The Zombie in the corner

I wanted to and still do want to disappear back to bed, it is hard these days to fight against that desire, but I know that I have to as I can’t let myself slip out of routine, not even for one day as I know all too well the consequences of it. Everyone when they are fit ans working have a routine, one that keeps them on track and in touch with everything important to them and their lives, even if they are not aware of it. Once you are ill it is easy to set that routine to one side and just go with the flow, sleep when you need to, eat when you want do what ever you feel like at the time. To me that is the way for it all to go wrong, and very quickly. I can’t speak for other illnesses on this point, but I discovered that MS is more than just a creature of habit upset it and it will kickback hard, when it is already upset as mine is just now, well it is even more important to try to keep to what would be the normal.

At this minute I am fighting just to keep my figures moving over this keyboard and my mind on the words I am thinking. Concentration is one of the symptoms that I find myself at war with frequently and especially when I am in pain. It is bad enough when there are distractions on the screen or on the TV but then add in pain suddenly somewhere and my chance of completing the sentence in one action becomes nil. I have said before that in some ways that can be good, well when a new distraction appears you forget the previous one, but that isn’t an answer to anything just a way of blundering through a day, bit by bit and without much success. These distractions are more than a moment lost here or there, they disrupt my routine and force me to become frustrated, but even that can’t last to long, as I am lost in something else. A glimpse only of the muddle that I find myself today. I have no idea how to keep myself going when things are like this, I fight between what I know has to be done and what I am able to do, I move from one period of pain to the next and through it all I am numb to even myself.

I can see clearly how it is easy just to stop, to give in and to sit there letting the day wash past me, to turn into what I most fear, the zombie in the corner. When your feelings, your thoughts and your physical being are all so muddled up together achieving anything is amazing in itself. I am so far out of my timetable today that I have had to accept the fact I just won’t or can’t actually catch up. Today is by no means a right off on the achievement scale, it is actually far higher than on a normal day, the fact that I have actually manage to write this is enough for me to be content that I can and have achieved. I hope there is enough logical thought in it for it to make sense to others.

The Zombie Fog

My MS has delivered me today it’s favorite thing to try and cope today. It is one of those symptoms that varies hugely, ‘Brain Fog’ can be simple thin mist to a ‘pea-souper’ or as I think of it a thick custard and that custard is thick. I am having real problems keeping my brain in one place, I am flitting all over the place and typing is an interesting process, all I can say this thank God for spell check, without it I doubt you would be able to make any sense out of this at all.

There was a strange thing I caught myself doing a little while ago and I didn’t like it. On TV and in films you sometimes see people sat looking totally blank, zombied, for some reason they usually are sat their with their mouth hanging open, I was doing exactly that. Why? I can’t find a single reason for it. I don’t know how but I was staring into space and my jaw had dropped, as though the control muscles that normally hold your mouth shut had just switched off. one minute I was typing stopped to read what was on the screen and then suddenly I wasn’t doing anything, I had become that horrific image I have of people when everything has stopped, except the basics needed to maintain life. Clearly I pulled myself out of it but I am left with this fear that, that is how it starts, that it will happen for longer and longer spells until I can’t pull myself back.

I think that is my biggest fear and always has been from the day that I was told I had MS, this vision that I will be eventually a zombie that just sits there, having spasms and twitching. I expect that all of use with any type of illness that effects the brain fear that end, that is why I believe that we all have to stimulate our minds, especially when it doesn’t want to be. I may be wrong about this but I have been doing so from the point when my MS turned progressive and so far, as I hope is clear in my on line activity, I am still very much in control. Loosing more and more of myself is a scary place and I nor medicine are unfortunately unable to stop it. I accept the physical changes, as strangely they are reasonably easy to deal with, there is always a way round or a way to manage a physical problem but your brain, it is just a totally different thing. It isn’t just Self-determination, it goes further than that, we all fear that being locked inside a body that does nothing and not being able to make ourselves understood, what if it was the other way round.

You could say that would be a blessing if you didn’t actually have a mind that processed anything, didn’t know what was happening around you, or what people were saying, what they were doing to you, I agree. It is the getting there I fear, that slow loss, bit by bit, of me, until I am gone. It is that possibility that keeps me fighting to keep my brain active, of having things round me that trigger my memories. I can only hope, that I will not have that happen to me, and I can try to stay as ‘with it’ as I can. The question still remains which is worse the slow slip to being a real Zombie or the physical drop into a world were you are locked inside, either way there isn’t a choice.