Old Library, Trinity College
© Willeke Van Eeckhoutte and Ireland, Multiple Sclerosis & Me, 2011-2012. Unauthorised use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Willeke Van Eeckhoutte and Ireland, Multiple Sclerosis & Me with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
Einstein
I will not write much over the next few weeks but I wanted to leave my blog with this quote to keep us all going until I am fit enough to write again! The quote below is one of my favourites for 2 reasons: a) Albert Einstein is always right and b) should Einstein not be right he still knows how to say it beautifully! “Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the universe.” © Willeke Van Eeckhoutte and Ireland, Multiple Sclerosis & Me, 2011-2012. Unauthorised use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Willeke Van…
Mortality
The superbug that had been staring into my eyes for months seemed long gone. In its wake, it left me wondering. I went through an abyss, one that could resemble Dante's nine circles of hell. That bottom of that abyss had been the morning before the rush into surgery.
Everyone’s an Olympian
After 7 years of waiting, the London 2012 Olympic Games are finally here! Off we go again for another breathtaking 16 days of sport, success and sorrow! I’ve ice cream in the freezer, my couch blanket and caffeine ready to make the most of the coming days. London 2012 was always going to be special to me because I’ve never lived so close to the Games as this year. This may sound funny to you but as a sports fan; I have been looking forward to having the Games to close to my native country as well as my adopted one. Every 4 years the Olympics take over 16 days of my summer calendar and this year it will be a blast. Not only because of the proximity of the…
An Open Letter To Those Without MS
I’ve known about this letter for a while now, and sometimes I feel the need to read it again, as if by reading it once more, people around me will understand what having an incurable illness feels like even when they’re not the ones reading it. However, at the end of the day, I cannot step in those people’s shoes and make them accept what is going on inside me. I am the first person that needs to educate my family, friends, ex-colleagues etc. I am the first one that has to tell them the same things over and over, and I will be the only one to know the truth about my own MS. I am my expert-patient and I will be the only one that will have to…
Vertigo: not just a U2 song
“How do I find my way back to my desk?!” With that, vertigo had entered my life in 2005 while I was at work. The hallway seemed to be spinning. Or was it me? Had I finally lost my mind altogether? A tilting floor wanted to meet my knees instead of my feet. “Ground control to Major Tom? Can anyone save me?” Afraid of moving any further because I felt like I would fall on the ground nose first. “Well hello there,” answered Major Tom, “I’m Vertigo, your newest symptom!” Vertigo as in U2’s Vertigo had absolutely no business with MS-vertigo. Please don’t confuse it with the Hollywood-version of acrophobia, either, the latter being an extreme fear of heights.
The stalker called MS
In my job I often had to do “root cause analysis” assessments on what went wrong with a certain account and how we could “cure” it again. I miss the term “root cause analysis” and I thought I’d do a one on myself, or my life. What the heck, it’s not like I have anything better to do on another dreary summer’s day in Ireland! I suspect that my illness, the incredibly annoying stalker called Multiple Sclerosis, entered my system through a back door in the 1990s. I have to go back when I worked in a library and I was having the time of my life, so it couldn’t have come at a worse time. I had a period of extreme fatigue and it turned out to be glandular fever…
