Time for me to start updating this again. But rather than lengthy streams of consciousness I’m aiming for shorter but more regular blogs in the hope I actually generate something worthwhile without gigantic gaps of silence in between each instalment.

 

 

 

So in the last year I’ve adopted a dog, become a manager of a team of 12 engineers, got married to the best person on the planet (in my opinion) and had a lovely honeymoon (both on the cheap). I’ve also spent more sleepless nights than I would like worrying about money and the future. Out of all of those things, adopting the dog is the only one that hasn’t been stressful to a lesser or greater degree. I’m paying the price right now MS-wise as my energy levels have plummeted for the last month and I struggle to do much outside of turning up for work and dealing with all the challenges my job throws my way each shift. The tough part for me is that it’s not physical tiredness, it’s fatigue and it’s like my brain is made of custard and my eyelids are made of lead. It is so hard to describe and quantify to people who have never experienced it. For example, If I’m on my own and hungry I’ll likely stay that way because the mental effort required to think about the mechanics of getting my arse off the sofa, not colliding with anything on the way to the kitchen, keeping my balance and not dropping anything just to prepare even a sandwich is too much to handle. So I stay sat down and hungry. It sounds like laziness but it really isn’t.

But I’ve had it much worse than this and come back from it before, so I fret about it in the back of my mind but hope it won’t last forever this time. Most importantly I’m very happy, and that helps the MS as much as being stressed exacerbates it. Plus, the dog is a total lazybones and keeps me company when I have many snoozes on my days off. It’s always good to have a mate with you when you’re feeling a bit pants.

So I deal with the fatigue as well as I know how. I exercise as much as I can. I walk 3 miles a day to and from the station when I’m on shift and I’m back up to being able to run 5k at a time, which I try to do twice a week. It’s hard to get going but once I do the adrenaline rush wakes me up for a few hours and I feel almost normal again, and that makes it very rewarding. I can also eat more food without getting fat, which also makes it very rewarding because I like food an awful lot. The dog keeps me company on the runs as well as the snoozes, although he does at least twice the distance I do with five times the energy. I hope at some point to get him a small GPS tracker and a Runkeeper account just to see how much distance the little sucker actually covers with such ease while I thud along gamely. He even has the audacity to look happy about it, the git. Sometimes if we go to the forest Spooner comes along on his bike to hit the trails while I plod and wheeze along and the dog zips around excitedly searching for Spooner when he disappears from view, and those runs where the three of us are there are my favourites.

 

 

 

I’m currently on night shifts and yesterday morning after my shift as I was walking to Charing Cross station from Oxford Circus where I work, all the familiar unwelcome symptoms of “tired me” reared their head. My legs feel like an electric current is running down the back of them, my feet have permanent pins and needles as I walk and I go from my normal smooth and speedy trundle to a jerkier and ungainly gait. Still quite speedy though, I want to get to that train home to the promised land of bed as quickly as possible. Drop-foot kicks in and once or twice I’ll really catch my foot and stumble. My sense of balance, precarious at the best of times, becomes even worse and I know that to the other early-morning occupants of Leicester Square I look like I’m still wasted from the night before and doing the walk of shame to get the train home. If only that were the case. As I reach St Martin-in-the-Fields, tunnel vision is starting to set in, my least favourite part of this little routine. I stop to cross the road opposite Charing Cross and my vision clears, which makes it even more difficult to motivate myself across the road when the green man appears. I force myself on buzzing jelly legs to the entrance of the station, only to realise with immeasurable joy that this weekend is one where Charing Cross is closed because of engineering work and my trains are leaving from Cannon Street, over a mile away along the Thames. The tube at Embankment is less than 5 minutes walk but I very seriously consider just lying on the concourse for an hour or two before continuing. Surely only the pigeons will be there when there’s no trains running, and they won’t mind….