A good life (honestly!) with Multiple Sclerosis…
I work (for now), I love, I live, I have fun. Just with wheelchairs and drugs and spasms and stuff...
21 June 2019
Hmmm… That title could take this blog so many directions! Option 1 Yes, Multiple Sclerosis makes me visibly disabled, tired, never far from a loo etc. It also affects my thinking. Cognitive Dysfunction they call it. The same faulty nerve signals affecting my legs (for example) directly impact my brain. I can’t process the world around me as fast as others. I can’t concentrate or focus for long. I forget things, especially short-term. I struggle to multi-task. [insert appropriate bloke joke]. On a bad MS day, I would certainly pass as stoopid. Nope, not talking about that today. Option 2 It’s a bugger, but my brain is also affected in other, subtler ways. (the long-suffering Mrs W would argue […]
12 June 2019
OK, so my recent post missed Invisible Disability Awareness Week by a month. And this one is missing Volunteers Week by a few days. Fortunately I have the catch-all excuse, “I have Multiple Sclerosis”. It’s brilliant, I can blame anything on it. From dropped cups, forgotten names, through jumbled words, random spasms, people rammed with my funky wheelchair to nodding off and snoring, it’s MS… Oh golly, we’re so lucky… Fundraising I don’t know how long this blog is going to be, because all I really want to say is a huge thank you to volunteers everywhere! In August, twelve amazing, hardy souls are swimming from Portsmouth to the Isle of Wight to raise money for two wonderful charities, https://shift.ms/ […]
4 June 2019
“Carpe Diem!” they shout, “Seize the Day!” “Yay,” we agree, “We’ll definitely make every day count!” A Grand Day Out. Or not. Except Multiple Sclerosis doesn’t quite let us work like that. It toys with us like a deranged cat with a weary mouse. We make thrilling plans – or even teensy plans – for tomorrow. We make resolutions. We have dreams and come up with crazy ideas. “This time it’s really gonna work,” we think, “I can’t let people down again.” And then, randomly, just as something starts to pan out and the coast looks clear, MS sidles up with a sly grin. “Sorry chum,” it smirks, “You’re staying in bed today. You’ve probably got enough energy for a […]
24 May 2019
Yup, allegedly someone paid to give good customer service – or at least some semblance of service – said that this week. And there was me musing on a new blog post. The plan was to talk about the labels, good and bad, we are given as disabled people, as people with Multiple Sclerosis. I had some fun ideas. “Labelled, Disabled, Dischmabled”, was my working title. I’ll save that for another time. Untermensch Then, like a senseless, dribbling troll in a fantasy movie, in blunders a Greene King pub – The Plough in Bloomsbury, London – with the crassest of refusals to serve a lady, (with MS as it happens, Other disabilities are available.) in a wheelchair. Allegedly, “We […]