Body dip

Posted on December 29, 2015 by livinginalimitedword

As soon as I lay down on my bed, I could see flashing lights. The last part of my body had joined in, optical neuritis was clearly playing a bigger role than I thought. I had been very aware that my eyes were just that bit more blurred than usual, and that the seasick sensation, when watching anything that moved, was growing stronger. I often feel it, so it’s nothing new, but when you can’t actually stand the effect of scrolling a page, well it’s time to give up and go to bed. I don’t know why, as other people say they can see them with their eyes open, but I only ever see lights, when I close my eyes. Once I was kitted up with eye mask and ear plugs, I lay down to find that it was brighter inside my mask, than it was outside it. Ribbons of light were flowing from top to bottom, some coloured, other were just bright. Seeing odd things when my eyes are closed isn’t unusual, in fact, it was the first signs I was aware of when my right eye was affected by, macular degeneration. The best way to describe it would be to say, it looked like a miniature petri dish filled with live cells, all wriggling and squirming, splitting and dancing, right in the center of the surface of my eye, but only when my eyes were closed, unless, I tried to concentrate on it. My vision wasn’t noticeably different at first, then the blind spots appeared. They were small, all in the exact same area as my moving friends, it was a bit like looking through a piece of lace. My peripheral vision was fine, it was just that central area, and it caused huge problems, as my right eye, had always been my good one, I am short sighted in my left one. If I were to close my left eye now, I can no longer read at all, the lacy spaces once allowed me to line up a clear area and scan with just that spot, but the clear spots have shrunk. Having optical neuritis on top, apart from triggering headaches, just makes everything harder as what is still normally good, is then blurred.

I was so tired, and felt so sick, that even though my skin was crawling with life, that once I relaxed a little and demanded to sleep, I did. An hour of rest and another of sleep, made a huge difference, actually, far more than the whole previous night did. I was a long way from perfect, but I was awake and the headache had gone. I hate headaches, they somehow have such a devastating effect, despite the fact that in the bigger picture, they’re nothing. I have always wondered how come I even feel them, when you consider how well my body is protected from pain, by the mass of tablets I swallow each day. Either, they are high on the migraine scale and I just don’t know it, or, just like burning yourself, something always gets through.

I have to admit, that yesterday I was feeling rather sorry for myself. It was one of those days where it didn’t seem to matter what I did, my body was determined to make life hard. I guess, that in reality, I was quite simply worn down by everything. It isn’t normal for me to feel that way, I am normally so good at keeping my life in perspective, just occasionally, I fail, and when I do, I fail totally. It’s nothing like falling into depression, but yes, I feel down. Even I get fed up with the whole thing, and just want to scream at the world, “This isn’t fair”. Nobody ever said it was, nor have I ever believed it is, but what life deals out to us, we just have to accept and get on with. I suppose, that I am entitled to just every now and then, feel as though I’m being picked on. Today, well I don’t feel that way at all, today, I am back in my normal stride and the fact my body doesn’t understand that when air or material touches it, that that is what it should feel, not fire, creepy crawlies or numbness, well that’s just the way it is. Not once since we redid our bathroom and removed the bath in preference for a really good shower, have I missed the bath, today I do. I suddenly had a desire to lie in warm water, I just have this feeling that warm water might neutralise the sensations. That there is a possibility, that if my body was surrounded by something it’s not used to, that it might just enjoy it, accept it and stop, feeling what isn’t there. Who knows if it would work or not, it’s just a notion. Maybe, it’s part of a desire I’ve had in the last few days to go swimming, something I used to really love, but the chances of that, are even less than a bath.

I’m not one really for dreaming about the impossible, but I remember once sitting thinking about winning the lottery. In my head, I designed my ideal home, not overly lavish or even big, I’m not that sort of person. But the one thing I wanted, even more than a house I could live in, in a wheelchair, was an indoor swimming pool. Although, I never had the opportunity to even try it, as all the swimming pools in Glasgow are miles away, or require expensive memberships, but I’ve always believed the swimming would help me. Even now, despite the fact I can do little, I know I could still swim and if, for nothing else, the exercise could change a lot. I know it’s a crazy dream, especially as I don’t do the lottery, but I guess we all need our dreams. Even though it was many years ago, I still remember it, right down to the colour of the tiles and ferns I wanted growing on one of the walls. The rest of the house, I don’t remember a single thing, just that one room. It’s odd the things we remember.

Even without a swimming pool, there are some bright points, this morning, my eyes have settled, and my vision just that bit better. My body, well, unfortunately, it’s still my body, despite the fact I would happily give it away, as my nerve endings are still on hyper mode. I just keep hoping that today, or tomorrow, or even the next day, I can say I have silence, even in the smallest part of me, that’s my only goal today, just to find one. The rest of it, it will unfold as it chooses.

Please read my blog from 2 years ago today – 29/12/2013 – Zombiefied

It’s one of those strange days, one where I know what I should be doing and I really don’t feel I have the energy or need to actually even start on any of them. I’m drained, quite simply the past week has……

Which is worse?

Posted on August 13, 2015 by livinginalimitedword

My eyes are bad today. I seem to be seeing everything, even this screen that is inches from my face, with an extra layer of fuzz than normal. I have been at a loss as to what is really wrong with my eyes for years. I can remember being 25 and getting my eyes tested for the first time in my life. The optician said that I needed glasses but only for doing my beloved embroidery and needlepoint. I can still remember though putting them on and looking out the window and being shocked at the difference they made. It just didn’t add up. How could glasses that weren’t meant to be for distance actually change everything? I only used them for their designed purpose and thought little more of it. When my MS was diagnosed one of the tests they did was for changes in my eyesight. At that time, they told me that my MS was affecting my left eye, but I knew that it was my right that was the worst. They were extremely vague in response to my questions so I headed off to the opticians from second ever visit. This time I left with two pairs. My distance eyesight, as I knew, wasn’t perfect, but they still didn’t seem to think it was as bad I was telling them it was. I once more went through the test, on with the glasses while standing at the window. Suddenly I could see leaves on the trees and the green mass I was used to, was grass, with individual blades.

I was beginning to believe that I was just a fussy person who wanted the world in what they now call HD. I didn’t feel fussy, I just wanted to see. This time I used them daily, as there was the world out there that I felt I had been missing for years. Being able to actually see the call centre I was in charge of, from one end to the other, was also extremely useful. Within a couple of years, there was a dramatic dip and my neuro sent me for further test. Everything that I thought I had seen in the previous test, was still there, but worse, especially in one test. You are sat looking into what looks like a black box, a speck of light appears and moves across your field of vision and you have to say when you can see it no more. The hospital option told me there had been a change in my macular degeneration. I stopped him there as I didn’t have a clue what he was talking about. Apparently, they had found it in their original tests and no one had actually told me. As always seems to be the way, despite him going over it with me, by the time I was at home, I forgot it all and had to look it up online. What I read made perfect sense. I have dry macular degeneration and I was losing the central vision in my eye and it was going to be a long slow decline until worst case scenario, I would lose it totally. Going blind is something that any of us put high on our must do lists. I think it was a bigger shock than being told I had PRMS. When I got my PRMS diagnosis, I had had six months to get used to the idea that I probably had MS, this came straight out of the blue.

So here I am with Optical Neuritis in my left eye and Macular Degeneration in my right. I’m short sighted in both but my left is worse than my right and both of them seem to go through phases of getting worse then settling back again. Add in the normal ageing of our eyes that usually means you see less and less and sometimes it feels as though I really can’t win. Whatever way you look at it, I am slowly going blind and I will see less and less no matter what happens. This morning, well one of them is playing up, as my usual vision that means faces on the TV are blurry and not clear enough to make out when they are small or in the distance, now even those that nearly fill half of the screen are unrecognisable. The TV for a long time from here at my PC has been a colourful radio, that supplies clues in shape as to what is going on. Eyesight is something that we take for granted. We open our eyes and there it is, a detailed world filled with colour and movement. We use it without thought and never, just like the rest of our health, expect it to one day to not be there. Right now I can manage just as I am, but when out of the blue it decides to give you a reminder of it deterioration, well you have to think about it.

I know that I have never in this blog written all the details that I just have before. I guess it never seemed important enough as my glasses have been good enough to boost the vision by correcting my short-sightedness. Lately, though, I have noticed more and more just how poor it is. Our TV’s demand that we interact with them. Messages in tiny writing appear and if you don’t react instantly, it will do something really annoying. What they don’t allow for is people like me. One of those messages is unreadable, glasses or not. By the time I have stood up and made it over to the TV and stood there long enough to squint at it and make out what it want’s now, it has decided that I’m not here and has just done it. More and more we are being expected to interact with electronic boxes. It used to be simple, we had what was once called white goods. They did things for us and they did it without annoying us. Look online and you will find more and more of these once servants, now have screens with tiny writing and require connection to the internet so they can speak to the smartphone I don’t have. Just buying a fridge that just keeps food cold, is getting harder and harder, some want to do my shopping for me as well. I fear it is going to just get worse. I don’t want to hold a push button conversation, or even worse a real one with my washing machine, I just want clean clothes.

I used to be a real tech lover, I loved the idea of a push button world where life was sleek and simple. I never thought that it would be my eyesight that would turn that love on its head. The modern world is a hard enough place for someone with a debilitating physical disability. I used to think that technology was going to be my saviour, that all these new gadgets that were piling onto the market would mean that no matter how disabled I got, I would still be able to do what I wanted and needed to do. Add in the loss of eyesight and it isn’t going to get easier, it’s going to get harder. Give me any day a simple dial that you set a given angle and one button to press any day, I can learn that eyesight or not. I know already that I am good at walking around the house in total darkness, I can actually get around the bedroom, kitchen and bathroom with my sleep mask on. I might still be hesitant, but I can do it. Some might think that is a strange thing for anyone to even try to do. When you know you are going blind, it’s a sensible precaution. Having experienced wild changes overnight in the past, well you never know what the next morning might bring. Strangely it is my PRMS that might just be my saviour. The Macular Degeneration will get worse, I might or I might not actually go blind, but there is a chance that the Optical Neurosis won’t get worse, as it’s rare for MS to cause blindness.

Disability comes in many forms, I don’t know if you can truly say one is worse than another. I don’t even think it is possible to say which is the most life changing. Everything that happens in our lives is relevant to where we are and how our lives are at that time. What I do know is that I fear going blind more than any of the other things that have happened, are happening, or might happen.

Please read my blog from 2 years ago today – 13/08/2013 – Three times plus

Autumn seems to be arriving very early, this house is freezing already and well I was hoping that the summer would last much longer, if just for the electric bill. I am honestly siting here with my feet wrapped up in my sleeping bag I keep for the coldest winter days, and if I am being honest…..

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

What can’t be seen

Posted on January 6, 2015 by livinginalimitedword

I’m working on a new idea today caused by the fact that lately I have noticed my eyesight getting worse and worse. My idea isn’t something radical or earth shattering, it’s really simple, I am going to wear my glasses. I know, I should have been using them anyway, but when you have two pairs one for reading and one for seeing the end of your arm, slight exaggeration there but it is a case of the other side of the room. I have such a mix of problems with my eyes that glasses have just all to often been a case of wearing with little improvement, so they have spent most of their lives lying around anywhere other than on my face. My eyes are totally unbalanced as I am short sighted, worse in my right eye than left, but I also have optical neuritis in my left and macular degeneration in my right. The world has been an interesting blur for a long time, I always used to say that it was a good job that I never learned to drive as MS isn’t a notifiable condition. Between my bad eyesight and constant leg spams, even if I did see a pedestrian crossing the road, my spasms might mean I’d hit the accelerator instead of the brake. I have for the last few years been wearing my distance glasses at night to watch TV simply because I was fed up seeing a blur, but even when wearing them I have never been able to really read the information panels, despite every effort of the opticians. I am actually really surprised at how little you really need to see to be able to work out what something says and I do quite often manage that quite well from the settee, but I have never tried using my distance glasses from here at my PC and I haven’t been using my reading glasses whilst sat here either. All last week I was overly aware of how difficult my PC screen was to actually see, especially when I am typing, I didn’t want to enlarge things as when you do they are so huge that letters fill the screen like huge spiders. Yesterday I had had enough and I found myself reaching for my reading glasses and to my shock for the first time ever, they helped, I actually could see the screen with a hugely increased clarity and the keyboard, before I had to keep changing my physical distance between them to see them clearly, to say I was shocked is putting it mildly, something really had changed in my vision.

All through December I have also been exhausting myself daily due to extra exertions that I couldn’t avoid as I haven’t had my normal collections of TV programs. Usually during the day I watch, well more listen to, programs that I have recorded and I normally don’t watch any series until I can watch it all as that way from here I can select the next one without having to be able to read anything on screen. Change of season always means change of series and every hour I have been getting up walking over to the TV so that I can see the information panels, as it was the only way I could select the next program, something had to change and quickly. This morning by accident after sorting out some programs to record, I walked over here with my distance glasses on and I discovered that no I couldn’t see the panels, but I could make out enough to make an educated guess. So simple that I can hear people thinking how stupid is she not to have done this before, well I did, but it didn’t work before, the last time I tired, I had no benefit from my reading glasses, in fact they caused me to feel sick as I just couldn’t get the right distance and the rest of the world became so fuzzed and odd that if I moved my head around at all, motion sickness appeared and that was just a couple of months ago. Every time I have brought my distance glasses up here it was causing me an another issue, I would forget to take them back to the settee, meaning another walk across the room. When your energy reserves are so limited, even the tiniest change can totally destroy you, but it has got to the point that that one possible extra walk compared to the multiple ones to change channel and the frustration of having to constantly change pairs, is now worth the risk and before anyone says bifocals, I tried them years ago and they also caused motion sickness. I don’t know what, but something changed last month as I now know without a doubt that I wasn’t imagining the change in my eyesight. I thought it was all too sudden and that if anything it probably had to do with the fact I was always tired, but the difference in my reading glasses alone proves it, I am guessing they used to be too strong but now they’re just right.

I know that in time I probably will loose almost all sight in my right eye, which is rather annoying when it happens to be the stronger of the two when it comes to being short sighted. The macular degeneration has nothing to do with my PRMS, I somehow managed to develop a condition normally found in the elderly rather prematurely, but why that should have surprised me, I don’t know, the only connection it does have is it was found by the hospital optician I was sent to see when I was complaining of problems with my eyes, which my optician was unable to help with. As is so often with my health they weren’t just able to confirm the optical neuritis but they succeeded in finding something else as well. I have often wished that they would just give me a full body MRI and every other test there is and get it over and done with as all my body seems to have done in the last few years is slowly fall apart. Adam and I were sitting last night talking and I was reminded of two conversations that I had pre-diagnosis with two different doctors, the first was with the doctor who diagnosed my Fibro, as nice as she was, she kind of got thing wrong and I now wish that I had had a tape recorder with me as she started after I questioned some of the other symptoms I had which didn’t fit with Fibro,” There is no point us doing any other tests as you have Fibromyalgia and nothing more”, within 12 months I was diagnosed with PRMS which they believed had started when I was around 21. The second was with the ENT consultant who ordered my MRI scan as he didn’t think I had Meniere’s, which neither did I, but I had been sent there and there I was, when he was talking to me about the results, he said that either I “had survived more strokes than anyone or I had MS”, both show how things can be there that no one knows about and some wouldn’t even suspect, even those who should know better.

Please read my blog from 2 years ago today – 06/01/13 – Pick a limb any limb

I am happy to report that the pain in my leg eased as the day went on, it is now at about normal again, painful but not making things unbearable. It’s strange I am sure to anyone who isn’t themselves living with chronic pain to think that I describe what…..

Seeing it clearly

Posted on June 27, 2014 by livinginalimitedword

I think I have broken through the worst of this phase of uncontrolled muscle tightening, I sat last night on the settee without constantly having to put my arms into stupid positions in a hope of stretching the muscle to the point they would give in. It was totally motionless, I still did it occasionally but that was the big thing it was occasional not constant. So far the morning hasn’t been too bad other than my right shoulder and underarm, they still are driving my fractionally mad, but I am not complaining, after the last few days, I have nothing to complain about. Pushing my dose of Gabapentin seems to have done the trick, I am going to keep it at the higher level today and maybe tomorrow then see what happens, it doesn’t scare me to bring the dose down as I have the answer, so I can test to my hearts content. Even though things are that bit better I am no longer trying to fool myself that things aren’t getting worse and that I am not in the midst of a flare. I have come to the conclusion that I will never just accept what is happening and that to the day I die, I will still be questioning what is happening to me without the slightest chance of doing what would be logical, to accept it and treat it as such.

I was pleased today to find in the comments to my blog a person who made me feel just that little less alone in all of this. I get so much support that is beyond words when it comes to making me feel better and giving me strength to go on, but there at times and topics where I am screaming inside, “Someone out there must know what I am talking about, someone has to be going through this too”, but there is no response, no feedback and I continue alone. Today though at last one other person on this planet said they to find themselves with seeping sores that they don’t know are there because they can’t feel them, that they just appear where skin touches skin and dealing with them is hard and horrid. Thank you and thank you again! I know I make things worse for myself when it come to sores like that as I truly don’t want to ask for the help I need from Adam when it comes to getting dry after a shower. Adam hasn’t seen me naked now for about 9 years and I am so embarrassed by the way my body is, that I don’t want him to see me, I have instead worked on ways of making sure I am as dry as I can be. By the time I have managed to undress and wash myself, I am exhausted, drying myself can be some days a truly huge problem. Just now it isn’t too hard as the weather is good and the house is warm, so I simply pat myself down as well as I can and use kitchen towel in the areas I know sores can appear, letting them blot the moisture of me, once as dry as I can get, I then let the air dry the rest of me, before I try to get dressed. I know because he has offered over and over again to help me, that all I would have to do is ask and Adam would be there, but I can’t get past my stupid embarrassment. His help wouldn’t be the full answer, though, just as in the comment, I too have a problem that sweat will build where skin meets skin and that alone can cause the skin to break down, which when you can’t feel it, well is a problem, one I haven’t found the answer to yet.

Just a week ago I was stressing myself out about the visit from the MS Support worker, now I guess with all that has been happening, I have something to talk to him about. On the other hand, though I can’t help wondering just how much of this happened because I was stressed out, one of those questions that I doubt there is a way of actually answering, as who really knows. The more I think about it though I now know that this all started prior the letter but skyrocketed after it. I am thinking of asking them not to write to me in future, but instead to just phone me on the day they are coming that way I don’t have this long time to twist myself into a state, hopefully as they deal with just people with MS they will understand my situation, so why do I think they will find it all very strange, maybe because that is the normal reaction I get from everyone else.

There is one other thing that I have found myself doing more and more, wearing my glasses here at my PC. I had a pair made just for this very use just over a year ago, but when they arrived I didn’t really find them a great help, so they have just sat on my desk doing nothing but gathering dust. I don’t really know what made me reach for them, but I think it was because I was feeling somewhat nauseous, something else I haven’t really suffered from for a long while. I used to find that I couldn’t deal with motion, things like sitting in the taxi and seeing things passing me by, or just sitting in my wheelchair being pushed, was enough to make me feel sick. A couple of weeks ago just moving my cursor or scrolling up and down a page was having the same effect, I had it explained to me while ago and if my memory serves me correctly, it had something to do with the fact that my vision being screwed up in my right eye due to macular degeneration, something they found when doing all the test for my MS. Because of all the pain I have been in recently due to the muscles tightening in my legs, I had played around to find a position at my desk that helped a little, but the downside is that I now see the TV out of the side of my right eye, the TV is giving me motion sickness, add in the what is happening on my PC screen and there is the reason for my nausea. I put my glasses on as although they don’t help with the TV movement, they do sharpen up the PC screen and means I reduce the fuzziness. Unfortunately, they don’t help with the left eye at all, a victim of MS. I can only guess that somewhere in my brain I was working this all out without real conscious thought, reaching for my glasses just happened and I am glad that it did.

Eyesight is something most of us take for granted, I had known for a long time there was something wrong with my right eye but normal eye tests didn’t find the issue. It was the more in depth test at the hospital that showed up the macular degeneration, something most people don’t have to deal with until old age, mine is down to my smoking, something most smokers don’t know can happen and once the damage is done, there is nothing that will fix it or even stop it, it will only get worse. It takes screws up your central vision, by firstly developing blind spots, but it also fuzzes out the rest of it. My peripheral vision is clear but it is unnatural to see that way and as things pass from clear to blind to fuzzed and so on, well it’s the same effect as motion sickness, all without moving an inch. My left eye has taken many hits from my MS, the worst about a year before I last left the house, I woke up one day with the plan of going to work to find I couldn’t see clearly at all, in fact if something was further than 6 inches away it was a total fuzz. I worked from home for two days, both of them with my nose almost touching the screen, convinced at first that it would never return to normal. I was as scared as hell, I really thought that was it, that I was never going to see clearly again, but it slowly returned until it was clear enough for me to return to life. MS can make you blind, it isn’t common but it happens, more common is pain in the eye and the loss I just described, optic neuritis is the inflammation of the optic nerve and it is normal for it to only be one eye at a time. I have been lucky so far for it to always repair itself, but with my MS being progressive, I many not be as lucky again.

Please read my blog from 2 years ago today – 27/06/12 – Teaching the young

Looking outside doesn’t seem to be the best idea today, it is another one of those warm damp days, yesterday evening I turned the TV to BBC one to watch the teatime news, I had turned over a little early and the days coverage of Wimbledon was just coming to an end, so I left it there and returned to what I was doing on my PC. I could hear the sound of Tennis balls, players, and the crowd, but when I looked up…..