MS Life
I work (for now), I love, I live, I have fun. Just with wheelchairs and drugs and spasms and stuff...
21 July 2019
My short-term memory may be shot to pieces by Multiple Sclerosis and hardly helped by chronic fatigue. Yay, I can blame everything on MS! But my long-term one is crystal clear. I can vividly remember the first time I mentioned the word ‘disabled’ about myself, and it was a fight to get the words out: Costa Coffee, Leighton Buzzard. 2009 perhaps, two years after diagnosis. Ordered myself a Latte and a Tiffin (that’s rich chocolate and crunched biscuit naughtiness for the uninitiated). And realised as I ordered that I was having a particularly wobbly day. Only half the coffee would reach the table if I carried it. “I’m slightly disabled, do you mind bringing the coffee to my table?” I […]
16 July 2019
Oh dear. There was me thinking I had come up with the word ‘Funishment’ all on my own. I was wanting to describe my Tough Mudder/Wheelchair Rugby/Skydiving adrenaline fetish. And it turns out fetish is thoroughly appropriate. Funishment is apparently defined as ‘a pleasurable way of being punished, usually in a sexual way.’ Oh. There was nothing sexual whatsoever about being manhandled like a sack of potatoes by a dozen guys and gals over, under and through 15 devious Tough Mudder obstacles. Especially on the multiple occasions I got a wedgie, or my ‘special pants’ were on display while being dragged over the line or a high wall. Why exactly did I love it? Why do I […]
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/ […]