This is my story, my battle with MS, from it's frightening beginnings, to the good days and bad days, my work life, my everyday life, how I deal with it! I shall not bother in going into all the technical details of MS, you all know them off by heart by now! Knowing all there is to know about it is a bit of a double edged sword, although it is good to know the facts, it can also scare the hell out of you!
Part.1 The month was June, the year 2000, should have been a good year but The Visitor set up camp and decided to stay for a long time, well forever actually! That year was my 40th, a landmark event for sure but for all of the wrong reasons!
There were warning signs beforehand, in hindsight, glaringly obvious now when I look back but at the time, each of these were just thought of as being one of those 'weird', unexplained events! "Christ I feel lousy today, must have laid too heavy on that arm, I never noticed that step before", all of the usual things that you tend to think of to try and explain away the 'unexplainable'! Then there was the tiredness that began to rear it's ugly head, the total, all consuming tiredness that I had no reason to be feeling, what the hell had I been doing to feel this tired and as I now know, nothing, absolutely nothing! At first it was annoying, I could never finish that great TV programme, or that 'must see' DVD without nodding off and not knowing how it had finished! Then there was the day I rode my bicycle into a hedge for no reason, hilarious at the time! Then there were many times when I would plunge my hands into a bowl of boiling hot washing up water and there would always be that delay before the pain kicked in! That funny taste in my mouth, Coca-Cola always seemed to have a strange taste, sweet things tasted salty and bananas, which I used to love, would make me vomit for no reason! Then there were the bruises, how did they get there? I didn't remember knocking my arm or bashing my leg, what started off as confusing, soon became worrying, mainly because it would take place with alarming regularity! Up until this point in my life, I had never suffered any health problems at all and so I never worried that much when these things started to occur, even the 'trip' at work that sent me crashing into a pallet of pressed steel car panels, resulting in a nasty gash in my arm that needed stitches, again, the total lack of any pain should have rung alarm bells but it didn't! Anyway, long story short, things became more frequent, so a visit to my Doctor was needed! He was unsure and advised me to make a second appointment the following week but before this visit was due to take place, all hell broke loose! The fatigue took hold completely, I could not stay awake, my speech became incoherent, my coordination went and I began to vomit, profusely and with alarming regularity! Then one night my wife called the Doctor and when he arrived, without any hesitation, arranged for me to go to hospital.
I was in hospital for a week, very ill, very confused and very, very frightened! Due to me constantly vomiting, I was unable to have an MRI scan for a while, I cannot blame them really, me throwing up all over their nice piece of Hi-Tech kit probably would not go down very well! So until the anti-sickness drugs kicked in, they decided to give me a lumbar puncture (spinal tap), having this gave them some idea what was going on and when I finally had the MRI, their thoughts were confirmed! I will always remember that day when this very young Doctor came into my ward, pulled up a chair by the side of my bed and proceeded to tell me what all the tests carried out on me had shown, I had been diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis. My reply to this was 'oh, I've never had that before'! A strange comment to make but at the time, feeling as rough as I was, I was just glad that they could put a name to my problem...! This part of my journey was thirteen years ago and without sounding too corny, the journey had only just begun!
Part 2 of my Blog Early 2014..............
