I'm back!

Ok, so the whole weekly blog post thing fell by the way side a little bit... That's what comes of trying to be superwoman, I guess. So, here goes the update for the last few weeks.

I am now, for the first time in 2012, under 15 stone! woo! Only just mind, but it's still progress. I've still got about 4st to go before I reach my target, but I'm confident that if I stick at it with the lifestyle change, I'll get there by about February/March time next year.

I am following a (fairly) strict diet which rules out all gluten, dairy and legumes. Seriously, this is a monster of a diet, it's really hard to stick to! BUT, I feel better for it, I've already lost a decent amount of weight (about 4lb in 2 weeks), and I've noticed that I'm getting less IBS type problems too. Further evidenced by how bad I felt on Monday after a weekend of ignoring the diet while the bff came to stay... So now I'm back on the wagon, and I'm convinced that I'll turn into a banana or a bowl of salad before long, but I do feel really, really good.

The exercise bit is pretty much on hold until I get paid in about 10 days time, so that I can renew my gym membership, but I am trying to stay relatively active, walking instead of driving whenever it's feasible to, and trying to get into the habit of doing a few sit-ups every evening to try and tackle the muffin-top... I've even found that I'm starting to be able to fit back into jeans that I haven't been able to wear since Christmas. It's great, I feel so pleased with myself!

I don't know whether it's the diet and exercise, changing some of my meds, a combination of both, or a complete and utter coincidence, but my MS symptoms seem to have calmed down for the moment too. My legs have decided against their jelly-related career change, and my skeleton has turned back to bone instead of being lead. And this is all in spite of considerable uni and volunteering based stress! Here's hoping that the improvements continue...

I'll leave it at that for now, and set a reminder on my phone for about this time next week... over and out!

Neurodivergent

Just for something a little different as my first regular post, here's an essay that the other best friend wrote for her Creative Writing project last year, on depression (or should that be Depression?).

I expect you'd be pretty put out if I didn't at least put some sort of update on how everything else is going, so here's a quick precis of this week. I'm doing quite well at starting to incorporate the new diet. As I run out of things I'm replacing them with things that comply with the strict no dairy, no gluten and no legumes regime. I'm slightly intrigued as to what I'll replace cheese with... I've been told about non-dairy, vegan cheeses, so I might have to try some of that, and if that isn't any good I'll just have to cut it out completely. As for weight, I seem to be around about the 15st3 mark at the moment, which is better than the 16st that I weighed in at earlier this summer, but it's still waaaay too heavy for my liking, so I'm hoping that the diet will help me shift some of that. And last but not least, fitness. Well, I'll be back at spin on Wednesday night, so hopefully that'll go well, then I'm away over the weekend, but I'm going to try and do some walking as well so I can start working on endurance. When I get paid I'm thinking I might have to book a session with a Personal Trainer to pick up a few tips on how I should go about getting in shape for the marathon.

Anyway, here's the other best friend's brilliant essay:

“I know I have a good life. That's what's so depressing. I can't help it.”

– Stephen Fry

Nowadays, you hear a lot of people talking about depression. It's got a lot more mainstream as a diagnosis, and it's actually possible to admit you have it without people misunderstanding.

But that's still a very rare occurrence.

I have clinical depression. No, I'm not feeling a bit glum today. No, I am not a whiny emo teenager, nor do I need to get outside and smile. I have clinical fucking depression. It's not like getting a bit sad, or being upset because someone dumped you, or any of that. If you have depression, genuine depression, then you are spending your life walking around with a great big sack of rocks on your head. You can be happy or laugh or enjoy yourself, and like any illness there are always good days and bad days, but that does not change the fact you have an entire boulder balanced precariously up there. 

When I first started getting counselling, my mother refused to believe there was anything wrong with me because “people with depression can't get angry”. Considering that having a short temper is one of the ten main symptoms, I'm not entirely sure which part of her first class psychology degree she pulled that out of, but prejudices are always there. One of my friends has been diagnosed for years longer than I have; even when she applied for a job no less than a year ago they asked her why she couldn't snap out of it and be happy. These aren't isolated incidents; ask a person with clinical depression how often they get misunderstood and you'll be there all week.

I think one of the biggest problems is that there is no way of definitively separating medically diagnosed depression with the kind that people are talking about when they say they're feeling depressed that day. If we had two separate words in our language for them, I don't think there would be quite so many issues. Half the time, you tell someone you've got depression and they'll go, “Oh, I was depressed over summer, but I got out in the sun and it was fine” because they don't understand that the two are discrete. There are countless self-help websites that people will spout, suggesting things like going for a walk or dancing in your room, and these are great techniques. If you're sad. Not if you have clinical depression. Like I said, it might make me smile and on a good day it sure as hell cheers me up. But it's not a cure in any way or form.

People without depression often fail to understand that it's actually a reason for not being able to do things sometimes. I always try my hardest not to let my depression own me or control me, because I am not my depression. But there are days I have to stay in bed because the simple act of getting up and facing the world is so daunting that it leaves me in tears. Keeping easy to eat food in my bedroom, like apples and bread, becomes essential on bad days. Anything more exhausting than rolling over to spread peanut butter on some dry crackers can floor me. Fortunately, with cognitive behavioural therapy, medication and learning to recognise the signs of a down-spiral, I can mostly avoid these now.

Sometimes, though, I can't. And on those days, forcing a smile, eating a banana or listening to cheery music won't help. In fairness, neither does lying on the bathroom floor in my pyjamas, but I'm going to do that because it's about all I can manage. Just try to bear with me and be supportive, alright? Talk to me if I need it. Don't try to give advice unless you know what you're talking about. And above all, remember I am still a person.

Going Round in Circles

 I think the first thing to note here is that I am not, nor have I ever been, good at sport of any description. Ever. It's not like I never tried to be good at sport, I just never was. Having said that, I've always enjoyed exercise. I like walking, I always enjoy going to the gym, and I like swimming (apart from the bit where it involves water...). I'm just not very good at it.

So, for some reason I have decided to inflict the most awful torture on myself. I've decided I want to run the London Marathon.

There are several reasons for this stupid decision, the main being 'just coz'; I want to prove (mostly to myself) that I can do anything, if only I put my mind to it. I also want to prove, not to anyone in particular, that having MS isn't the death sentence that so many people seem to think it is. That you can still achieve amazing things. And lastly because improved fitness has been proven time and again to have such a broad range of benefits to people with MS (not least the keeping fit bit). There's more information here, here, and here about the studies that have been done in this vein.

This only leaves me with one mammoth task: training. How on earth do I go from being a size 18, almost completely sedentary student, to being fit enough to run a marathon?

So far, I have started attending spin classes at the uni gym, and sometimes walk to work (3 miles each way). Spin classes must be the first time I have ever found exercise relaxing. Which is weird. Especially when you consider how fast-paced and physically demanding spin actually is. In any case, I aim to go spinning twice a week. Walking to work happened every day for a week and a bit, although that stopped mid last week, after I went to spin in the evening after having walked to and from work earlier in the day, and I could barely do anything like what I usually manage. I'm still working on how I can incorporate both into my week without falling flat on my face.

Yet, despite all of this I'm still tipping the scales as obese. Which is frustrating. So in the fashion of so many other bloggers all over the place, I've decided that I'll use my blog as a way of documenting my progress, and hopefully inspiring me to do better. Come payday I'll be starting my own variation of the paleo diet, based loosely on the Best Bet Diet. Which means no gluten, no dairy and no legumes. I get the feeling that this is going to be the most difficult part of what I'm doing, so as with the exercise I'll start a little bit at a time. First to go will be dairy (I'll keep goat's and sheep's alternatives in to start with, and see how I get on), then legumes, then gluten. I'll have to start doing a regular post, so let's say weekly.

Wish me luck!

Cross Porpoises

Ok, so the bff and I have birthdays 5 days apart (she tries to pretend she doesn't know this, mind...), so we were discussing the possibility of doing a joint birthday do this time. We eventually decided a BBQ and games at a local beauty spot would be a good plan.

Part way through our discussions, she asked me if I was still walking - of course, I giggled and facetiously told her that I'd actually decided to try hovering a few feet off the ground as a less weight-bearing alternative, and then continued to tell her that yes, I did still have legs, and yes, they did still work.

In all honesty, I was a little taken aback by the question, and thought that, whilst it was nice that she was concerned for me, she hadn't really shown that concern in the most tactful manner (not that she's usually tactful, but that's another matter).

As the conversation progressed it became increasingly apparent that what she was actually referring to was a much earlier conversation we'd had (see my last-but-one post for more details on that one) about going for an evening walk each day.

I wasn't laughing so much at the misunderstanding itself, but at my own stupidity for assuming that she'd thought I had become incapacitated since the last time we saw each other - which, let's be honest, wasn't all that long ago. Perhaps there's a lesson in here somewhere for me?

These people can't seriously believe this shit...

So, some of you will probably know that Jack Osbourne was recently diagnosed with MS. Woo, big news, lots of media coverage of MS stuff, free advertising of our cause!

Yeah, and lots and lots of people who don't know what the hell they're talking about, trying to pretend that they know what they're talking about. Gah!

Apparently, according to fundamentalist number 1, if Osbourne turns to God, he will be cured. This is probably the single most insulting thing I have seen all year. Not least because I know several Christians who have MS, who - funnily enough - haven't been cured by the miraculous healing powers of God Almighty. I wonder if it's one of those new customer only deals? Maybe that's why mum hasn't miraculously stopped having MS, because she was ALREADY A CUSTOMER before her diagnosis. Soz, mum. Looks like the early bird misses the worm in this case... Hey, maybe we should suggest to the big G that he puts a bogof deal on. Maybe for a week at Christmas.

I really shouldn't be surprised by this level of ignorance any more, but it still amazes me how people can honestly go through their whole life thinking that this stuff is actually genuinely true. Oh well, that goes in the sin bin along with the 'hey, lets round up all the 'gays and homosexuals and lesbians' (because they are all of course distinct entities in their own right) 'then build a fence round them and let them die out - because they can't reproduce'. I won't go into how stupid this one is, I really cba right now.

Jelly Wobbles

So. Today my legs decide that they want a career change; they don't want to be legs any more, they'd rather be jelly towers. Which is great for them, but they could have warned me in advance that they were going to be practising their wobbling skills while I was walking across campus this morning... 

They seem to be doing a lot of this recently.The weekend before Easter I went shopping with the boyf and his parents. I was walking back to the car with them, happily minding my own business, thinking of the new jeans I'd just bought myself, when all of a sudden I'm sitting on the floor in a puddle of shopping bags, thinking, 'how on earth did I end up here?' 

It's not just my legs that have been a bit 'wobbly' of late - I don't want this blog to turn into one of those ranty pages, so I won't go into all the gory details, but suffice it to say that over the past six months or so, I've been metaphorically shadow boxing, and the shadow's been winning more than I'd like to admit...

Anyway, recently I've been having a few MS-related problems, mostly with neuropathic pain, fatigue-like symptoms (I don't want to say fatigue outright, in case it isn't), and a sort of minor aphasia, and it's been getting me a little bit down-in-the-dumps, which obviously doesn't help with the whole degree thing.

I will admit that I've been neglecting to clean all the things too...This lethargy thing has more downsides than you first imagine. I've put on about 3 stone and 2 dress sizes in about a year and a half, and feeling constantly tired and in pain doesn't really inspire you to go and do the rounds of the gym - especially when your clever university spend millions on a new sports centre, but then make the gym about a third of the size they need it to be... Queueing for the weights machines when your legs have decided on a career change is never fun

 So anyway, getting slowly to the point, the best friend very kindly gave me a well deserved kick up the backside, and reminded me that, in the words of Terry Pratchet, I 'don't have MS, MS has [me]', and that I should make it rue the day it got me! She also very kindly suggested that maybe I should try and ease myself back into doing regular exercise, since we're regularly told that the stuff released from exercise cancels out pain, and makes you feel better. At least I can rely on the bff to remind me what's what from time to time, even if most of it comes out as jibberish at the time...

Sleep

Sleep... it's something most people take for granted. For me, it's a living nightmare.

Well, I say that; sometimes, it's a living nightmare, other times I just can't seem to get enough of it. Which is just as annoying.

Imagine this: it is 10pm, you are shattered, you have just taken your nightime medicaton, which makes you even sleepier. But you can't sleep.

Now it's 11am, and you're just waking up after having finally fallen asleep around 11-12ish. You had one hundred and one things to do in the morning, but now you can't do any of them, because you slept through all 3 of your incredibly noisy, annoying alarms. Bugger.

This is my life at the moment, and as much as most people would love to be able to sleep that long, it actually really annoys me, because I don't like being lazy. I like to be up and doing things, but all I seem to be able to do is sleep. So much for getting a job...