Week 41 - Birthday week

The sun is shining the sky is blue what more could I ask for today? A longer weekend, a nice extra-long sleep lay in bed, not scraping ice off my car with a Shell Petrol Card at 07:25 in the morning before a frustratingly slow drive to work with Monday morning Middle Lane Morons clogging up what would be a perfectly functional motorway if people used all 3 of its lanes, the heating at work to be sending heat instead of recirculating cold air?

Actually it’s all good. Our cleaner quit on Friday which wasn’t a surprise, she’d not been for a couple of weeks with varying excuses but thanks to t’interwebs I had a replacement sorted by midday and at the same cost BONUS. I had an early oxygen treatment Saturday morning; we got the shopping done and all the other bits and bats we needed to get done.

The ‘Anti-Pollution Warning’ light coming on in my car (again) but thanks to some patting the steering wheel and threatening it ‘if you start costing me lots of money you’re going to the knackers yard’ it appears to have healed itself. The fault has gone away – perhaps my overactive MS immune system also healed the sensor on my car’s catalytic convertor – an interesting new career opportunity perhaps?

Sunday started with a lovely long walk with Gareth and the dogs in the sunshine. It’s so lovely to have Winston chasing balls, he’s so much calmer these days now he can get the exercise he needs because we aren’t scared he’s going to just disappear every time he sees something remotely interesting, people, other dogs, birds, a leaf blowing in the wind….

I have some exciting news - although now I’m not classing it as MS related. The loss of sensation in my left hand to my thumb and first two fingers and the palm bit that connects them is actually improving. I’ve known it for a week, but didn’t want to jinx it by saying it out loud. The electric sensations started lessening last week and now over the weekend I’ve had Gareth testing the sensation with the lightest of touches – I can feel ‘touch’ there again in both my fingers, the palm and back of my hand. The thumb remains profoundly numb and has the electrocuted from the inside out sensations but hey I now have pretty much an 80% fully functional dominant hand. I’m pretty sure it’s the physiotherapy exercises that are helping it return along with me being far more aware of my posture so I’m not sitting in that hunched over position to read or type at my work desk. I have another physiotherapy session tonight so I will tell them I’m getting sensation back and see what they recommend to make further improvements.

MS wise I’m tediously ‘normal’ I still get tired if I overdo things but I manage that more effectively these days. MS certainly isn’t the root of all evil for me, I’m overweight, I don’t exercise enough and I’m really quite lazy. If I proactively did something to address the first two things then I’m pretty sure that it would help with my energy levels and stamina – but then the lazy kicks in and the little devil on my shoulder whispers in my ear ‘can you really be arsed with all that – have a glass of wine and forget about all that nonsense’ He could sell snowballs to Eskimos that little devil on my shoulder - well that’s what I keep telling myself; perhaps I’m weak as well as lazy?

Any pretence of dieting or healthy eating is going out the window on Thursday I have to go and buy a load of cakes to bring into work for my colleagues to enjoy in honour of it being my birthday. I’m going to be 44 years old (officially) in reality I will be celebrating my 27^th birthday again.

Why 27 you wonder …..

Well …..

27 was a good year

• I earned enough that I could live well
• I was sensible enough to protect myself from things that could hurt
• I was old enough and worldly enough to know better than to do too many silly things
• As my Twitter profile says ‘Stupid enough to do it again’ anyway.

My Aunt Kathy is coming to visit us for the weekend in our new home for the first time, we are having dinner at L’Ortolan for the 2^nd time in a month and I’m very much looking forward to it all.