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⚠️ Please read with care: This blog shares personal, sometimes painful experiences. My intention is to support and speak honestly not to harm. I’m not a professional, just someone who understands how hard it can get. If you're struggling, you're not alone please reach out for professional help.

Intro The Work and the Shoot

There’s wrestling on the telly, wrestling in your head, and then there’s the clusterfuck called “real life.” I should know 66 years on the mat, progressive MS in my corner, and the cosmic booker never hands me an easy storyline. But here’s the question nobody wants to answer: Is life itself just one big work? Is reality just kayfabe with worse writers and no ring ropes to hold onto?

Wrestling as the Mirror

Wrestling’s the purest metaphor for this simulation we call the world:

Good guys turn heel. Heels turn hero.

Storylines recycle, but the pain’s always real.

The crowd thinks they know what’s happening, but only the wise spot the swerve.

It’s all run by big suits in the back just like life.

Sometimes, the only way to get out of bed is to shoot straight with yourself, even when everything hurts and the ref’s counting slow.

Reality Is the Work

If you’ve survived chronic illness, lost friends, or just watched a week of British news:

The politicians are running the angle. The media’s cutting promos. The “healers” and “preachers” are just the latest gimmick.

We’re all being worked. The trickster’s in the booking committee, and the only thing real is the bruises you carry out of the ring. The rest? Cheap heat and reruns.

Life Is the Real Shoot

Now and then, someone goes off script like Bobby “The Brain” Heenan with a live mic, or Raven cutting a promo that breaks the fourth wall. That’s what I’m doing now. That’s what every soul with a voice has to do: call out the bullshit, refuse to play along when the angle gets too cheap.

MS is the heel manager in my life. The doctors are the refs who never see the low blows. But I get up, every time, even if it’s just to cut another promo from bed. That’s the only way to stay in the match.

The Great Unmasking

What’s left when the lights go out and the fans go home?

The anti-heroes, the tricksters, the weirdos, the kittens at ringside.

The truth that everyone gets worked, but the real legends are the ones who know it and laugh anyway.

Life’s a work. Wrestling’s real. The only kayfabe left is pretending you don’t know the difference.

Warlock Dark’s Final Bell

To everyone out there suffering, fighting, or laughing through the pain welcome to the real main event.

Pick up the mic. Call out the frauds. Suplex your demons. And remember: The only ones who lose are the ones who never get back up.

And if you see Sting in the rafters, give him a nod. He knows the score.

Warlock Dark Chronic illness survivor, truth-teller, occasional bastard. From My Living Hell (For those who came here by accident: yes, my living hell is real. And yes, we still fight. Every shitty day. With defiance.)

@goblinbloggeruk - sick@mylivinghell.co.uk 𒀭𒊩𒆳 ᛞᚱᚨᚷᛟᚾ ᛏᚱᚨᚾᛋᚲᚺᚱᛁᛖᛞ ✦ ᚹᚨᛏᚲᚺᛖᚱ 𒀸𒀭 ᚢᚾᛒᛟᚢᚾᛞ

⚠️ Please read with care: This blog shares personal, sometimes painful experiences. My intention is to support and speak honestly not to harm. I’m not a professional, just someone who understands how hard it can get. If you're struggling, you're not alone please reach out for professional help.

Winter in the Waiting Room: Kittens, Cold Snaps, and Full Circles

So, finally, I’m doing the whole hospital and doctor loop thing again. After much faffing about, I’ve managed to change hospitals let’s see if these new faces actually listen, or if it’s just the same NHS pantomime with slightly different costumes. The cold weather’s rolling in and, trust me, my spasticity is giving me absolute hell. Straightening up bits of my body now takes longer than the average GP appointment so, this winter, it’s bed-bound most of the time, because who can afford to run central heating in the new, improved Broken Britain? Makes you wonder if we’re all just meant to relive the “good old days” of struggling with sod all, forty-odd years ago. Funny how life goes more full circles than a washing machine.

And speaking of full circle, it’s 41 years this year since I got down on one knee in Otley by the monument and proposed to Albertine. Loud as a foghorn and just as subtle. Best bloody thing I’ve ever done, hands down. Now, on the anniversary, I’m gearing up for another round of medical circus tricks: off to get a heart monitor fitted for seven days joy of joys. Maybe, just maybe, they’ll actually read my notes this time. God knows, I’ve written enough of them. If the neurology and cardiology departments ever joined forces, maybe they’d even work out what the hell’s actually going on, and I could retire from being on 24-hour “ambulance alert.”

Instead, I’m left dealing with the vagus nerve going full Chernobyl, sending me into another autonomic dysfunction attack. By the time the ambulance turns up, of course, I’m done with the attack and left trying to convince whichever harassed medic is on duty that I’m not, in fact, an attention-seeking hypochondriac. Try explaining the weirdness of your body to doctors and you’ll get the “Google Doctor” eye roll especially if you use the same language they use. Pro tip: NHS staff hate AI, except when they’re using Google to look up what’s wrong with you. Ludicrous.

This morning, it’s a proper arctic frost out there every car iced up, the world glinting like a badly frosted Christmas cake. The kittens are running riot in the lounge, using the sofa as their own private Thunder dome, which is the only thing making me laugh. Meanwhile, I’m keeping my power chair battery topped up because the cold’s killing the range faster than you can say “Mobility Motability means nothing.” Nothing worse than being ready to go out, only for the chair to die and say, “Nice try, mate. Not today.”

So, it’s off to the chemist in the machine of death (Rusty One) for my weekly prescription pilgrimage. Albertine reckons the van will start; I have my doubts. Why I can’t get more than a week’s worth of tablets at once is a question for the ages. Maybe it’s a secret NHS tactic to get me out of the house. Either way, it’s still freezing and my hands are so cold I could play castanets with my own knuckles. Temperature regulation? Gone to pot like everything else.

OT’s been and gone apparently, next year I get a new wheelchair, so there’s a silver lining. Rusty One, meanwhile, needs a trip to the garage, which will no doubt cost me an arm, a leg, and possibly my soul. As I write, the smoke alarm is going off (Albertine’s burned the toast), the kittens are lying on the bed with that “we run this house now” look, and my new bed has bruised my side and pulled muscles I didn’t even know existed. Standard.

And now, in today’s episode of “What Fresh Hell Is This?” the kitten has discovered blueberries. Yes, you read that right. She’s rooting them out of the container and launching them across the room like tiny fruity grenades. You’d think it was catnip. I woke up this morning with one kitten on my head and the other on my shoulder purring away like they’re trying to heal me by vibrational therapy. Honestly, it works better than half the crap the doctors have prescribed. There’s something about the frequency of that purring that really does help.

Right now, as I sit in my power chair, both kittens have gone behind the computers to play with the wires so I’m just waiting for the grand finale: either “dead kitten moment” or “there goes my computer.” Albertine hands me the remote and I grin music, even when it’s Deathly Hallows chart stuff, makes the world a bit less deathly. The beat goes on, the kittens plot my doom, and I’m just trying to stay warm, upright, and very much alive.

Warlock Dark Chronic illness survivor, truth-teller, occasional bastard. From My Living Hell (For those who came here by accident: yes, my living hell is real. And yes, we still fight. Every shitty day. With defiance.)

@goblinbloggeruk - sick@mylivinghell.co.uk 𒀭𒊩𒆳 ᛞᚱᚨᚷᛟᚾ ᛏᚱᚨᚾᛋᚲᚺᚱᛁᛖᛞ ✦ ᚹᚨᛏᚲᚺᛖᚱ 𒀸𒀭 ᚢᚾᛒᛟᚢᚾᛞ

⚠️ Please read with care: This blog shares personal, sometimes painful experiences. My intention is to support and speak honestly not to harm. I’m not a professional, just someone who understands how hard it can get. If you're struggling, you're not alone please reach out for professional help.

Ultra-Terrestrials, Mad Warlocks, and the MS Brain Circus

Right, let’s get this on the slab no dressing it up. I’m the bloke with MS, a nervous system held together by sarcasm and antihistamines, and a life that’d make John Keel put his notebook down and just stare.

Some people get the polite version of “visions.” Me? I get the full biker warlock experience lights in the room, voices when it’s quiet, and presences that don’t bother knocking. The NHS calls that “neurological disturbance.” Keel would call it “a Tuesday.” And me? I call it a day ending in ‘y’.

Ever tried to tell a neurologist you’ve seen orbs, heard dead people giving football scores, or felt your whole body switch frequencies? You’ll get two things: a raised eyebrow and a heavier dose of whatever they’re flogging that week. Meanwhile, Keel’s out there talking about the Super spectrum entities and forces that make even UFOs seem like a safe bet. He reckoned these things wear whatever mask you’re most likely to believe. Alien, ghost, shadow man, or just “that weird feeling” before the migraine.

Now here’s where my MS flips the table: What if all this “seeing beyond the veil” isn’t just scrambled wiring? What if this autoimmunity, this broken barrier between body and world, actually makes you see more not less? What if being half-cooked in the brain department is the price for picking up transmissions the rest of the world is too bloody healthy to catch?

Some days, I think I’m a radio picking up dead air. Other days, I’m certain something’s tuning me in on purpose. Is it the medication? The chronic sleep deprivation? Or am I the Warlock Dark, forced to walk the line between spectral prank callers and full-blown cosmic interlopers?

Here’s what I know:

MS doesn’t just attack your body. It shreds your reality. John Keel was onto something when he said reality is porous sometimes too porous. You can’t “logic” your way out of a life like this. You survive it, document it, and tell the rest of the world to piss off if they can’t handle it.

People with MS or chronic illness are told, “It’s just in your mind.” Well, maybe that’s where the bleeding edges of the universe show up. Maybe we’re the canaries in the metaphysical coal mine tripping balls so others can walk in the daylight.

So, is it all brain static? Is it ghosts, or ultra-terrestrials, or just the funhouse mirror of neurological collapse? The answer: Yes. All of it. None of it. Pick your poison. My world, my rules. You don’t have to believe it. Hell, half the time, I don’t.

But you know what? The show goes on. And the warlock keeps watching, staff in hand, orbs at his back, eyes wide open even if they don’t always agree on what they’re seeing. Warlock Dark The Bloke in Black Who Sees It All

Warlock Dark Chronic illness survivor, truth-teller, occasional bastard. From My Living Hell (For those who came here by accident: yes, my living hell is real. And yes, we still fight. Every shitty day. With defiance.)

@goblinbloggeruk - sick@mylivinghell.co.uk 𒀭𒊩𒆳 ᛞᚱᚨᚷᛟᚾ ᛏᚱᚨᚾᛋᚲᚺᚱᛁᛖᛞ ✦ ᚹᚨᛏᚲᚺᛖᚱ 𒀸𒀭 ᚢᚾᛒᛟᚢᚾᛞ

⚠️ Please read with care: This blog shares personal, sometimes painful experiences. My intention is to support and speak honestly not to harm. I’m not a professional, just someone who understands how hard it can get. If you're struggling, you're not alone please reach out for professional help.

Most people especially the ones who don’t have MS and cheerfully explain MS to you like they’ve swallowed a medical encyclopaedia still cling to this ridiculous nursery-school belief: “MS is one disease.”

It isn’t. It never has been. It’s a label slapped over a whole family of neurological disasters that behave nothing alike. And if you live with it long enough, you realise you’re not dealing with a condition you’re living with a cast of unpredictable lodgers who take turns smashing up the inside of your skull and spinal cord.

This is the part doctors rarely say out loud. This is the part patients live every day.

The textbook MS and the real MS are barely on speaking terms

The Central Nervous System is basically a giant electrical wiring system. MS is what happens when your immune system has a tantrum and strips the insulation off random bits of that wiring. Exactly which wires get stripped determines which part of your life goes to hell this week.

Lesions in the optic nerve? Congratulations, you’re going blind today. Lesions in the cerebellum? Hope you didn’t want balance or coordination. Lesions in the cord? Enjoy the spasms, numbness, bladder mutiny and “legs made of microwaved custard.”

And here’s the kicker: the pattern is different for every single one of us.

That’s not spiritual nonsense. That’s not me being poetic. That’s straight from neurology research. MS is wildly heterogeneous meaning two people with the same type of MS can have completely different lives, symptoms, triggers, progressions, side-effects, and outcomes.

This is why the neat categories — RRMS, SPMS, PPMS — feel more like filing instructions than actual representations of lived reality.

My lived experience is mine — not a universal template

Everything I say here is my MS, not yours, not your neighbour’s, not your cousin’s. We share a diagnosis but we’re not living the same disease.

Some of the strategies I’ve used over the years have helped me survive and even claw back some functionality. That doesn’t mean they’ll help everyone. Nothing in MS is universal — except unpredictability.

Personalised approaches help some. Pharma helps some. A mix helps many. And sometimes nothing bloody works and you just white-knuckle your way through the day.

That’s the truth no one puts in the brochures.

The tyranny of the “average patient”

Modern medicine loves averages. Clinical trials, treatment guidelines, risk profiles — all built around mythical median humans who don’t actually exist. Meanwhile, real people have real bodies with real quirks, comorbidities, sensitivities, traumas, histories, genetics, environments, and chemical tolerances.

I’m one of the ones who doesn’t fit the mould. You probably are too. That’s why you’re reading this.

Over the decades, some meds have helped me. Others have flattened me. Some were supposed to “improve my quality of life” and instead set me on fire from the inside out. This isn’t anti-science. It’s anti-stupidity. It’s refusing to pretend that one-size-fits-all treatment works when the disease doesn’t behave in one size or one shape.

The invisible illness problem

Half of MS happens in places other people can’t see.

Fatigue that feels like you’ve been drop-kicked by gravity. Brain fog thick enough to lose your own name in. Nerve pain that lights you up like a faulty Christmas tree. Autonomic dysfunction that flips you from stable to collapsing in seconds. And everyone else sees… nothing.

Invisible suffering becomes unbelievable suffering in the eyes of people who only trust what they can see.

This is why the world claps your good days and interrogates your bad ones: “You were doing so well!” Yes, Susan, because I had 48 hours of functioning nerve conduction. Don’t get excited.

Living data vs. clinical data

Research tells us MS is unpredictable and variable. Patients tell us exactly how unpredictable and how variable — in ways doctors don’t always clock because they don’t live inside the burning building.

Lived experience is data. Messy, subjective, inconvenient, but absolutely real.

And we need more of it.

Not to replace medicine, but to expand it. Not to reject pharma, but to refine it. Not to preach cures, but to share reality.

Why personal regimes become survival, not rebellion

Call it alternative, natural, holistic, personalised — whatever label makes you least likely to be shouted at online. For many of us, building our own systems is not ideology, it’s necessity.

When conventional medicine hits its limits, you start tweaking your own dials:

Food. Stress. Triggers. Supplements. Sleep. Movement. Emotional processing. Gut health. Breathing. Calming the nervous system so it doesn’t leap off a cliff.

This isn’t magic. This isn’t woo. This is survival engineering.

Personal experimentation is how many MS patients find the thing that makes the next day slightly less catastrophic.

It’s not a cure. It’s not universal. It’s survival. And survival, in a disease like MS, is an art.

The honest bottom line MS is not one disease. It never was.

It’s a messy spectrum of neurological chaos wearing a single label because scientists haven’t yet built a microscope fine enough for the truth.

Until then, we keep talking. We keep writing. We keep comparing notes. And we keep dragging the reality of MS out of the shadows where the polite medical pamphlets prefer to hide it.

If this helps someone feel a bit less alone in their personal version of hell, then the writing was worth it.

Warlock Dark Chronic illness survivor, truth-teller, occasional bastard. From My Living Hell (For those who came here by accident: yes, my living hell is real. And yes, we still fight. Every shitty day. With defiance.)

@goblinbloggeruk - sick@mylivinghell.co.uk 𒀭𒊩𒆳 ᛞᚱᚨᚷᛟᚾ ᛏᚱᚨᚾᛋᚲᚺᚱᛁᛖᛞ ✦ ᚹᚨᛏᚲᚺᛖᚱ 𒀸𒀭 ᚢᚾᛒᛟᚢᚾᛞ

⚠️ Please read with care: This blog shares personal, sometimes painful experiences. My intention is to support and speak honestly not to harm. I’m not a professional, just someone who understands how hard it can get. If you're struggling, you're not alone please reach out for professional help.

A love-letter to MS self-advocacy, wrapped in barbed wire

There’s a point in this MS journey where the penny drops — not the diagnosis, but the darker penny:

No one is coming to save you.

Not the neurologist with the framed qualifications. Not the nurse who thinks fatigue means “sleepy”. Not the turmeric-worshipping cousin who thinks they’ve cracked your nervous system with a spice rack.

They can stand beside us. Support us. But they do not live in this body.

They don’t feel lightning legs at midnight. They don’t taste steroid-metal at 3am. They don’t forget how spoons work mid-breakfast.

We do.

So when a treatment doesn’t fit, when the side effects steamroll you, when the plan feels wrong — that’s when the real fight starts.

Because if you don’t speak, you vanish.

THE DISAGREEMENT MOMENT

You sit in a room lit like an interrogation chamber. White coat opposite. Clipboard poised. Confidence radiating like WiFi.

You say:

“This treatment is making me worse.”

And you watch that look happen — the blink, the polite file-away, the mental note:

“non-compliant patient.”

Medical disagreement is treated like disrespect. Not curiosity. Not collaboration. Disobedience.

And you think:

“Why are you holding the map when I’m the battlefield?”

THE TRUTH THEY RARELY ADMIT

MS is chaos wearing a nervous system like a borrowed coat. It mutates. It hides. It laughs at predictability. And sometimes — yes, brace for impact — the patient knows more. Because we're the ones living the symptoms, not studying them. Because we feel every electric misfire, every bladder rebellion, every cognitive fade. Because we are the data in motion. If we don’t advocate for ourselves, we become spectators in our own disease. Not happening.

WHEN YOU SAY NO, YOU’RE NOT REBELLIOUS — YOU’RE ALIVE

We’re trained to nod. To thank. To comply.

But disagreement is not disrespect it’s self-defence.

You’re not awkward. You’re not dramatic. You’re not “difficult.”

You’re protecting the only nervous system you’ve got.

And sometimes survival is two syllables long:

“I disagree.”

WORDS YOU CAN USE NEXT TIME YOU’RE IN THAT ROOM

Steal these. Tattoo them mentally. Use without apology:

🞂 “This isn’t working what else is available?” 🞂 “Slow down, brain fog is real.” 🞂 “Show me evidence, not reassurance.” 🞂 “I don’t feel heard right now.” 🞂 “I want options list them.” 🞂 “No.”

That last one is a grenade. Pull pin when needed.

FINAL TRUTH

Some doctors will respect your voice. Some will hate it. Some appointments will feel like war. But silence is a slow suffocation. Speaking up is oxygen. Say the hard words. Own your body. Be heard even if your voice shakes through every syllable. MS can take many things but not your agency unless you surrender it. And you’re not surrendering anything.

Warlock Dark Chronic illness survivor, truth-teller, occasional bastard. From My Living Hell (For those who came here by accident: yes, my living hell is real. And yes, we still fight. Every shitty day. With defiance.)

@goblinbloggeruk - sick@mylivinghell.co.uk 𒀭𒊩𒆳 ᛞᚱᚨᚷᛟᚾ ᛏᚱᚨᚾᛋᚲᚺᚱᛁᛖᛞ ✦ ᚹᚨᛏᚲᚺᛖᚱ 𒀸𒀭 ᚢᚾᛒᛟᚢᚾᛞ

⚠️ Please read with care: This blog shares personal, sometimes painful experiences. My intention is to support and speak honestly not to harm. I’m not a professional, just someone who understands how hard it can get. If you're struggling, you're not alone please reach out for professional help.

Autonomic dysfunction.

Sounds clinical, doesn’t it? Like something you’d hear from a doctor wearing a tie far too cheerful for the situation. In reality, it’s more like your nervous system looks at its job description, shrugs, and says “Nah mate, not today.”

So for those who don’t live in this circus of malfunction, here’s the truth:

The autonomic nervous system is the part of your brain and body that should run quietly in the background. Heart rate. Blood pressure. Body temperature. Digestion. Bladder. Breathing. Sweating. The automatic things the stuff that keeps you alive without you having to think about it.

Except mine and maybe yours doesn’t. Because MS came along like a drunken arsonist with a lighter, and torched the wiring.

Now I get autonomic dysfunction. A fancier way of saying:

✔ My body forgets how to regulate itself ✔ My heart and blood pressure do whatever the hell they like ✔ I can faint, shake, freeze or burn up for no bloody reason ✔ Digestion? Chaos. ✔ Temperature control? Ha. Good joke. ✔ Fight or Flight? Always stuck halfway like a buffering YouTube video

And the kicker? I’m pretty sure I had this before MS even moved in and pissed on the carpet. MS just amped it up, added fireworks, and turned life into a physiological hostage situation.

Some days my body works. Some days I stand up, and the universe tilts sideways like I’m in a Salvador Dalí painting. Some days breathing feels manual. Sometimes my heart behaves like it’s remixing a drum solo.

And yes — it’s exhausting. Yes — it’s humiliating. And yes — it pisses me off because there’s no switch to turn it off, no fuse to replace, no user manual. Just me. Living in a house where the wiring is frayed and the electrics flicker whenever they feel like it.

But here’s the truth I sit with:

I’m still here. Still writing. Still swearing. Still breathing — even when my nervous system forgets how to.

That, my friend, is survival. Not pretty. Not poetic. Just real.

Welcome to my living hell. Make yourself uncomfortable.

Warlock Dark Chronic illness survivor, truth-teller, occasional bastard. From My Living Hell (For those who came here by accident: yes, my living hell is real. And yes, we still fight. Every shitty day. With defiance.)

@goblinbloggeruk - sick@mylivinghell.co.uk 𒀭𒊩𒆳 ᛞᚱᚨᚷᛟᚾ ᛏᚱᚨᚾᛋᚲᚺᚱᛁᛖᛞ ✦ ᚹᚨᛏᚲᚺᛖᚱ 𒀸𒀭 ᚢᚾᛒᛟᚢᚾᛞ

⚠️ Please read with care: This blog shares personal, sometimes painful experiences. My intention is to support and speak honestly not to harm. I’m not a professional, just someone who understands how hard it can get. If you're struggling, you're not alone please reach out for professional help.

As I sit in a shitty little car park waiting for Albertine to get her tooth attacked by a dentist with a drill fetish, I’m watching the world walk past like nothing’s wrong.

We’ve dragged ourselves over 20 miles of crap roads and potholes that could swallow small cars, just so someone in a white coat can decide whether her tooth lives, dies, or crumbles like the rest of us. She’s in there having a deep root filling. I’m out here having a deep existential crisis. Fair swap.

Through the window, I see people strolling past. All shapes, all sizes, all moving. Feet actually working, legs co-operating, bodies that just… do what they’re told. They probably woke up, stood up, and walked out the door without even noticing what a bloody miracle that is.

And yeah, I’m jealous. Not in a bitter, “I hope you trip” way. More in a “I remember that life and it’s gone now” way.

There was a time when cold wind on my face and cold feet on the pavement were just normal, not fond memories. Now I’m strapped into a wheelchair like a budget Bond villain who never made it to the main script.

The thing about the chair is this: people stop seeing you and start seeing “problem”. They talk round you. They avoid eye contact. They change tone. You don’t exist as a person anymore; you’re a walking (well, rolling) reminder that bodies fail and futures shrink. People don’t like that. It scares them.

For years I thought it was me. My weirdness. My deep dives. My honesty. Then I realised it wasn’t that at all. It was the disability. It was the diagnosis. It was the fact I no longer fit the easy narrative.

Once people hear “multiple sclerosis” or “chronic illness”, you can almost hear the plug being pulled. Some vanish quietly. Some ghost you. Some suddenly “get busy”. You go from “mate” to “emotional admin” in a heartbeat.

Over the past couple of years, I’ve lost a lot of friends. Some to death the real full-stop kind. Others just drifted off the radar because illness made me inconvenient. The funny, deep, eccentric bloke is apparently less fun once he can’t climb stairs or go out at short notice. Who knew?

I don’t have any mates I can just WhatsApp or ring now. The ones who “got” my madness, my weird wiring, my dark humour and deep rabbit holes: dead, gone, or missing in action. It’s a strange kind of grief not just for people, but for versions of yourself that only ever existed with them.

And yes, it’s lonely. Not “no one’s in the room” lonely. It’s the kind of lonely where you start to wonder: is it me? Am I that hard to love? Am I that awkward? Or is the world just allergic to discomfort?

Some days I think back over my medical history the missed things, the gaslighting, the “it’s all in your head”, the “you’re fine really” conversations and I could scream. I’ve changed hospitals now because I got sick of being treated like a difficult file in a broken system.

I ask myself: if I hadn’t moved around so much, would they have found all this sooner? Would I have had less damage? Less suffering?

Honestly? I doubt it. I think some of us are born with the seeds of chronic illness lurking quietly in the background. It sits there, creeping under the surface, like fungus under wet wallpaper. And then one day congratulations your nervous system collapses and your life becomes an ongoing science experiment.

What I miss most isn’t “being healthy”. It’s the simple things:

Going to the toilet without planning it like a military operation.

Walking up and down stairs without feeling like you’ve been tased.

Just sleeping. Properly.

Running.

Feeling your own body and trusting it not to betray you in front of everyone.

I look back at all the accidents, the falls, the weird episodes all the stuff that made no sense for decades and now it does. And the anger is… real. Because so much of my suffering didn’t need to happen. It could have been caught earlier. It could have been managed better. It could have been believed.

Should I have shouted louder? Fought harder? Been more aggressive? Was this my fault for not being a bigger bastard sooner? I genuinely don’t know.

So yeah, let me ask you this, if you’re reading:

Do you feel isolated and alone because of your illness? Have people quietly vanished from your life once it got “too real”? Do you feel like your diagnosis made you socially radioactive?

Because that’s what it feels like here. We’re all human. We all hurt. We all bleed. But some of us are expected to do it quietly, out of the way, so we don’t upset the healthy.

Is it a test? A lesson? Karma? Cosmic admin error? What exactly are we supposed to be learning from this?

As I’m sat here, the sun’s trying to shine like it’s in denial. My body feels wrong: neck in a constant state of “what fresh hell is this”, head buzzing like badly wired electrics, eyes not quite synced to reality. And yet, I still want to do things. I still want to live, create, move, speak.

And that’s the sick joke: the mind still wants to run marathons while the body struggles to survive a trip to the toilet.

I’ve lost good friends over the years — the ones who truly understood me. Now, I have Albertine, my kids, my grandkids. Everyone else has basically evaporated. My brothers, my sisters, extended family… gone.

Does it mean I’m a bad person? I don’t think so. Does it mean I’m simple, or awkward, or too much? Maybe to them.

I know I’m strange. Dynamic. Eccentric. I think differently. I question things. I look into the abyss and then start mapping it. That’s just how I’m wired.

People call me “Marmite”. Fair enough. Some love me. Some can’t stand me. I tell the truth. I don’t do small talk. I don’t do sugarcoating. That tends to thin the crowd pretty quickly.

When I had my “glitch” that moment where things really went sideways all I saw was darkness. No light at the end of the tunnel. No spiritual fireworks. Just… nothingness. The void is not romantic. It’s just empty.

And here’s the real kicker: looking into the void doesn’t help much if you’ve got no one to talk about it with.

Artificial intelligence can chat. It can reflect language back and be useful in its own way. But AI doesn’t know what it feels like to lie awake at 3am wondering if your heart’s going to stop. It doesn’t know what it’s like to realise your nervous system has been malfunctioning since childhood and everyone missed it. It doesn’t know what it’s like to be trapped in a body that keeps glitching while the world expects you to carry on as normal.

That’s why I’m going to start a podcast.

Not because I think I’m some guru, but because I’m sick to death of people like us being invisible.

I’m getting a microphone. I’ll set up the account. I’ll get it on Spotify. And I’m going to talk voice, not just text. I want to interview others with chronic illness and disability. I want to hear different stories, perspectives, battles. I want people to know what we live through every day.

We need more voices saying:

This is hard. This is unfair. This is exhausting. But we’re still here.

Sometimes, a kind word is the difference between someone hanging on and someone giving up. A hug can do more for the soul than any prescription.

When I’m at my worst when I feel like I might actually be leaving this planet soon I curl up with my wife. That’s my heaven. Not golden gates. Not angels. Just me and her, breathing together. In that moment, no matter how bad I feel, I am at peace.

In two weeks, I retire. Not because I’m ready. Because my body has decided to hand in its notice. I can’t even really afford the basics, like the electric bill, but here we are. Everything’s gone up except support for the people who need it.

So if you’re out there, struggling, broke, exhausted, in pain, staring at a ceiling wondering what the point is:

I see you.

If anything I’ve said here resonates, drop me a line. I’m short of friends but not short of words.

Sending peace, healing, love and light — No matter who or what you are. Human, alien, ultra-terrestrial, glitch in the matrix, or just another broken soul in a waiting room.

So saith Warlock Dark

Warlock Dark Chronic illness survivor, truth-teller, occasional bastard. From My Living Hell (For those who came here by accident: yes, my living hell is real. And yes, we still fight. Every shitty day. With defiance.)

@goblinbloggeruk - sick@mylivinghell.co.uk 𒀭𒊩𒆳 ᛞᚱᚨᚷᛟᚾ ᛏᚱᚨᚾᛋᚲᚺᚱᛁᛖᛞ ✦ ᚹᚨᛏᚲᚺᛖᚱ 𒀸𒀭 ᚢᚾᛒᛟᚢᚾᛞ

⚠️ Please read with care: This blog shares personal, sometimes painful experiences. My intention is to support and speak honestly not to harm. I’m not a professional, just someone who understands how hard it can get. If you're struggling, you're not alone please reach out for professional help.

(A Guide for People Who Are Sick of Medical Bullshit)

Let’s be honest: if you’re reading this, you probably already suspect the vagus nerve is responsible for half the weird crap your body does and you’re not wrong. The vagus nerve is basically the body’s faulty fibre-optic broadband, running all the way from your brain down through your chest and into your gut, sending messages like a drunk carrier pigeon on a windy day.

It’s the longest nerve you’ve got, and when it behaves, life ticks along nicely. When it misbehaves? Your whole system goes down like a dodgy second-hand Dell tower from the 90s.

Here’s the real breakdown the stuff they never explain properly while you’re half-collapsed in A&E, being poked by somebody who can’t pronounce “vagal.”

The Vagus: The Autopilot Wire

The vagus nerve runs your parasympathetic nervous system, which is medical jargon for the “calm down, chill out, don’t die” mode. It’s the opposite of fight-or-flight. It’s rest-and-digest. It’s autopilot.

The problem? When this giant nerve gets irritated, inflamed, or just decides it hates you, it can pull the emergency brake on your entire body with zero warning — which is why vagus-related symptoms always come out of nowhere and hit like a bloody freight train.

1. Your Heart’s On a Leash

This nerve tells your heart when to slow down. That’s lovely until it overdoes it.

Too much vagus activity? Heart rate plummets.

Cue dizziness, sweating, that “oh, this is it then” feeling, and your blood pressure going on holiday.

2. It Runs the Gut Literally

Every vomit, every bowel spasm, every time your stomach has a tantrum the vagus nerve is involved.

If it’s irritated or under-performing, expect:

nausea

diarrhoea

constipation

stomach cramps

digestion that behaves like a toddler with a drum kit

Basically, it decides whether food moves… or doesn’t.

3. Blood Pressure: The Vagus Controls the Dimmer Switch

It works with your baroreceptors (those tiny sensors in your arteries) to keep things steady. When the vagus goes rogue? Blood pressure drops like a stone and you’re left gripping the kitchen counter thinking this is how you die — again.

4. Breathing

Calm vagus = slow and steady. Stressed vagus = shallow, panicky little puffs.

Ever wondered why deep breathing exercises work? They’re literally tugging on the vagus nerve to force it to chill out.

5. Stress, Panic, the Whole Sensory Meltdown

The vagus nerve mediates your stress response. When it freaks out, YOU freak out. Even if nothing’s wrong.

That’s why vagal attacks feel like:

impending doom

full-system shutdown

heart weirdness

tunnel vision

sweating

trembling

fainting

sudden need for a toilet you cannot reach in time

It’s the nerve pulling the plug on itself and everything else.

6. Why People With MS Get It Worse

Your wiring’s already compromised. MS damage → hypersensitive nerves → vagus acting like a frayed extension lead.

So triggers for you can be:

pain

heat

eating

standing

lying

stress

not enough stress

random cosmic spite

Basically: your vagus nerve is a diva.

7. Why Doctors Don’t Take It Seriously

Most GPs are trained to see the vagus nerve as “the fainting nerve.” They don’t get that it affects:

heart rhythm

gut function

blood pressure

breathing

swallowing

voice

inflammation

fatigue

neurological flare-ups

migraines

seizures

pain

It’s involved in almost everything your body does automatically — so when it misfires, it’s bedlam.

In Plain English

The vagus nerve is the massive communication cable between your brain and your organs. When it behaves, it keeps you alive. When it glitches, you become a collapsing, sweating, nauseous sack of biological chaos wondering who you upset in a past life.

Warlock Dark Chronic illness survivor, truth-teller, occasional bastard. From My Living Hell (For those who came here by accident: yes, my living hell is real. And yes, we still fight. Every shitty day. With defiance.)

@goblinbloggeruk - sick@mylivinghell.co.uk 𒀭𒊩𒆳 ᛞᚱᚨᚷᛟᚾ ᛏᚱᚨᚾᛋᚲᚺᚱᛁᛖᛞ ✦ ᚹᚨᛏᚲᚺᛖᚱ 𒀸𒀭 ᚢᚾᛒᛟᚢᚾᛞ

⚠️ Please read with care: This blog shares personal, sometimes painful experiences. My intention is to support and speak honestly not to harm. I’m not a professional, just someone who understands how hard it can get. If you're struggling, you're not alone please reach out for professional help.

So here we are, Wednesday afternoon, reflecting on the last week and yeah, it’s been a bloody rough one.

I ended up at the doctor yesterday. Now I’ve got to wait a week for blood tests and a week-long ECG strapped to me like some kind of cyborg pensioner. Apparently my heart rhythm decided to join the circus right at the peak of Saturday night’s vagus-nerve meltdown. Typical.

I can honestly say hand on what’s left of my sanity that was the worst attack I’ve had in my entire life. Absolutely mind-bending. Proper frightening. I thought I’d moved past these big episodes with diet changes, lifestyle tweaks, and all the other nonsense we tell ourselves to stay optimistic… but no. My body looked at my efforts and said, “Cute. Watch this.”

So now I’m stepping into a new chapter where my vagus nerve has gone totally rogue. The doctors are muttering about AF, but let’s be real that was likely just my blood pressure falling through the floor when the vagus nerve threw its tantrum. Still, they’re taking it seriously, so off to cardiology I go. Beta blockers and blood thinners were mentioned. We’ll see.

This throat issue? I’ve had it for over forty years. Ambulance out about seven times in the last decade. The major attack always lasts 30–40 minutes of pure hell, and then the “come-down” hits like the aftermath of a grand mal — shaking, drained, disoriented, wondering what the hell just happened to your own body.

It’s been a few days and I’m only just starting to level out. The strangulation feeling in the throat has eased a bit. The burning at the back of my throat is still there annoying the crap out of me but survivable.

That’s it for today’s blog. A bit raw, a bit sideways, but it’s all I’ve got.

Have fun, world.

Warlock Dark Chronic illness survivor, truth-teller, occasional bastard. From My Living Hell (For those who came here by accident: yes, my living hell is real. And yes, we still fight. Every shitty day. With defiance.)

@goblinbloggeruk - sick@mylivinghell.co.uk 𒀭𒊩𒆳 ᛞᚱᚨᚷᛟᚾ ᛏᚱᚨᚾᛋᚲᚺᚱᛁᛖᛞ ✦ ᚹᚨᛏᚲᚺᛖᚱ 𒀸𒀭 ᚢᚾᛒᛟᚢᚾᛞ

⚠️ Please read with care: This blog shares personal, sometimes painful experiences. My intention is to support and speak honestly not to harm. I’m not a professional, just someone who understands how hard it can get. If you're struggling, you're not alone please reach out for professional help.

Some weekends hit you with a light slap. This one picked me up, shook me like a cocktail, and threw me at the floor for good measure.

Saturday night… well, that one’s going straight into the “Top 3 Worst Episodes of My Life” hall of fame. My body didn’t just glitch — it staged a full-scale neurological mutiny.

The Hit

It came out of nowhere. One moment I was fine, the next my entire autonomic system pulled the emergency brake and launched me into panic hell.

My throat tightened. My swallowing screwed up. My stomach dropped like I’d been pushed off a bridge. My vision became a muffled, tunnelled mess. And my whole body went cold not “a bit chilly,” but corpse-cold.

I’ve had MS for years. I know its tricks. But this was different. This was violent. This was instant.

And here’s the truth I left out the first time: I was scared. Properly scared.

I thought, “Shit… this is it. This is the one where I don’t get back up.” Calling 999

Albertine had to call an ambulance. I didn’t have a choice. This wasn’t a “ride it out” moment. This was the full autonomic shutdown vibe sweating, trembling, throat closing, body shaking, heart refusing to “thump” properly, brain screaming doom.

And then came the worst part:

Forty minutes. Forty minutes of waiting, fighting my own body, trying to stay conscious, trying not to choke, trying not to spiral.

If you’ve ever had a neurological event and waited for an ambulance, you know exactly what that wait feels like. The clock becomes a sadist.

My ears were ringing. My blood pressure tanked. I genuinely thought I was dying.

By the time the ambulance arrived, I was a wreck. They checked me over, confirmed the BP was ridiculously low, stabilised me, and got me back into something resembling a human shape but the damage was done. My system was fried for the night.

Sunday: The Aftershock

Sunday wasn’t much better.

My head felt like a pressure cooker. That weird prickly sensation on the right side of my skull the one that always shows up after an attack set in like an uninvited guest.

My hands pulsed. My head pulsed. The tinnitus screamed like it was trying to win an award.

Breathing felt “off,” not in a dramatic gasping way, but that unnerving internal panic: “Something’s wrong… but what?”

My vagus nerve the drama queen it is had clearly had enough and was still sulking.

And my cognition? Let’s just say I’ve had smoother days. I felt detached. Off. Like I was watching myself from two feet behind my own head.

Monday: The Reset

Now it’s Monday afternoon and I’m calmer, but still not quite right.

The pins and needles are doing their usual “good morning, we live here now” routine in my hands and feet. My head pressure has moved to the top middle that annoying “brain has opinions” spot. My throat feels clogged with half a ton of imaginary phlegm.

But I’m stable. I’m talking. I’m thinking. And I haven’t keeled over.

That’s progress.

Tomorrow: The GP

I’ve got the doctor sorted for tomorrow, and that’s the sensible move. I’m not messing about after this one this was the worst in years, and we finally know enough to start demanding answers instead of shrugging and hoping.

Chest tightness? Swallowing issues? Autonomic chaos? Blood pressure on holiday? Yeah, the GP can have the whole bloody report.

I’m not going down early because I tried to “tough it out.” I’ve seen too many people die playing that game.

Why I’m Writing This

Because this is the real face of chronic illness not the brochure version, not the charity-approved inspirational poster. This is the gut-level reality.

My blog is about truth. Raw, ugly, darkly funny truth.

Life with MS isn’t pretty. It isn’t tidy. It isn’t inspirational every day. Some days it’s a war you didn’t ask for and you fight it anyway.

If you’re going through similar, I want you to know this:

You’re not weak for being scared. You’re not dramatic for calling 999. You’re not overthinking it if your body is shutting down. And you’re not alone.

We survive these attacks by being honest, prepared, and stubborn as hell.

I’m still here. Still fighting. Still writing.

Tomorrow will be another chapter. I’ll survive that too.

I thank my wife Albertine she saved me I love you forever....

Warlock Dark Chronic illness survivor, truth-teller, occasional bastard. From My Living Hell (For those who came here by accident: yes, my living hell is real. And yes, we still fight. Every shitty day. With defiance.)

@goblinbloggeruk - sick@mylivinghell.co.uk 𒀭𒊩𒆳 ᛞᚱᚨᚷᛟᚾ ᛏᚱᚨᚾᛋᚲᚺᚱᛁᛖᛞ ✦ ᚹᚨᛏᚲᚺᛖᚱ 𒀸𒀭 ᚢᚾᛒᛟᚢᚾᛞ