Counting the cost

Posted on August 24, 2017 by livinginalimitedword

I have been having the strangest feelings lately. I keep looking around our home and all I feel is a sense of sorrow, I feel like I am seeing my home for the last time. I know that is silly, but almost every room was decorated by me, my choice of colours and mainly my handiwork. In just a few days someone will be here hiding it under a fresh coat of paint and what “I” did, will be gone. Yes, they will be painting on the colours that I have chosen and they have promised, to protect the three-inch border that I hand painted around our bedroom, and not to touch the paintwork in the living room that I spent so long making look as though it was painted 100yrs ago, and no-one has touched since. But it’s still not going to be the home that I put together, it will be different.

10 years ago, I was locked away from the outside world and I doubt that there will be many out there who even remember that I existed. Now, somehow, it feels as though I am starting to be erased from the small part of this world that I still exist in. I know that is so silly, but feelings are the most illogical of things, and once these guys have finished, it will still be my house, just a little less “my” home.

Right now we were supposed to be in full painter mode, and it’s not. Everything went on hold late last week when I had a phone call saying that they wouldn’t be able to start on time, due to the job they were doing being mainly out doors and thanks to the weather, they were way behind. We have had nothing but rain for the past two weeks, but no matter what happened they will be here next Monday. The week’s delay is in some ways a huge pain in the butt, but in other, has allowed us more time to do silly bits and pieces that once completed would allow the work to proceed more smoothly. When I say work, I really mean Adams work, he will, after all, be the one who will be moving stuff around so that the painters can move from job to job.

John, one of the owners of the decorating company was here this morning and I am finding myself once aging starting to panic about how it is all going to actually work. We have so much stuff and a huge proportion of it is breakable. It’s as though I hadn’t really seen it until now, which I know is stupid, but until now, it was more something that was happening somewhere out there, one of my dreams not something that is real, something that is actually about to happen. Oddly, the more real it gets, the sicker I am feeling and I do mean sick. I have even been waking up at night feeling as though I was about to throw up, and I keep desperately wanting to go and lie down on my bed. I’ve looked for other reasons and I can find none. It has to be a prolonged panic attack as I can think of nothing else that could be causing it.

I can even pinpoint the day that it started. I had invited a few handymen to come round and give me a quote for some smaller things that needed doing. The second guy was great, really friendly and gave both of us the confidence to say “Yes, you are the person we are looking for”. We arranged for him to be here this Thursday as painters wouldn’t be here, and then I mentioned we also needed a new floor to be laid in the kitchen and what roughly he would charge for the job. Before I knew it, I was agreeing to him being back here the Tuesday after the decorators leave, to do that work as well. Slight problem, we hadn’t even chosen the floor we wanted. By teatime on Sunday, we had chosen it, paid for it and the stuff required to fit it. I know it hasn’t, but that kind of pressure is exactly the pressure I have felt bearing down on me since the money left to me by my mother, hit my bank account.

I don’t know a single chronic illness that isn’t made worse by stress, but even our governments seem to be out to make sure we have loads of it. Part of the problem is being caused by the fact that I am on benefits. If you receive an inheritance it can mean losing then, until you have used it all to live on. There are though certain things that you can do, that will be accepted and not seen as trying to rip off the country. Our case, of using the money on household repairs and decor that hasn’t been touched, due to not having the funds as I don’t work, is allowed. We have only been spending on things that were either dangerous, as in the kitchen floor and replacing of tatty rugs, repairs such as the plaster that is at this second held to the wall by a thread in both the living room and kitchen, and making what was a dumping area into a useable space, are all OK. As are of course the medical aids I bought, Once it is all done, well what is left over the £6000 we are allowed to have in our bank accounts, will go to paying off another chunk of our mortgage, also allowed. But the pressure of documenting everything, keeping accounts to show what it was spent on, is just another pressure I could do without. It has to be done though, just in case someone asks any questions. Nothing is easy for us, the second we are too ill to work, we aren’t allowed to have anything that is private, especially not our finances. I’m just waiting for the day they want to install web cams, just to make sure you’re really as ill as you say.

Dumbstruck

Posted on August 2, 2016 by livinginalimitedword

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 …..

From the forgotten

Posted on July 23, 2016 by livinginalimitedword

I feel like hanging out flags and setting off some fireworks. Today, after 2 months of fighting with them, Talk Talk, the suppliers of my broadband service, have agreed that the problems we’ve been having, isn’t caused by anything in our home. That is, despite my replacing all the internal wiring, the router, and the telephones on their instructions. When their engineer arrived at the house within a minute, he located the issue as outside the house. All they have to do now is fix it and then I’m going to try and make them pay for the equipment that I didn’t need to buy, and all the stress and upheaval that they caused in my life. I know that that will be an even bigger battle, but at least the first step has been taken and I feel great about it. There really isn’t anything worse than feeling like you are being treated like both an idiot and a liar, when you know perfectly well, that you are neither.

Even if you are fit and healthy, the way some of these companies treat their customers is abominable. On the odd occasion, that I got past the person who answered my call, and actually spoke to a manager, I very much got the feeling that I was being patted on the head like a two-year-old. I told them on several occasions that I was disabled, housebound and needed both my phone and the internet as they are my only connection to the outside world, they still didn’t seem to take it as any more serious than an inconvenience. The problem with these huge companies is they don’t care about those who are making them money, we are nothing but a number and if they lose you, they will replace you with someone else. I haven’t told them yet, but the instance that this is all fixed to my satisfaction, I will be leaving, as soon as I can. I just wish that there was some way of making them feel the pain that they have been causing me, but that is impossible. I quite honestly believe that they have been behind much of the recent downturn in my health. I have been left several times sitting here in tears and with stress levels off the scale, while they continue on happily with their own little lives.

To me, this is yet another hole in the disability rights. Every company has to now supply access to their buildings for the disabled, they also have to employ a certain number of disabled people, but once past those physical situations, there is nothing that says we have the right to service appropriate to our conditions. As someone who is housebound, it goes without saying that my telephone and broadband service are essential. Without them, I have no contact with the outside world, there for, it is essential to my health. Right now, both my gas and electricity supply is protected, even if I didn’t pay the bill, they can’t cut the supply. My telephone company can do whatever it wants, how is that right?

Recently, here in the UK, there has been a drive for staff to be trained to be able to supply service for people with dementia. I don’t have dementia, but I can get just as confused and just as agitated as someone who does, due to the brain damage that I have. That drive is focused on shop and bank staff, there is nothing similar when it comes to their call centers, which these days is most people’s point of contact. I wouldn’t have the slightest qualm in having it written on my account that I have with every company I have dealings with, stating that I have a disability that needs specialist help on the phone. I have said many times before that I have huge issues making phone calls, but it came down to my having to make the calls to Talk Talk for several reasons and despite my telling them, over and over that I have a disability, on some occasions, I have even said it affects my brain, but nothing changed, nothing happened until I broke down in tears. It is so wrong that we are treated this way. Businesses have to change, they have to, as if they haven’t noticed, there is a huge aging population out there, many of whom will in time need specialist attention when dealing with them. The more elderly there are, the more people with chronic illnesses there will be, it’s a simple fact. If companies want our money, they need to shape up.

Sorry for going off on a rant, but as you can probably tell, this whole thing has really got to me, and it’s not even over. Unfortunately, you have to have your life turned upside down before you start to see the wrong in the world. Even worse than that, once you can, you’re not in any condition to put up the fight to get these things changed. Sometimes, I think the outside world knows that full well, in fact, they don’t just know it, they bank on it. We are the forgotten, the ignored and the put upon, simply for those reasons, and like everything else in chronic illness, it simply isn’t fair.

Please read my blog from 2 years ago today – 23/07/2014 – Pulling things back together

Calm and ready to go, well that is the story I am telling myself today, calm being the most important part of it all. After yesterday’s free fall into confusion, panic, isolation, agitation and pure hell, today has to be a better one and the best way I know of achieving that is to stay calm, to hold on to the normality of my day and just work my way through from now to bed time without letting go of total…..

Which, what or way next

Posted on July 6, 2016 by livinginalimitedword

The mental overload that I have found myself within the last few weeks is becoming exhausting. Why is it, that when life finds a chink in your mental armour, it then pours in more and more until you want to scream at everyone, “Just leave me alone”. I find myself exactly where I feared when I agreed to the help of carers. Finding those glorious gaps where I am alone and life is peaceful, seems almost impossible now. Two months ago, my life was easy, Adam and I alone on Saturdays and Sundays and every weekday when he works, I was here by myself and our evenings were about us, nothing else. Now, I have just Tuesday, Thursday, and Sunday, when life is as it was, the rest, are messed up, changed and noisy with people. How can just one hour from each day being changed, feel like a total day taken over?

I know that last week was exceptional, as I was really meeting and building the picture of my needs from the incontinence service and the district nurses, but even when they were here to do my enema this Monday, it felt like my entire day was reshaped. The enema on Friday hadn’t really worked. I did warn her that I didn’t think the contents of my bowels weren’t in reach. As she squeezed in the contents of what looked like a rather large bottle, all I felt was the tip of it, then 15 minutes later the liquid starting spill back onto the pad she had supplied for such an outcome. Neither of us had really thought it out either, as although my wheelchair was to hand, I had my trousers and knickers still around my ankles. Not exactly a good move when my body was racked by tremors and we had to somehow get to the loo. Trust me, it was a journey that I wouldn’t have managed without her assistance, otherwise, my white bedroom carpet wouldn’t be so white. It wasn’t as though my bowels cleared, they just took exception to having something enter it from the wrong direction.

Until late that afternoon, that was all that happened. The hours passed and nothing other than fast journeys for small amounts of liquid. I really shouldn’t have wished for action as that was what I got all day Saturday. Every time I moved, I had to go to the loo to clean myself up. I went from nothing happening, to a slow seepage of solid that I could do nothing about. On the good side, it was also Saturday that I started to feel pressure right across the top of my stomach, a pressure that I knew all too well. Late Sunday, it started to turn the corner and if life went to my bodies normal plan, that would have meant three more days of gentle build up, them two or three days of pain, before it would move again. Normal was interrupted on Monday, by enema number two, and the wonderful relief of all that future pain being interrupted by relief. As Murdoch used to say “I love it when a plan comes together!”. Because it cleared as far as possible, there was no follow-up leakage, no pain nothing, just my body doing what everyone else does with ease. Monday also found me on a good day. When the nurse arrived the tremors were quiet and I wasn’t normal, but about as close as I ever get. That meant that once she had me safely on the loo, without either my trousers of knickers, I told her to go. She could see clearly the difference in me and was happy to follow my wishes. I think she had been gone about twenty-five minutes when I started to wonder if my choice had been a wise one.

Somehow, I had to return to the bedroom, play about with the new mega towels she had delivered (quite honestly, if you added tags, it would fit a 6-month-old baby), get redressed, locked up the front door properly, and tidy up all the bits and pieces she left behind. That whole period from her ring the doorbell to then was about an hour and a quarter, and I didn’t have the tiniest drop of energy left, twenty-four hours on, and I’m still not revived. It appears that I somehow managed to empty, far more than just my bowels.

It’s Tuesday now, that means I am alone today, this is one of my peace days that I knew so well, but every second of it so far feels, like I am working towards finding the energy for tomorrow. The morning will find me once more with the nurse, and another enema, although I doubt there is much there after yesterday’s spectacular success. Tomorrow afternoon will see my carer here for my shower. How am I going to make my way through all that, and still be alive enough to enjoy my evening with Adam? A double whammy, that right now sounds like something that is going to leave me beyond wiped out, but I have no choice, this is the agreed plan, the way things are to be until we know exactly what works and what doesn’t, for my bowels. It goes without saying that I am more than hopeful that the space between each enema in time will be expanded.

It is bad enough that I feel so out of control of my body, but to throw in the sensation that my life has been taken over and planned by others, well, it’s left me just a little numb right now. Yesterday, the chemist arrived with yet another new drug, something else for me to swallow on the instructions of my doctor. It feels right now as though all I do is swallow and breath in medications, and when that fails, the nurses take over and insert it where I can’t. If anyone can think of any orifice they have missed, well please keep it to yourself. I always thought that our bodies were supposed to carry us through life and to bring us pleasure along the way, life now is all about medications, just to make it work at all. That pleasure piece, well, it’s still there when there is the time, just a little harder to find, and far less fun than I remember.

Please read my blog from 2 years ago today – 06/07/2014 – Some scares never heal

I feel that bit more under control today, not as lost and as though I am grasping at anything in my mind to keep me in line and still moving. It’s mad how something you knew, but didn’t want to hear, can really through you into the worst of muddles and make you just want to stop the world in it’s tracks for a while. I would even go as far as to say that my determination not to be beaten, is returning, not in the angry…..

Through hell and back

Posted on May 25, 2016 by livinginalimitedword

I hope you are sitting comfortably, as the tale I have to tell, has nothing comfortable about it. A simple hospital visit, that turned into a total nightmare. It should have been straightforward, the ambulance should arrive with plenty of time to take us to the hospital, see the doctor and another ambulance to take us home again. It should have been that easy, but it was nothing like that at all.

My appointment was for 11:15, but as always, we had no idea other than what we had been told by ambulance control, as to the when the ambulance would actually arrive. They as always had told Adam that it would be here, anytime after 8:30 am, the time my alarm would normally wake me for the day. So yesterday, my alarm was reset, for 6:45, a somewhat ungodly hour that I wasn’t looking forward to at all. For me, an hour and three-quarters, is a lot of sleep to lose, but to be ready, what other choice did I have. As 8:30 arrived, both of us were now ready and there was nothing more to do, other than wait for the doorbell to ring. I went about my normal morning routine and found myself by 10 am, playing games just to fill in the time. Adam was pacing about, looking out the window in hope of seeing it approaching then sitting again for a few minutes until he thought he heard something. That is a game that I have given up on long ago, but it is a character that I recognise in myself from years ago.

It was 10:40 when the buzzer rang and the crew started their way up the sandstone stairs to our flat. Even before Adam had our door fully unlocked and the storm doors held open for them, I could hear the noise of the stairclimber. As much as I hate those things, I have to some extent become used to them, but the racket they make is unmistakable. I had turned off the computer and had my coat on and sat in my wheelchair when the noise in the hallway changed. I even said to Adam could they have made more noise if they tired, as their voices were echoing around the stairwell. Then there was silence. Just for a few seconds, before their voices appeared again, but without the unmistakable noise of the climber. There was the odd sound of it trying to move, but the sound only lasted seconds, before we were back to the over loud attendants. I headed to the door, intrigued by this point as to what was going on.

I arrived there at about the same instance as one of the attendants. The climber had broken down half way up the stairs, they couldn’t get the chair up nor down the stairs and were going to have to call into control for another two-man crew, so they could carry me down, or for another climber. We were just going to have to wait and see what would happen. As 11:15 arrived and went, Adam phoned the hospital to say we would be late. He returned to the living room, to let me know that it wasn’t a problem, we would be seen that day, either as soon as we got there, or we would be added to the afternoon list. Not perfect, but at least we were going to be seen. As luck would have it, the second crew arrived quite promptly and were made it to the hospital, before 12. During the trip, we were told that the stairclimber had just returned into service, after spending the last 7 months in Germany being repaired. The crew were hopeful, though, that it just needed a properly charged battery.True to their word we were seen promptly and were back at the ambulance station within the hospital, to wait for our return trip by twenty past.

We were with the consultant for about 15 minutes, discussing what had happened in the past six months. To be honest, I didn’t have a great deal to report, as my chest has been really quite good, just the odd difficult point which he put my mind at rest about, in fact, things have been so good that he suggested that we didn’t need to return, unless I was having problems. With Adam working in the same hospital, he can go and talk to them at any time if needed, so we are in a different position from many. Right to the point that he has said he can just drop of a sputum sample without even talking to them, should I be having new problems. It was at the point where we should have probably been leaving when I suddenly remembered that I had forgotten to bring my DNR with me, as I wanted it added on to my hospital records so that no mistakes could be made in the future. I had to once again show that I wasn’t depressed and that I knew what it meant before he agreed. But he congratulated me on my ability to have looked forwards and to have made this decision so that it didn’t have to fall on Adam in the future.

We were about to leave when he once again gave me his standard warning about not being able to give me oxygen at home if I continued to smoke. I instantly pulled him up on it, and told him that I had read Scottish government policy that said the total opposite. As I went further in quoting some sections, he showed quite clearly, that he too had read it. Although not word for word, he too started to site parts of the policy document, both Adam and I knew then, it had been nothing but a hollow threat, and we had caught him out. Adam and I chatted about it on the way to the station room, I have to admit, that was quite smug about it actually. I seem to be growing stronger in my old age, as a few years ago, just because of his position in life, I wouldn’t have questioned him. I used to be very much part of the school of thought, as in “who am I to question someone more learned than myself”.

We had been outside for a cigarette and had been waiting for well over an hour for our transport home, when the women who runs the system within the hospital, decided to phone and find out what was happening. We were told they would be there in 20 minutes, a time that came and went. She called again and while on the call, she put it onto speaker phone, ambulance control had just realised they needed another stair climber to get me home. It was then that I started to get uptight and reminded Adam about what I had said, just a couple of days before. I had had the strangest feeling that the whole day was going to be a disaster, one that was going to push me to the limits. Control ordered another ambulance to come for us, we had little faith in their timing of half an hour and it too came and went, but this time for just 5 minutes.

When we arrived back here, well clearly, I thought that was it, it wasn’t. We were half way up the third flight of stairs when this stairclimber also broke down, this time, with me in it. I was in this half sitting, half lying down position and there was no way of getting me up or down, it was totally dead. Adam had run up the stair ahead of us, so he could get the doors open, it took him a couple of minutes to realise the noise in the hallway had changed and to return down the stairs to be with me. At first, I was fine, but when they called in and were told that there were no other batteries to swap over with and that carrying me was the only option, that I started to get wound up. I also heard them say, that not even a six-man crew could lift me and the chair, the whole thing was too heavy and didn’t have anything to hold onto, to lift it by. I was totally stuck. The tears started and my entire body was shaking as different nerves started to react to my distress. They did their best to calm me down and to reassure me that I was perfectly safe where I was, but trust me, it’s a position you don’t feel safe in.

The crew were great and didn’t take the word of their control. They knew where there was a battery and they called the guy who had it. It was on board another ambulance which was at the Southern General, half an hour from our home. I was just going to have to try and calm down and accept what was happening. I had a cigarette and Adam brought me a drink and between the three of them, the took me through several fits of tears and tremors. Adam even took over holding the bottom of the chair so that I could see him with ease, which actually helped a lot. No matter how well trained these crews are, it was being able to see Adam and knowing he was holding the weight at the bottom of the chair, gave me more trust in the fact I was safe.

The second battery arrived and switched them over. At last, we were on the move again. This is where it gets beyond a joke, half way up the final flight, it too broke down. I was once more stranded. It was the first time that luck came into this whole things. As they are apparently designed to do, there was enough power to go downstairs, but not up, so we at least could return to the landing, where we waited for assistance again. Another 15 minutes of waiting and yet another crew arrived, this time, I changed into the chair they can carry, and that was how I eventually arrived home. I know this post is long, but it was a long day and one that that needed to be written about, as without a doubt, it is a mirror to the state of NHS. At 4 pm yesterday, the time I arrived back in my home, there wasn’t a single working stair climber in the entirety of Glasgow. Nor will there be today, as those batteries take a full 24 hours to charge and no, they don’t have spare ones charging all the time.

By bedtime last night, I still had that feeling that I could burst into tears any second, I was right on the edge and I had no idea how to get rid of it. I have to admit, that even writing this, has made me feel that way again. I am sure that you also understand why it has taken till now for me to make a post at all, something, I thought I might have managed to write when I was home yesterday. The bad news is, that I once again have to put my life in the hands of the ambulance service next week. I just hope it is nothing like yesterday.

Please read my blog from 2 years ago today – 25/05/2014 – Facing the facts

I woke at midnight, I wasn’t sure the second I woke what was wrong I just knew something was and that it had broken my sleep abruptly. Then it happened again, I can say that as the second it did I knew that was it, that was what had disturbed me, something really hard to do these days. My lower legs both of them were in pain and not a spasm, this was different almost as though they were causing me pain just because they could. I lay there for a few seconds……