The Energy Bank

Imagine, if you will, that Energy is your body's currency. Unlike ordinary money, you can't save up for a special occasion or a rainy day; instead, you receive a fixed daily allowance. You do, however, have an overdraft, the interest for which is extortionate, and the terms require you to repay the debt over the next few days+. This means that if you have used your Energy overdraft, you will often have significantly less Energy in your daily allowance for one or two days after.

You must use Energy to pay for everything you do throughout the day; this includes trivial tasks such as getting out of bed, cleaning your teeth, and preparing your meals. Eating well provides you with a small return for your Energy investment. spent preparing the meal. Naps are a slightly higher risk investment, since you must also invest Time, and your Energy return is not necessarily larger than or equal to your Time and Energy investment. Occasionally, the Energy bank shortchanges you and gives you less Energy in your daily allowance than you would normally have. Those days are usually bad days.

Every so often, you receive a bonus in your Energy allowance which you can use to complete extra tasks during the day, which would normally be too expensive. As with your normal daily allowance, if you don't use it, you lose it. There is some evidence to suggest that the healthier/more physically fit you are, the higher your daily allowance is; however, this does also require a bit of a gamble, as exercise can be very expensive.  Especially if, like me, you have never been particularly fit. 

The majority of customers banking with the Energy Bank receive quite a sizeable allowance, and rarely need to make use of their overdraft. More often than not, it is only used for things such as jetlag and special events such as weddings, birthdays or New Year's parties. There are, however, a significant number of people who, for one reason or another, receive a significantly smaller allowance. Most will suffer from long term illnesses such as MS or ME; people with depression, or on long term medication; and even insomniacs and shift workers.

The Saga Continues - Lights are Blinding My Eyes (post 6)

Date: July-September 2010

Age: 20-21

 A week after I start my DMT, I go on a 3 week residential course at Lancaster, in preparation for university in the autumn. My 21st birthday falls on the first Saturday, so I arrange to take the train home for my birthday weekend. A couple of days before my birthday, I get a stabbing pain behind my left eye, and I notice that if I cover my right eye, most of my vision has been replaced by a grey blur. This causes a lot more problems than one would imagine, besides the lack of vision... For one, my depth perception abilities take a nose-dive.

Despite the agonising pain behind my eye, and the loss of vision, I manage to get home in one piece on the train on Friday night. On Saturday, my 21st birthday, my aunty's managed to book me a last minute appointment at the optician's. The optician rearranged her other appointments, and worked through her lunch so that she could make room for me. When I get there, she spends almost an hour with me, doing every test available to her. She says she has a good idea what the problem is, but she wants to call a colleague of hers who is an ophthalmologist at one of the local hospitals, to get a second opinion.

She rings me later, to ask me to come back and see her again. She does a couple more tests that her colleague suggested to her, then she confirms that it is very likely that it's Optic Neuritis, which is quite common in MS, and usually clears up of its own accord within 4-6 weeks. She advises me to just take normal anti-inflammatory painkillers, but to see my doctor if it takes longer than 4-6 weeks to get better, of it gets worse.

As predicted, the optic neuritis goes away of its own accord within the 4-6 weeks that my optician stated. I don't think anything of it until the very end of August, when I notice that it's come back again. This time my optician recommends that I speak to my MS Nurse, who tells me to go to my GP, and request a course of steroid treatment. I'm already running late for my engagement dinner, but I decide that it's not worth putting it off until tomorrow, and I go to the doctor's. The GP writes out a letter for me to take to A&E, explaining what I need. I ring my parents to say I won't be able to make it to the restaurant.

After waiting in A&E for a not inconsiderable length of time, I get taken down to the Medical Assessment Unit, to wait for someone to hook me up to a drip. They eventually get round to seeing me at about midnight (I have been there since about 5pm by this point), and the doctor assures me that the steroids will stop me from sleeping, and will make me feel euphoric. As they get ready to wire me up, the squeamish fiance runs away, leaving me on my own.

I wake up in the early hours of the morning, freezing cold, and still attached to the now empty drip. I continue to doze for a few hours, until the ward consultant does his rounds in the mid-morning. He tells me that I need to take my condition more seriously, and chastises me for having left it so long before coming to the hospital about the Optic Neuritis. I burst into tears, which he interprets as having got the message through to me that I need to stop being a silly girl who doesn't take her health seriously. The reality is quite different: I am so furious that he would DARE to make such an assumption about me, when he has no idea about the lengths that I have had to go to, to get medical professionals to take ME seriously. I am so incensed by his attitude that I cannot even speak. I am too busy getting things ready for University to be able to put a complaint in.