it was the other way round.

You could say that would be a blessing if you didn’t actually have a mind that processed anything, didn’t know what was happening around you, or what people were saying, what they were doing to you, I agree. It is the getting there I fear, that slow loss, bit by bit, of me, until I am gone. It is that possibility that keeps me fighting to keep my brain active, of having things round me that trigger my memories. I can only hope, that I will not have that happen to me, and I can try to stay as ‘with it’ as I can. The question still remains which is worse the slow slip to being a real Zombie or the physical drop into a world were you are locked inside, either way there isn’t a choice.