The road to diagnosis
It was a cold, dark February morning and once again, my eye and facial pain were back. The antibiotics my GP gave me the week before did not work at all, and he seemed clueless about what could be wrong with me. I had been on several rounds of antibiotics, I had seen a dentist, went to the Eye & Ear Clinic and I had seen a homoeopath, yet nobody was able to give me a clear answer. The only person somewhat clear on what was wrong with me said that I needed to have my immune and central nervous system checked out. Fast. She was an intuitive healer and turned out to be 100% correct. Go figure. On my way to work that morning, sitting next to a cold…
Relapse!
Yesterday I received an email from the Daily Post at WordPress that said ‘Competition: What activity, task, or game most brings out your competitive streak?’ Activity: having multiple sclerosis. Task: not going to bed when my body screams to should stop doing what I’m doing and make a triple Salchow backwards to land myself under my duvet instead. Game: enjoying life. Competitor: myself. It was an easy enough question to answer because I (still) consider myself my own worst competition, especially right now.
Trigemin…argh!
Brain fog. “Being blonde”. Now I know what it feels like. Years ago I acquired the “just being blonde” tag by others in my team at work because I suddenly needed time to digest ideas, questions and discussions. I would never have referred to myself as “being blonde” in those days because I used to be quick-witted, but I was dark-haired back then, and still am. In other words: my elevator of knowledge does not travel all the way up to the top floor right now; it keeps sticking somewhere between the 3rd and the 4th floor. I hear people talking, but there’s no understanding flowing from hearing and seeing them move their lips and vocal chords into linguistic marvels of the 21st century.
MS: a social disconnect
Therein lies the disconnect: the way others want me to be, and me not being able to keep up. How many of us have pretended to be well enough to walk another 500 meters? How many say they are OK when they feel pain in their limbs, their eyes and in their soul? How many say they will be able to go to work when they were awake half the night because of pain? Unwillingly we are put in a non-self-imposed isolation; we are put there by our illness, and quite often by the outside world. Our mental functioning is now processed differently because of our illness.
Health is not valued until sickness comes
Sadly my attempt to post daily has not had much success so far. Blame the old trigeminal nerve pains in my face and/or occipital pains behind my eyes. That said, I continue reading because the book I’m in love with right now is regarding psychology, good old Dr. Sigmund Freud and philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. It’s hard to put the book down but at times I need to be mindful of the aches and pains so they don’t get any worse. And that means that I am not blogging as much as I want to. Like Albert Schweitzer once said: “Serious illness doesn’t bother me for long because I am too inhospitable a host.” I am also because life is bigger than my neurological illness, and life will always be much…
Reality check!
I just saw this picture on a dedicated MS Facebook page. It says “YOU WILL NEVER KNOW WHAT PAIN IS UNLESS YOU HAVE MS!!” Well excusez–moi, please, but that is just OTT. Life is NOT A CONTEST of who has more pain than the other, it’s not a game of showing people how sick we can be. So forgive me for sticking up for others who are otherwise seriously ill, because statements like this only give people the wrong idea of what having MS is really like.