Tag Archives: fatigue

Draining daily

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The day that you reach out and you ask for help, the day when you tell the world that you are no longer coping alone, isn’t the day where life gets easier, it’s the day when life is turned on its head and will never be the same again. What I wanted, was peace and quiet. Days, where I didn’t have to think or do anything, other than sit here and let life happen. It hasn’t turned out that way at all. I know this is only the start of week two, but I’m already exhausted by the whole routine. It didn’t take any brain power, to know that last week, was going to be spent teaching (my new carer) Laura, just what was needed and how I would like it done. So exhaustion was going to happen, but this is week two and I’m still exhausted. Admittedly, Monday wasn’t Laura’s fault, but it is also the perfect example of how my days appear and feel.

Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings are always dominated by the fact that the district nurses are here. My mornings are always the same, a rush to try and get all my Twitter stuff done before they arrive. I have, in fact, become quite good at it. My timings and routine from when I wake to their arrival is tight, but by getting everything out of the way before they are here, it means that once I’ve had my enema and gone through the results, I can relax and recover over the rest of the day. All that pushing myself around the house in my wheelchair, to just answer the door is exhausting, but then into the bedroom to undress, have my enema and chat while we wait for it to work, then off to the bathroom, where once safely on the loo, they leave me alone, letting themselves out of the house. Sometimes, I can be there quite a while, at others, it’s not too bad, but then I have to dress again, tidy up all their bits and pieces and lock the house up again, as they can’t do anything other than leave the storm doors open. That level of activity, well it’s draining and I thought having someone here to make lunch, would mean I could relax more, but that’s not the reality. It feels as though no sooner have I settled myself again, than I am once more back in my wheelchair and active again.

It doesn’t take much brain power to work out, that few meals can be prepared and cooked in half an hour, well other than ones that go ping and generally taste terrible. So before Laura arrives, I have to prepare and sometimes put in the oven whatever I want her to finish off for my lunch. During her half hour here, she also puts together my supper and sorts out my psyllium pancake, so once she is here, she is kept busy.

As I said, Monday was an extended version and total madness for me. The nurses were late, very late. Instead of 10am, it was 11:15am when for the first time that day, the intercom buzzer rang out. Of course, I thought it was the nurse, but it wasn’t, it was the postman, I let him in and had just returned to the living room when the doorbell rang. He had a parcel for me, so once more I had to head for the door. With the parcel in hand, I went into the kitchen to start on lunch and I had just put the potatoes on and returned to the living room, when bang on 11:30 am the doorbell rang, this time it was Laura. I showed her into the kitchen and I had just explained what I wanted for lunch when the buzzer rang again. This time it was the nurses, more than an hour and a half late. Somehow I had to go through that whole process. The undressing, the enema, the whole embarrassing process with three relative strangers in my home, and be ready for lunch to be served at 12:00pm. The enema was just in when the sound of the buzzer was heard again at 11:51am. This time one of the nurses answered it, it was a delivery man with another parcel for me.

12:01pm and suddenly, I had silence. The nurses had gone, the parcels where stacked in the kitchen and Laura had left my lunch going cold in the living room, while I sat on the loo, exhausted, and I hadn’t got as far as dressing and eating. So much for relaxation, so much for help, I felt deserted, totally deserted and snowballed by life. It was no one’s fault, just coincidence, but, I felt totally drained and I was wishing that I had never asked for help. I know it was a one off, well at least I hope it was, but somehow it felt like it was the perfect example of how I feel all too often. To everyone else’s, I’m cared for and my life must appear quiet and straight forward, but to me, I do nothing that is for me, it’s always for routine, governed totally by timings and events I have no control over. From the moment that the alarm clock demands that I get out of bed, to the point it tells me that I must go to bed and sleep again, otherwise, I won’t get enough sleep to cope with the next day, my life is governed by time and others. Right now, I feel as though I’m drowning in help. I know it’s all going to settle down, that it’s all going to be worth it and life will feel normal and far better than it was, but right now, I’m drowning.

Door bells and buzzers that have to be answered, not just for people who are coming to see me, but all too often there is no one there or it’s for another flat number. Every time I have to move, for others or for me, it’s draining and since I asked for help, I don’t feel as though I have sat still for any longer than a few minutes. With every extra piece of help that is added, I’m still for just that bit less time than I was. My initial belief that help would equal more energy left for me, just hasn’t worked out that way at all. I am learning to dread the very sound of that buzzer, as no matter why it’s been rung, it’s always going to steal what little energy I have. Is it any surprise that I feel as though I drowning, as though I’m struggling just to stay awake, and doubting that the logic that brought me to this point, was logic at all.

 

Please read my blog from 2 years ago today – 03/11/2014 – A new fururefurure

I have always believed in the saying that “The first step of any journey is always the hardest”, it’s taken me years to realise just how wrong that statement is, the first step may be hard, but you can be sure there will be many as hard and some even harder along the way. It doesn’t matter how many……

Brain buster

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They say when you watch something, it never does what you’re looking for. Well, mine eventually did. I’ve been staring at the phone on my desk, willing it to ring, for the incontinence nurse to call me and let my know what her boss said. When she did, you would have thought that she was reading out the results of some sort of competition, giving me all the points that they took into consideration, before just telling me what I wanted to know. They have looked at all the scan results and my history and present problems, especially those being caused by my intestine and bowels and for now, they don’t think that I need to have any form of a permanent catheter. What they want me to do is to be careful to be sure that my bladder is as empty as possible whenever I go to the loo. This means that I have to double void each time. For those who don’t know what that means, I have to stand up and move away from the toilet for a minute or so, then return and try again. I also have to use a method I have already been using for years, to rock gently side to side and back and forward, which as I knew already, makes the urine move out of it’s hiding spots and out of me. They believe that if I continue to do this, I should be alright until the problem with my bowels is sorted, when hopefully, the problems should lessen. She once more added that if I do find again that I can’t empty my bladder, then I must call for medical intervention immediately.

I didn’t tell her, but when I spoke to the district nurse on Friday, I had talked through with her, the reality of implementing her final point. She was just as I dumbfounded by the idea of calling 999, within minutes of finding I couldn’t empty my bladder. We talked it over and quite rightly she agreed with me that that was just not a viable plan. I can with ease sleep for 13 hours without once getting up to go to the loo. Therefore, my bladder, nor I, am in any type of danger for that length of time. That is, of course, as long as I am not in severe pain. As she said, I’m not stupid, I will know in myself if I need help or not, but maybe that guideline of 13 hours, should be my max. I am also not stupid enough to leave it any longer than that, as I am well aware that urine can turn toxic to my body with ease. Which is a problem for anyone, but for someone like me with a compromised immune system, something I need to be careful about constantly, hence the double voiding. Should I feel at all that I need help, then I should call NHS 24 or my doctor for help. There should be no need for me to be dialing 999 unless I know something is horribly wrong. Both NHS 24 and my doctor would be able to send out a district nurse armed with a catheter to my assistance. After that, well then we can talk it all through again and possibly include a detailed chat with a urology consultant.

I have come to the conclusion that the continence nurse who has been coming to see me, just likes to scare people. There was no need what so ever for her to have worried me the way that she did. She could quite easily have left here without saying a word about permanent catheters at all. Returned to her place of work and talked it through with her boss, then telling me, exactly what she did, when she phoned me. If she had done that, then I wouldn’t have landed up feeling as I did and I would have had a much better end to my week. I have learned one lesson from all of this, should I see her again, I will not let myself be wound up until she has checked her “thoughts” with someone else first.

I have to admit that I have been lucky and I haven’t come across many like her. On the whole, the medical profession has always told me their thoughts, but done so in a way, that it felt like they were imparting information, not telling me that there was no other option when there was. Just like the consultant who I saw about my bowels, he laid out all the possibilities, what they could and they couldn’t do and what they thought needed to be explored first, hence the enemas. Even though I left there knowing that this was the last possibility, but at the end of the day, if I couldn’t cope with it, the final option was down to me, I could request a stoma. When I left there, I felt a little shell-shocked, but I didn’t feel as though I had lost control. In fact, it was the total opposite, and it left me with a new problem, when and how to make that decision, and I still don’t know how to do that.

It took me many years to realise that the medical profession doesn’t have all the answers. What they have are possibilities. In an emergency, they make the decisions for us, but when it comes to those things that aren’t going to kill you in the next ten minutes, the choice suddenly becomes ours. No one can do anything to you without your permission, that’s clear as you always have to sign those disclaimers, but there are times when you want them to tell you, not suggest to you. About three years after I was diagnosed, my health was so bad that my Neuro offered me chemo. It was all explained to me, how it would affect me and most importantly, what they expected it to do for me. What they were offering me, was a way of turning back time, they could say how well it would work, or if the results would be long term, or just short, but it was the only option there was. To me, that was an easy choice. Without it, I was heading downhill so rapidly that I would have been a vegetable long ago. It didn’t feel like a choice, it was a no-brainer. Everyone wants to live, to be able to function as a person. I wasn’t going to say no, if I had, I would have hoped that they would have sectioned me and done it anyway. Where I am now, is totally different.

If the enemas work properly, they will not only move the faeces out of my body, but they will remove the pressure and pain that I live with daily. The short spell I had last month when it appeared it was working, I found a new appetite for food, I could breathe with far more ease and both the pain and pressure were gone, even my mood improved. It was wonderful. Now, we’re back at the start, it is as though none of it ever changed. If I have the stoma, well it removes the problem of getting rid of the faeces, and hopefully the pressure, but there is no guarantee it will change the pain in any way. The pain is caused by my nerves and removing them and my intestine, might not change the pain at all. I will also spend the rest of my life with a bag attached filled with poo. How do you choose?

This week, we’re stepping the enemas up to three times a week, if that doesn’t do it, I could have them every second day. How many weeks or months is a fair trial? What if they never give me the result that I want? Am I asking and expecting too much? When do I say enough and if I do, will I be any better off? This isn’t a no-brainer, this is a brain destroyer.

 

Please read my blog from 2 years ago today – 08/08/2014 – The small things

Once again I crawled off to bed at 8:30 and slept all the way through, which of course leaves me with a problem as to what my new drug routine is doing, as every night I have taken my drugs later, I have gone to bed early. Now that doesn’t make any sense to me at all, surely not taking my drugs should make me want to go to bed later not sooner, as I have shifted my routine and once……

Emotional overflow

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I found myself sitting here falling into floods of tears, for what feels like no reason. I was fine until the district nurse called, it was the one that I really like, although I can’t tell you her name, so nothing new there then. She was the one who came to see me first, to talk through the whole process of them coming here to give me eneama’s and to help me with the problems I had then recently started to have with my bladder. I have seen her a couple of time since then, but following that gap and after the news I had from the continence nurse the other day, I decided to update her. When I started to tell her about the possibility of having a permanent catheter, the tears suddenly started to flow. I didn’t expect them, as there hasn’t been a single one until then, but with the door opened, they have just kept reappearing without permission.

All of this intervention and changes that are underway with my carers, plus the feeling that I am losing more and more of my abilities to live normally, just suddenly became too much. I know that right now, nothing is definite and in many ways that in itself, is making it all the harder. Right now, I would love someone to just say this, this and this are happening and it will all be done by such and such a date. As I said to the nurse, I hate the fact that it is up to me, to make the decision as to if or if not I have a stoma. All this fiddling around with eneama’s which work sometimes and not others is starting to get to me. If it were as simple as them pushing the liquid in and I sat on the loo and everything just left my body, then great, but it’s not. Again today it failed, nothing other than a couple of tiny blobs that must have been sitting low in my guts. The bulk, the bit that has been sat there for two days, causing me discomfort and even pain, didn’t shift at all. Of course, we didn’t know that was what was going to happen when we were talking. She had asked me if I had an appointment to return to the hospital, which I don’t, I told her that as far as I knew,  it was now up to me. If we didn’t get a result with the eneama, good enough to leave me comfortable, and if I decide that I can’t handle things any longer, then I will request a return appointment, to give the go ahead with the stoma. She said that she was going to check the letter from the doctor, as she said that she felt that there should be some kind of follow-up.

Having gone through all the disasters of the eneama’s failing, and the fact that I am still finding myself no further forward in getting rid of the pressure and the pain, I agreed that it was time to try a change. Although it was something I don’t really want, from the point of view of having space in my life for other things, like being me, we’re stepping it up to three times a week. Monday, Wednesday and Friday, if that fails, we’ll go for every second day, which is what the consultant wanted, but not my GP, the district nurses, of myself, who all felt that was just too much. We have to try everything as a stoma, is the final step, one that I don’t want to take, if, something else could mean I could avoid it. As I said the other day, I believe that my bowels are behind my bladder not wanting to empty, so it could be a fix for both. No, I don’t want a permanent catheter either, if it can be avoided.

When she left, I was still lying in my bed, with tears rolling down my face. It was me who told her to go, I felt able to get off the bed and to go by myself to the loo. Keeping her there, felt like another pressure that I didn’t need, as I knew she had many other people to see. She double and triple checked and assured me that if I needed her to stay, she would, but with her gone, the tears then flowed freely, without the restriction that I was putting onto myself, of not wanting to cry in front of her, for what felt like no reason. I lay there for about another ten minutes before heading to the loo. I already knew that nothing was going to happen, I had had the eneama inside me for twenty minutes and I felt nothing. I pulled myself together while I sat there on the loo and told myself to stop being so stupid. It kind of worked, if two or three times an hour escaping liquid running down my face, could be called working.

I don’t know why I suddenly feel as though I am under pressure by all of this. It’s not like anything has really changed. Maybe, it is a psychological change that is needed. Maybe, I need to start seeing my eneamas as routine, not as something that is there as some sort of demand to perform. I’m not stupid, I do realise that it is the fact that I have the final say when it comes down to the stoma, that is getting to me. I so wish someone else would stand up and tell me what to do. I just don’t feel that my mind is in the condition to make such a huge decisions, as it feels like it should be a purely medical decision, but I also see that it can’t be. The continence nurse saying there wasn’t a safe amount of time to have a bladder that didn’t want to empty, hasn’t helped either. There must be a point when it changes from safe to dangerous. I don’t want to call for an ambulance for my bladder to suddenly empty by itself when I reach the hospital, just as it suddenly let go other night. I don’t want to even have to go to the hospital at all.

The district nurse phoned me in the afternoon, as she said she would. What I had said was totally correct, the decision about the stoma is all up to me. I admitted to her that I am at this second in pain from my guts, she rightly said to me that it’s a long time to Monday, so one of them is going to be here tomorrow, to try again. Maybe tomorrow, it will be totally different. Maybe tomorrow it will work, and maybe tomorrow I won’t have to worry about all of this ever again, which tomorrow that is, I don’t have a clue.

 

Please read my blog from 2 years ago today – 06/08/2014 – I’m still here

Everything has to be rushed this morning as Teressa and John will be here around 11am, they are coming for lunch today as there is some show that neither Adam or I have ever heard of, but apparently has been running in Glasgow for around 20 years, that they want to go and see. It is always the way……

When it rains, it pours

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Yesterday, the incontinence nurse appeared at my door. I had a memory of her saying she would be back, but I had forgotten totally the date she said she would actually be here. When the doorbell rang, I was totally surprised as I was in the middle of changing my trousers having just spilling egg yoke all over them. I used the last few seconds I had before opening the door to ensure that I didn’t have my top caught up in them, something that happens frequently. Pulling up trousers and so on, isn’t the easiest things to do one handed. If I’m not holding onto something, there is a huge danger of losing my balance when contorting my body to achieve the desired results. She was here to once more scan my stomach to see if my bladder was holding onto fluid, or behaving itself and emptying. She had previously done two test, both through in the morning, this was the first in the afternoon.

I had told her when she was first here, that I found it easier to empty my bladder in the morning, as I had taken my frusemide then. She didn’t seem to get the connection, but when the drug pulls the excess fluid out of my body, I then have a bulk to get rid of. The force of the quantity always seems to make the whole process easier. Later in the day, especially in the evening, I have to spend time relaxing and concentrating on the whole process, but frequently pass nothing more than a series of dribbles. This was exactly what happened when she asked me to go to the loo, and I wasn’t in the slightest bit surprised when she found that I had held onto 198mils. While I was lying there on my bed, covered in gel, I asked her a question, “How long is it safe to go if you can’t empty your bladder?”. She seemed somewhat flustered by the question and said that she had never been asked that before. So I told her about what happened a few nights ago, I quite simply couldn’t empty it and had even been wondering about calling the district nurse for their help, as I had gone from around 4pm right into the night unable to pass anything, other than the odd drip or dribble. I had woken several times during the night as it wasn’t painful, but uncomfortable. It wasn’t until just after 4am that I had success. I was absolutely sure that it had been caused by my guts, as they were full, and they weren’t moving anywhere. She didn’t really answer me at that moment, and I admit that I was somewhat distracted at that point, as she dropped a huge blob of gel onto my just put on clean trousers.

She asked me to go back to the loo and try again, just to see if I could shift anymore, which I did. The result was I brought the stored liquid down to just 95mils. As I was sorting myself out, I asked her again about the length of time it would be safe to keep trying. She asked me to go through to the living room while she cleaned up and put away her scanner and so on, she would join me there and we would have a chat. It was when we were both in the living room, that she said that clearly down to my dexterity and the problems I had inserting them without drawing blood, something that had happened more than once, due to spasms, that self-catheterizing or what they call intermittent catheters just wasn’t suitable for me any longer. She then said that it might be time for me to have either an indwelling catheter or a suprapubic one. I had to admit that I didn’t know what the difference was. Apparently, the indwelling is a permanent catheter inserted just as the intermittent but stayed there held in place by a water-filled balloon, the suprapubic is put into the bladder through a whole in your stomach and just like the indwelling empties into a bag on your leg, or some have a valve that allows you to have say in when it is emptied. She did though what to go back to the hospital and discuss it with her superior and would call me in a few days.

To be honest, I didn’t really take it in until she left. Here was another person wanting to bypass nature’s way and take over with plastic. I could within months find myself with both my bowels and my bladder emptying into bags. I also did the exact wrong thing, I read up about it online, where of course I found all the bad things about having them, the possible infections, bladder stones, and so on, and how they have to be cared for. I also came across the horrific entry that said the suprapubic could be inserted under a local anaesthetic, which sounds horrific to me. On the good side, I wouldn’t have to wear all these terrible uncomfortable pads, as the issue of wetting myself will have been taken care of. Mind you, would having a tube coming out of me, be any more comfortable?

I do know the dangers of my bowel not emptying, especially as the last thing I need is any infection as they are bound to throw me into a flare, but all of this feels as though it is running away with me. I can’t remember when, but I know that I have written it more than once, if you invite the medical profession into your life, without a doubt, they will find something wrong with you that you didn’t expect. I invited her in when I started wetting the bed as I wanted to get the free pads through the NHS, now suddenly, I’m facing possible permanent catheterisation. A result that never entered my head when I asked my doctor to help, as I was wetting the bed.

 

Please read my blog from 2 years ago today – 04/07/2014 – 1 hour is changing my life

Sometimes it takes something going wrong, for you to realise that it has always been wrong, yesterday was a perfect example of that. The day started well, my new system to give me more time to myself and also to allow me to still be active online while Teressa and John were here, it worked perfectly. I did push it in how fast I was doing everything and that believe me is…..

Dumbstruck

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The world and it’s dog, think of MS as a condition that affects muscles, both in pain but mainly weakness. They see us as future cripples, the people sat in wheelchairs, rarely seen without a carer and simply waiting for the day to pass. After all what value are we to the world, the cripples who can no longer work. Some look at us with pity, but most don’t look at us at all. We are invisible, long before we disappear completely by becoming housebound. I can say that, because if someone had asked me when I was 20, that is probably roughly what I would have said. Just as I saw spina bifida as people wearing calipers until my son was born with it and then died 12 days later. None of us really know what any chronic condition or disability is like until it somehow touches us. Even now, I couldn’t tell you if my Jeffery felt pain or felt anything at all, I just had to take the word of the doctors, that he was at peace in his misshaped body.

MS isn’t just weak muscles and pain, it is so much more. All you need to do is read my blog from its start to today, and you will see that there isn’t a single part of me that it doesn’t affect. Although, I do have to add that what you would read is my version of PRMS, one of five forms that MS took until recently, now there are only four. I discovered yesterday while reading on line that PRMS no longer exists, we have been absorbed into PPMS, although how I’m not sure. I’ve read the description often, and I quite honestly don’t fit. Yet, who am I to argue with the great and the good of the medical world, I am, after all, only the person who lives with it. In fact, I’ve lived with it now for over 30 years, but if you were diagnosed with RRMS, SPMS, PPMS or even benign MS tomorrow, I couldn’t tell you what lies ahead, because I haven’t lived your life. It’s not just MS that this is true of, whatever the condition, all of us would find our own quirks, symptoms, and difficulties, that’s just life though, as none of us live the same one in the same body.

At times people have asked me what is the worst thing about the conditions that I have. Yes, it is plural, I like the majority of people with a chronic condition have a collection of them. Why they travel in gangs, I can’t tell you the medical reasons, but I’d make a guess that once our bodies are weak, we are susceptible to other developing. As for the worst part of it all, well, it depends on what day and at what time you ask me. In the mornings, I am most likely to say that it’s the pain and by the evening the fatigue, catch me in the middle of a brain fog, and I’d most likely look at you stupidly and say very little of any sense. Chronic illness is a minefield filled with monsters, just waiting to take over from each other when the others have got fed up of playing with you. But if you have one, you already know this.

Today, though, my physical monsters are just treading water, the pain levels are set at normal and my fatigue just slightly higher, today, it’s the monster in my brain that is having the most fun. I have started and not finished a dozen things already, and my poor browser, has been straining under the number of web pages that I have opened, most I have little idea why. Concentration is little more than a distant memory. I have even stopped this post more times than you would believe, returning and having to read my earlier entries, and then sitting here trying to work out where I thought it was going. Even now, I’m not sure. Mind you, that’s nothing that unusual. For some reason, today seemed like the perfect day to change broadband suppliers. I had been thinking about it for a while, but out of the blue, I found myself actually doing it. So hopefully, as of the middle of next month, I will be flying on high-speed fiber and miles from the company who couldn’t even answer their phone without getting me angry and leaving me in tears. Yes, I will double check all that I’ve done when my own brain has returned.

I know that I am being rather flippant today, that is quite often the result of living in a muddle, as if you don’t take it on the light side, you’d drive yourself mad, if, I’m not already. Seriously, though, unless you are living with a brain that has been affected by something like MS, you don’t have a clue just how frustrating and depressing the whole thing is. I know that I am still managing to type out word after word and that I will appear to many as not having the slightest problem, but take my word for it, my brain is a mess. All of those wonderful tricks or the gizmo’s that are supposed to aid me in my everyday life, to me, are totally useless. It doesn’t matter what it is, my brain finds a way of turning it into an ignorable annoyance, something that doesn’t apply to me, or at least not at the moment it is trying desperately to put me back on track. It doesn’t matter if it’s a post-it note, a list, an alarm or even something huge in the middle of my computer screen, I can ignore it and totally forget ever even seeing it. Life with my brain is now one long smooth line, uninterrupted by all those annoying little things, like eating, washing or taking my meds. Well, it would be, if I hadn’t long ago started using Adams brain to fill in what I missed and of course my carers now keep me straight as well. Yet, I’m lucid and intelligent, well I think I was once, and might be occasionally now, as long as I don’t engage my brain, it will trip me up in seconds, if I let it and even when I don’t.

There is nothing in my life that annoys me more than those hoards of people who have happily brushed aside everything I have said, then try to tell me of this amazing way they know, of getting things done and never forgetting again. I learned long ago that I wasn’t only invisible, I was also mute as what I have said, was clearly unheard. Until you have spent an entire day, with my brain, in control of your life, you won’t understand, any more than you can understand the effects that pain has me, outside of the pain itself. When your brain is being eaten alive by lesions, nothing is as simple as it was just a week ago, far less a year ago. Unlike my body that now sits in a wheelchair, there is nothing visible that supports my brain. I can’t show it to you, all I can do is tell you, but then, of course, I forgot, I’m mute.

Please read my blog from 2 years ago today – 01/08/2014 – A spark of truth

I am waiting for the phone to ring, Teressa and John are due to come and see us today the first time we have seen each other since Christmas. To be far I doubt I will get a call before 12, after all, they are on holiday and as she is staying with her brother, I know last night will have included more alcohol than is …..