Tag Archives: progression

Life without legs

Posted on by
7

I have felt my lungs closing in on me in the last few days. To be honest, I can’t remember when I was first aware of it. It was just there, but it didn’t feel new if that makes any sense. There was a tightness across my back, nothing new there, but to go with it, I had the feeling that my right lung was solid. I don’t mean like concrete, but solid as in not giving, not flexible. I’ve felt it a few times at the end of a hard day, but this has been with me constantly now for several days. At first, I thought it was just the stress of the meeting building up on me, but as I said yesterday, that pressure has lifted dramatically. I am still a touch no the tired side, but that is to be expected, but this thing with my lungs, well it hasn’t changed at all, it’s just there as it has been for several days. I have tried both my inhalers and my nebulizer but nothing seems to touch it. It is as though it has decided to become a fixture in my life. I know it’s early days, but it just has that feeling, like it has come to stay. I don’t seem either to be able to get anything like a stable reading on my blood oxygen. They have been all over the place, from highs of 94%, with sudden and dramatic dips as low as 86%, when I least expect them. The worst ones always seem to be when I have returned from a trip in my wheelchair, which I thought would have been the time, they should have been at their best. Just as exercise raises you heart rate, I thought it would force more oxygen into my blood, not less? Mind you, I have given up on my body doing what it should in all other respects, why not in this one as well.

It isn’t just my lungs that are playing up, my legs seem to be getting worse by the day. Yesterday morning I stood up to go to my wheelchair to fetch something to drink, when both legs from above my knee upwards, just started to shack violently. My knees wouldn’t lock and I was sort of stuck in a half seated position, not able to stand and not sure how to sit down again. For once, though, my arms did come to my rescue. They locked perfectly and I was able to lean on them, while my body decided, just what it was going to do. I hit the seat heavily and actually quite painfully, as often is the case when things like this happen, it was my backside that took the true injury. I may not like the fact that I have gained weight, but sometimes, that extra layer of blubber is actually quite welcome. A few minutes later I did make it to my chair and right through to the bathroom without issue, but once there, I was so glad that we had the grab rails installed, as, without them, I wouldn’t have made it to the loo, at least not without a visit to the floor first. It almost feels as though my legs have noted that there is now little opportunity to achieve collapse, since the bars arrived, as without a doubt, since that day, they have become weaker and shakier than they were before.

This isn’t the first time that I have had that feeling. That my body has been hanging on as long as it could until the new gadget or aid arrives, then bang, it has permission to stop even trying. I am sure that a shrink would probably agree, but say that it has nothing to do with the state of my body, but everything to do with the state of my brain. I like to think that I’m that little bit above such a thing, but I’m probably not. Either way, I can track with total ease the decline of my ability to stand or walk, from the day I sat in my wheelchair for the first time, 5 months ago, to this date. Clearly I took the chair out of the cupboard as there were clear signs that I needed it, but since I started to use it, all of that has speeded up. The grab rails arrival seems to be hosting, the same sort of sudden change. Where ever I am, that final act of truly standing is getting more and more difficult. Almost as though, each time I sit or lie down, they degrade, so when I next need to stand, at first I can’t. I am finding myself instinctively adopting a wider stance, one that I think my body is demanding in the hope that it will provide more stability. I have even found myself not quite straightening my hips, I think that it’s because I fear falling, and that way, I am closer to the seat I just stood from.

It amazes me how the combination of our minds and our bodies changes over time, and how they both seem to do things without asking us. A year ago, I was still capable of standing upright and walking, now, I am either in my wheelchair or shuffling like a little old lady, permanently reaching for the next thing I can hold onto. I have gone from confident to fearing the whole process, even when I’m not truly aware of the fear. Five months, that’s all it has taken. How will I be in another five months? What is the next change, the next process that I’m just waiting to discover, I can no longer do?

 

Please read my blog from 2 years ago today – 28/04/2014 – Adjusting

Every day I tell myself this is it, I have done it, at last, I have found the way to get through the things I have to do each morning faster, every day I find myself here just at about the same time as I do every other day. Just like every other day, I am beating myself up about it. Why is it that no matter what happens in life we are always the ones hardest on ourselves, we are the ones who actually make our own lives tougher than they should be, just because we have stupid expectations of our own ability. Even now although I haven’t worked for years, there are nights when I dream that I am still in the office and that I am trying as I always did to keep all the plates spinning, despite no one expected me to do half of that which I did daily. I have even woken in……

That next step

Posted on by
8

I am coming to the conclusion that how I feel now, is probably how I am going to remain feeling. It has been too long now since I felt any other way, for it to go backwards. The problem with haveing a condition that is both progressive and has flares is actually telling the difference. Not all flares are wildly dramatic, unlike my understanding from other blogs that I had read. From them, I thought all flares appeared suddenly and totally destroyed you. In fact, I thought it wasn’t a flare unless you became bedbound, had a wildly dramatic change in a symptom, or found yourself in the hospital. Wrong. A “flare” is any unexplainable change in your health or your body. It’s as simple as that. The key word is change. It can be anything from finding yourself more tired than usual, to losing the use of a limb. If it hasn’t happened before, or not to that extreme extent, plus it lasts more than a day, then that’s a “flare”, just as much as the dramatic stuff is. The final definition of a “flare” is, it also goes away again, maybe not completely, but they always settle down to a large extent. Yes, that does mean with the milder stuff that you can’t be sure until it’s gone, just what is happening to you. Which is why I started to refer to much of my health as being phasic, rather than just having flares and progression. Especially, when I reached the point where there wasn’t a symptom that I hadn’t had before. Health more than any other thing proves perfectly that nothing in life is just black and white. Hence my need for the third state. Progression is my everyday life, phasic, the humps on that road and flares, are the car crashes we can’t escape. Three states make far more sense than just two.

Before I knew better, I thought that health had rules to it, that when you got ill, you would be handed a leaflet that laid out what you could expect, from your condition. The truth is, there are no rules, no leaflets, nothing that helps you through any of it. Worse than that, it can take you years to work that out. Your health changes, something happens that you didn’t expect, and you don’t have the slightest idea what to do next. Doctors don’t help, they’re as much use as a short piece of wet rope. Yes, if you have a dramatic flare then we need them to prescribe steroids, but other than that, they can do nothing for us. So you start working it out for yourself as you have no other option. To their faces, you use the terminology they do, to ourselves we name things with words that feel are right. So if some symptoms come and go, a bit worse this time than the last, sticks around for a while, then fades away, well in my world they’re phasic, not “flares”, nor progression. When they step up and don’t go away, don’t get any better despite doing all the things you can think of, well there is no choice left, other than to accept it as progression.

It’s been weeks, closing on months, since I last felt anything close to what I once called normal. There’s another word, “normal”, there isn’t anything to replace it, so it’s there. “Normal”, it’s something that also changes, it’s never the same for more than a day, so how can it be “normal” Well it’s another way of saying we have accepted where we are, as how we will be forever. It doesn’t mean that we like it, it just means that we have accepted it. After weeks of writing about how things are wrong, how I don’t feel as I should, well today, I’ve accepted that this is my new “normal” thanks to progression. This isn’t phasic as I hoped it was, it has done nothing but get worse and stay worse. If progression needs a definition, well that’s it.

I find it hard now to believe that I was ever like other people. That I once went out and about. That I could once run, climb and dance, all with passion and joy. Which is actually one of the cruelties of this illness, it’s taken out someone who lived life with passion. Who never once had a car, avoided buses and trains and took pleasure in just walking everywhere. I look now at a world filled with people who do everything to avoid using their legs, now I can’t, where is the fairness in that? Here I am stuck using a wheelchair just to manage to get from one side of a room to another, yet, this is my normal. I guess, “normal”, is what you make it, in whatever way you can. Mine now means feeling nauseous and tired without the energy to just stand up and fetch something. Constantly tired, able to sleep at the drop of a hat and with a body that knows more pain, that it does silence. Every change that I go through, I name them all phasic, in the hope that they will go away. If I’m honest, it ceased having any hope of it being such several weeks ago, I just kept hoping. Hope is something you hold onto tightly and grip gets even stronger the longer you are ill. Without it, what do you have?

The good thing about declaring the new “normal”, is it means I can now let go of the old. Just as I forgot about running as an option, I can now let go of the possibility of ever being truly awake and I can look forwards from now. That’s why accepting is good, it’s not about giving up, it’s about moving forwards and stopping that terrible yearning for the past. If you spend your life looking back, you’re never going to move anywhere. So here we are, at a new dawn and life is good.

 

Please read my blog from 2 years ago today – 04/03/2014 – Just deal with it

I seem to be slightly closer to be on track today which is odd if you consider just how little has actually changed since yesterday. Out of all the things that could possibly drive me mad at any time, this hesitation, or stuttering fingers is really driving me nuts! I hadn’t realised just how much I actually express myself by typing and just how much time I really do spend every day communicating without saying a single word. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised to find that my vocal stutters have relocated themselves into my fingers as thier power to anger me through talking had become somewhat limited once I became housebound. Joking aside, my dexterity hasn’t really change that much in the last few years, yes I drop small fiddle things, spend more time than most searching around the kitchen floor for that coke bottle cap, or tablet……

There are blessings

Posted on by
Reply

I’m sitting listening to yet another TV show, about staying healthy, and wondering not just why, but if this short of show, has actually changed anyone’s life for the better. There must be thousands and thousands of hours of this sort of programming shown worldwide every year, but does anyone really change their diets, or lifestyles, because someone on TV, has told them this or that is the way you’ll live longer. I have to say that I have never once actually paid attention to any of it, but I still watch, which in itself is odd. I can’t help wondering what is going on here? Look at the ratings and the shows are clearly popular, in fact, there are some channels dedicated to them, but look around and the evidence that’s out there, shows they aren’t working. If they were, we would all be pin thin joggers, who eat nothing that could do us any harm. Mind you, that might be rather hard to find, if, you listen closely to all their warnings. It’s just a thought.

A couple of months ago, I wrote about the problems that I was having with my hands I was having following moving back into my wheelchair. At first, it was aggravating my HMS and my thumb joints kept popping out, not just when I was using the chair, but when I was doing nothing. The good news is, that they aren’t doing this nearly so much. I think, that the persistent use of the muscles in my hand, has strengthened them, and the joints are being held in place better. The bad news is, I am getting more and more spasms, and my entire arms, aren’t getting stronger, just weaker. I can’t make a simple trip in my chair to the kitchen and back, without being left with pain my upper arm muscles for the next half hour. I don’t remember getting spasms in my hands, other than the odd one, very occasionally, but that has totally changed. I never get through more than a handful of hours now without them doing something odd. It can be anything from, spasms so painful, that they stop me dead and I have to massage them, in a hope of breaking the spasm, to twitching and tremors that are just plain annoying. Clearly, I do a lot of typing and have done now for years, but in the last two months or so, I have found my left hand doing the oddest of things. I’ve joked for several years now, that my Dyslexia had spread to my fingers, as I frequently hit wrong keys. Yes, I am Dyslexic, I was diagnosed before it had that name, in those days they called it word blindness, my father, just called me stupid. Now it’s not just as simple as hitting the wrong key, because, my fingers aren’t where my brain think they are, now they’re just stopping in mid-air, shaking over the keys, but unable to hit them. My right hand isn’t affected nearly so badly. There are far fewer spasms in it as well as odd movements, but that isn’t really surprising, as my left hand has been weaker for years, ever since it died and took a year to return.

It has changed so much in the last month that I am now beginning to worry about it. I’m not transfixed by it, but there are so many small things happening, that just weren’t there before I returned to using them to propel me. I can remember quite clearly what life was like when my hand died and the problems that it caused. I don’t think that my hand is about to die again, it doesn’t feel that way, but the rapid increase in odd behaviour is suggesting that it is just going to keep progressing in a direction that I really don’t like. When you can’t trust your hand to do what you expect, it makes life difficult, and not just when you a typing. Everything from eating to holding onto things becomes a lottery, you simply don’t know for sure, that your hand will complete a task or throw a spasm midway. Being right handed, is a plus right now, but there is this niggle that says “For how long”.

I can remember years ago a conversation about if you had to lose part of you, what would be the worst thing to lose? Well, as I have proved, losing your legs is a huge inconvenience, but it is one you can get around. Sight always sounded like the most horrific, but I again have proved to myself, that I can get around the house, find what I need and functions without seeing. With an app, that reads back what I type, well, I could still manage as I am already a touch typist. But losing my hands, well that would stop everything. As I already know, losing one hand isn’t the end, but it is incredibly hard, even though it was my left and not my right.

I guess, that when you have a collection of conditions like I have, especially ones that are attacking the nervous system, it is something we are bound to at least think about from time to time. Our conditions are so unpredictable and often, do things without any warning at all. Those events are distressing, but waking up finding some part of you no longer works, isn’t half as bad as watching something slowly change. Almost daily, being aware that this or that is just that bit worse than it was, or it’s doing something totally new that you had never, even thought possible. It’s like watching yourself falling apart, diminishing bit by bit and become something that you don’t like. Progressive illnesses, whether they move quickly or slowly, are quite simply cruel. I used to think of it as aging on speed, but I realised a long time ago that it’s worse than that. At least, when your aging, you’re doing what everyone does, it is just part of the progress of life and all those around you, are doing it too. Yes, I could look at my health that way, but that would be a lie, because I know, that I am on a progression that no one has done identically before me. On the plus side, it is a life of discovery, but it’s sometimes hard, to find the adventure in what you’re losing, as most adventures are about gaining. Yes, I gain knowledge daily about what my body can and can’t do, but that knowledge, is never, a good enough compensation for the losses as they appear before my eyes. Progressive illness is cruel and in my case, relatively slow, that is my blessing. Everything that has happened to me, could have happened in one catastrophic night, but I have been given years. At times it speeds up, at others it slows down, never stationary, even when I, at first, think it is. Percieved stationary, generally turns out to be something sneaky going on inside. Out of sight, can never be out of mind as that is just plain dangerous. I can’t stop any of this, no one can, but I hold onto my blessing as it has given me time, time to live, time to spend with those I love and that, it is the biggest blessing of all.

 

Please read my blog from 2 years ago today – 25/01/2014 –  What if

I am an avid news watcher so I was surprised that with so much coverage of the flooding down south, that although we have seen the odd elderly person being assisted out of there homes, there had been no mention other…..

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It’s not the bed

Posted on by
6

I am amazed at the difference just getting rid of that horrid little tablet has made. My head is now clear and I find that I am feeling so much better, that at this moment, even the pain doesn’t feel that bad, mind you, that could be the increased Gabapentin, after all, it’s not one of those drugs that relies on a build up effect. Today, I feel like a person again, rather than a zombie racked with pain. Duloxetine is supposed to be an antidepressant, for me, just those four days on it, did without a doubt, pull me down. So now I am me, I can get on with life and see about sorting out the rest of me.

It doesn’t matter how long you live with chronic illness, some of the effects of your condition can actually take over everything else. It is now over three years since I went through loads of test to prove what I already knew. That is one of the problems with modern medicine, they have to prove things, tick all of their boxes before, they believe you. My digestive system hasn’t been working correctly, for all that time, and longer. It started with pain across the top of my stomach and a pressure that was making it slowly harder and harder to breath. It was that pressure, that triggered the spasms in my diaphragm and then the intercostal spasms. Once they were triggered, well breathing just got more and more difficult and led to more tests and diagnosis of COPD. My intestine is basically, only, partially working. The nerves that are supposed to push the contents through me, are dead in some areas and relying on bulk to push from behind, to make it pass into the next section. I tried drug after drug, but the results were only ever tempory, and always relied on huge quantities and inevitable, caused more and more pain.

Before anyone says this can be helped by diet, well, I am virtually a vegetarian and my diet, couldn’t be more healthy if I tried, and yes, I do drink plenty of fluids. My GP was at a loss as to what else could be done and I landed up, once more back at the hospital. For once, the consultant I saw didn’t send me for tests, but sat and went through it in detail. His answer was Pysillium and to throw out every drug that my Doctor had prescribed for constipation. In his opinion, they were as useless as sugar water, totally pointless and were probably making things worse, not better. It took me several attempts and a lot of work to find a way, of actually taking the stuff, as it is totally inedible when turned into a drink, the suggested and normal method of taking it. Clearly to me, those who manage this method, don’t own either tastebuds or the ability to feel any form of texture in their mouths. It is the most foul and unpalatable substance anyone has suggested, I, should eat or drink. I discovered I could make a form of pancake which although still odd, they were, at least palatable, and eating one a day was amazing, in just a week, I started going to the loo. It wasn’t a total miracle drug, but I went to loo at least every three or four days, and I went without pain or effort. Like everything else, I have found that I have had to slowly increase the quantity of Pysillium that I consumed daily, but that wasn’t a problem, but, it meant I had to cut other foods out, as the pancakes are incredibly filling, but they worked. Yes, I did use the word worked, not working, as I have had some problems.

At first, I blamed the bed, as I kept waking with a painful back, which with my array of painkillers, was easy to handle. We got a new mattress and the back pain went away, but only for a couple of months. Then, just occasionally, I was still waking with pain in my lower back, worst on the left side, but it wasn’t as bad as in the past and I convinced myself, that it was just one of those things. Last month, I had two nights that were a million miles above anything I had gone through before and I instead of struggling a little to get up, I was struggling big time, even when using the mattress elevator. The pain didn’t just disappear once I had been up for a few minutes, it hung around for about an hour, then slowly faded. I looked and looked for a reason and simply concluded, that it had something to do with how I was lying and nothing more than that.

Two weeks ago, it suddenly started to appear within minutes of lying down and it wasn’t confined to my back any longer, it was running into my legs, my groin, and lower stomach. That was when I started to think again, this had nothing to do with the bed, it had to have everything, to do with my guts, once again. Getting up in the morning, was total agony, a pain that I had woken to, repeatedly overnight, it was off the scale of what I had known in the past. I could hardly manage the few steps from my bed to my wheelchair. As luck would have it, that morning, I went to the loo very soon after waking and I passed what I would call an acceptable quantity, more importantly, the pain vanished. That was the first clue, but far from the last.

I no longer have to be lying down, it appears in response to almost anything, including wind and simply eating, the pain could be triggered. This week, I have been to the loo three times, yet this morning the pain was once again off the scale. Walking was almost impossible as the pain wasn’t only in my groin, but my sciatica nerve, something I haven’t felt since I was pregnant with Jeffry, and unusually, the front of my thighs. I woke not just because of the pain, but my breathing was also difficult, to the point that it was my breathing, that forced me out of the bed. I haven’t been to the loo, nor has the pain totally left, there’s a shadow pain where the worst points where. I haven’t just accepted my own conclusions, I checked online and was surprised by the amount of information there is out there that confirms just what constipation can do your back.

So what do you do when you have done everything, that your doctors have said, and suddenly find yourself, in a far worse condition than any you have found yourself in before? I have been to the loo each day for the past three days, yet here I am as always, bloated and in pain. The pressure being caused on my body, is unbelievable, back, chest and everything inside me are being squashed. I’m not constipated in what I would call the normal way, as my bowels are moving, slowly but moving. I am rapidly coming to the conclusion that I have an area that is now working less effectively than it has in the past. Before I started going to the loo this week, I hadn’t been for over a week. I had put that down to the extra food that I ate over the New Year and that it would move when it was ready. Those four motions I have had, well they would match to the four days I ate my pancakes, well I couldn’t eat them, as well as those festive meals I allowed myself. I have no choice, tonight, I have to add in a laxative, something I don’t like doing now that I have been clear of them for so long. They are unpredictable, but what choice do I have. I no this is another one of my guesses, but, I think like all of me progression has played its part. Now my entire gut, both upper and lower sections, are backing up, and causing me pain. Once again, I am going to have to up my Psyllium dose, but from here on in, I can’t ignore any pain in my back, even the slightest. The last thing I want, is for my bowel to become impacted, something I think is a growing possibility. For the last year, I have wrongly thought this was a problem that was totally under control. Psyllium was my wonder drug, even though it isn’t really a drug, more a supplement. I had simply forgotten one thing, nothing in my life ever stands still, it just gets worse and I can’t afford to ignore anything, not even a little pain in my back.

 

 

Please read my blog from 2 years ago today – 14/01/2014 – What next?

Please tell me what is so hard about just going to bed when you are tired? It seems to be something I am doing less and less when I need to and more and more because the clock allows me to. I have been pushing…..

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It will be a good New Year

Posted on by
4

The start of year nine, I don’t know what I thought would happen when I became housebound, but I never once thought that I would be sat exactly where I was nine years ago, counting the years. Mind you, do we ever look that far ahead of ourselves in our future reality. I know we all have dreams and plans, but that’s not the same thing, what I’m talking about, is really imagining and putting ourselves “into” our future. I don’t think any of us do, simply because we can’t truly see our future. It doesn’t matter how much detail we amass about our health, none of us can truly imagine ourselves in those final stages, not us, other people but not us. Even when we were diagnosed with whatever horror our doctors found, we didn’t actually look into our future in detail, only in the most general of terms. All of us draw up a worry list, almost immediately those words were spoken. It probably started with the fear of having to stop working, how we’ed pay our bills and would our families stand by us, or vanish as we grew iller. All valid concerns, but none, have a single thing to do with how we would feel, how we would survive mentally, emotionally and even physically, or how we will deal with our health vanishing and not being able to do anything we wanted. We don’t think of future pain, future inabilities and how long we will have to live housebound or bedbound. I for one didn’t think about any of the things, that really matter to me as an individual, not as a partnership, or a member of a family, I mean totally and narrow-mindedly about myself. Every single thought I had, somehow, included Adam. Now that’s not a bad thing, but as this is happening to me, why didn’t I think about me?

It was in the first week of January 2007, that I had to come home from work as I couldn’t manage my wheelchair as my left hand was dead. Not being able to manage my chair, meant I couldn’t manage the office and I was going to have to work from home. I don’t remember it ever entering my head that I wasn’t going to be able to leave here alone ever again. At first, I know that I thought it was just a matter of time, my arm would recover and I would be free again, but by the time it did, other things had progressed, and I was never to leave again. So maybe that’s why I have no memory of looking into what me true future was back then, because, I couldn’t see it, I couldn’t believe, that I was housebound forever. Looking backwards, it’s easy to see why we don’t see the truth, even when it’s staring straight at us. We lie to ourselves, over and over again, painting a glossy picture, as we’re us. What the doctors or those websites say, is about other people, not us. None of that, well maybe the mildest parts might, but the bigger, bader picture, no, not us. Those lies are what keep us sane, able to cope, able to get on and live our lives, even if that life is a lie, it’s better than the truth.

I remember when I was at the hospital for my chemo, and there in the waiting room was this lovely and loving man. He was sat there talking to his wife, who was sat in a wheelchair, not like mine, but one that she was strapped into. Her head hung to one side and her voice was so weak and so slurred that only he could understand her. He sat there wiping away the saliva that escaped the corner of her mouth, ever time she tried to say something. Although he was clearly engrossed in his wife and her needs, he took the time to talk to me. His wife was my possible future, she too was there for chemo, just two months earlier, she had been fine, then she had a flare, the result was there in front of me. I felt like a fraud. My health was bad, and I was creeping forwards far too fast, towards losing my job, but in comparison, I was fine. I still hope that the treatment worked as well for her, as it did for me, as I never saw her again. Even then, at that very second when we were facing each other, I couldn’t imagine I could ever be like that, because, I was me. Conceited, no, just self-defense, I didn’t want to believe, I didn’t want to see or even think, that such a thing could happen. My blinkers were firmly fixed and firmly closed, to my future. This, though, was the year, when I first saw a single sign of that lady, in me, and it hurt, it really hurt. None of us want to believe, the worst can ever happen, or the end is ever getting closer.

It’s been a year where anyone who has read my blog throughout it, will know that my health started to race, started to take me into places, I hadn’t wanted to even think about. The start of year nine, finds me in a totally different place, than the start of year eight. Even this time last year, I couldn’t see or believe that what has happened, would or even could, yet here I am, still me, but a lesser me, a somewhat diminished person compared to just twelve months ago. The new year is all about looking back and looking forwards. It’s taken me almost every year of my age, to realise, we are actually only capable of doing one of those things. None of us can even glimpse our future, without having touched it. When we look forwards, what we see is totally determined by just three things, our belief in ourselves, our attitude and hope, the strongest of the three, has to be hope. The belief in ourselves will take us a long way, if we’re determined, even our health can’t take everything we dream of away. Our attitude, well that takes us that bit further, as used correctly, it sees our dreams as never defeated, just needing that bit more work, but we’ll get there. Hope, well hope is going to make this a wonderful year, as it’s hope, that fills in the adds the gloss and the glamour, that makes life far more than just worth living.

My ninth year of being housebound is going to be another good year. I know that, I can’t see it, or predict it, I just know it. Just as I knew every previous year would be and was. Life is good, if you can smile and laugh, if, you can feel the love, of those you love, if, you can feel the care, of those you care for. Whatever our health does to us, well if we have all that, we can survive it, more than survive it, we can get on and live our lives, in hope and happiness.

 

Please read my blog from 2 years ago today – 01/01/2014 – Happy New Year

2014, well it’s only begun so I have incredibly little to say about it, yet, give me a couple of days and I am sure that that will change, but of course  I hope all of you have a Great New Year. I didn’t make it…..