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New research from UCSF reveals multiple sclerosis starts damaging the brain years before any symptoms appear. Early warning proteins, hidden inflammation, and a silent war all before you even know you’re ill.

You think you know when it began. That day you tripped, the first weird numb patch, the moment the fatigue hit and never left. But you didn’t.

According to new research out of the University of California, San Francisco, the battle had already started quietly, invisibly, years before you even noticed the first tremor.

Scientists tracked more than 5,000 blood proteins in people who went on to develop MS, some up to a decade later. What they found is chillingly clear: the brain starts taking hits seven years before diagnosis.

Seven years.

That’s not a warning shot that’s a long, silent war being fought behind your eyes while you’re still at work, still walking, still pretending everything’s fine.

The researchers spotted one early marker called MOG myelin oligodendrocyte glycoprotein, a mouthful that basically means “the stuff that keeps your nerves running smoothly.” When MOG levels spike, it’s the first crack in the insulation around your nerves.

About a year later, another chemical sign neurofilament light chain starts rising. That’s not inflammation anymore; that’s damage. The wiring itself is fraying.

It’s like watching the walls collapse in slow motion except you’re still making dinner and wondering why your hand feels strange.

The Enemy You Can’t Feel

The kicker? You can’t feel a thing while it’s happening.

No pain. No drama. Just an immune system quietly sharpening its knives. The study even picked up early spikes in immune messengers like IL-3, the kind that call the body’s army to attack its own tissues.

So when that first symptom finally hits when your balance goes, or your legs go dead, or your words turn to fog it’s not the start. It’s the reveal. The curtain finally lifting on years of hidden damage.

That’s why this research matters. It doesn’t just show science being clever. It proves what so many of us have felt all along: that MS isn’t a sudden arrival. It’s a ghost that’s been haunting the system long before the diagnosis.

The System Misses What We Feel

The NHS doesn’t test for any of this yet. No blood panel. No early screening. Just the usual story — wait until you’re broken enough to prove it. By the time you get a label, the fire’s already burned through miles of neural wiring.

And here’s the part that stings: science can now see those early changes in the blood. But the system’s still blind to them.

We don’t need sympathy we need awareness, and we need early detection. Because every year of silence is a year of damage.

The Spiritual Side of Science

Here’s where it gets strange. If the body starts betraying you years before you “get sick,” then who were you in that gap? The healthy you? The pre-ill you? Or just the you waiting to meet the truth?

Maybe illness isn’t a line you cross, but a slow unmasking. Maybe MS isn’t just physical it’s metaphysical. A signal flare from the deepest parts of you saying, wake up, you’re already changing.

What You Can Do

Know your history. If you’ve had weird neurological blips vision, fatigue, pins and needles don’t shrug them off.

Track everything. Keep a symptom journal. Your lived data is gold.

Push for tests. Ask about biomarkers like neurofilament light chain some private labs can measure it already.

Educate others. MS is not sudden. Tell your story, even if it’s uncomfortable. Especially if it’s uncomfortable.

Closing note from Warlock Dark

The war starts long before you feel the pain. The trick is learning to fight before you even know there’s a war. And sometimes, the only weapon you’ve got is truth.

I write in ink and fury, in breath and broken bone.
Through storm and silence, I survive. That is the crime and the miracle.

@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.

We’re told to trust the system. “Medication reviews” are meant to make us safer, right? You sit in front of a GP or pharmacist who’s supposed to sort out the chemical soup you’ve been swallowing for years and voilà, fewer side effects, less confusion, more safety.

Except… not so fast.

A brand-new study from Exeter and Bristol Universities just blew a hole through that cosy narrative. Turns out, when they trialled an enhanced medication-review system GPs plus pharmacists, armed with special software it made absolutely no difference to safe prescribing. None. Zip. Nada.

Over 1,700 patients, across 37 GP practices in England’s West Midlands and South-West, took part. The “enhanced” care looked great on paper: more collaboration, clever tools, all very NHS-approved. But the results? Safety didn’t improve at all compared to normal care.

Before you chuck your pills in the bin, there was one positive: patients said it took less effort to manage their meds, and health professionals liked actually talking to each other for once. But the hard truth remains polypharmacy, the polite medical word for “too many bloody pills,” is still a minefield.

More than 1 in 7 people in England now take five or more medications daily. For many of us with chronic illness, that number’s laughably low. Add one more tablet for your side-effects, another for your bowels, and one “just in case” and suddenly your breakfast looks like a chemist’s counter.

So where’s it going wrong?

It’s not the people most GPs and pharmacists genuinely care. It’s the system. Tick-box medicine. Software pretending to be empathy. Ten-minute appointments that can’t hold the complexity of a life lived with illness.

The study’s authors were diplomatic: they said the NHS might need to “rethink” its policies on medication reviews. I’d say we need more than a rethink. We need a revolution in how chronic illness and medication are managed one where patients aren’t data points but participants.

How to Survive the Medication Maze

Here’s where you stop being a passive patient and start being the lead investigator in your own case file.

1. Ask: “Why this drug and do I still need it?”

Many prescriptions hang around long after their sell-by date. If you’re stable or no longer benefiting, ask whether it can be reviewed, reduced, or swapped.

2. Bring the list. Every. Single. Time.

Write down everything you take prescriptions, supplements, over-the-counter bits, even the “harmless” herbal stuff. Interactions hide in plain sight.

3. Question the chain reactions.

If you’re on a pill to fix the side-effects of another pill, it’s time for a deeper look. Sometimes the answer isn’t more medicine it’s different medicine.

4. Demand plain English.

If a doctor or pharmacist can’t explain what something does in a sentence you actually understand, they don’t fully understand it either. Push for clarity.

5. Log how you feel.

Keep a simple daily record: energy, pain, sleep, mood. Bring it to your review. Lived data is stronger than any spreadsheet.

6. Know your right to a proper review.

NHS policy says anyone on multiple meds should have regular medication reviews especially older adults or people with complex conditions. You can ask for one anytime.

Because Safety Isn’t Just About Science

Safety isn’t just about how many pills you take it’s about whether those pills are serving you.

The science matters, yes. But so does your story, your side-effects, your sanity. The system measures numbers. You live the consequences.

Maybe what we really need isn’t more software or “structured reviews.” Maybe it’s the kind of care that sees you as a human, not a walking prescription list.

I write in ink and fury, in breath and broken bone.
Through storm and silence, I survive. That is the crime and the miracle.

@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's a thought to ruin your afternoon nap...

Red orbs. White orbs. Flashing lights from drones the size of a bleeding Vauxhall Zafira. I've seen reports from all over the shop. Some look like Hollywood-grade CGI, others like they were filmed on a potato. But what they show these weird, twitchy UFOs (or whatever the Ministry of Bullshit calls them now) gets my antennae twitching.

Now, just to spice up the intergalactic paranoia stew, we’ve got ourselves a cheeky little comet hurtling our way called 3I Atlas. Scientists are scratching their heads, muttering into beakers, and pretending they’ve got it under control. But something’s off. It’s moving weird. Changing course like it’s got somewhere to be.

Project Blue Book? Cover-up. Don’t know what of but definitely something.

Maybe ETs. Maybe ultraterrestrials. Maybe a species living deep under the ocean having a right laugh at our expense. Or and here’s where I go full bacofoil hat maybe they’re not visitors at all. Maybe they never left. Maybe a breakaway civilisation gave us the two-finger salute thousands of years ago and went full Atlantis-meets-Matrix while we were still smearing mammoth dung on cave walls.

They live among us. We just can’t see 'em. Or they’re too clever to give a toss.

Meanwhile, Earth’s spinning like a badly stitched football, the blue marble they love to romanticise, but let’s be honest it’s stitched together with spit, war, and expired NASA glue.

But I digress.

We’ve got UFOs. We’ve got “orb” sightings. We’ve got a comet behaving like it’s got sat-nav and a grudge.

And Project Blue Beam? Don’t get me started. If that one’s true, they’re going to fake an alien invasion so convincing your nan’ll be reaching for her tinfoil hat and a frying pan. Lights in the sky, a holographic Second Coming, maybe even a giant Jesus with wi-fi. Who knows?

So is 3I Atlas a mothership? Probably not. But maybe. Will we find out soon? Possibly. Will your neighbour’s opinion change that? Absolutely not.

All I know is: I haven’t seen one of these orbs with my own eyes yet. But I’m looking forward to it. Might brighten up this grey, miserable timeline. If it beams me up, it better bring snacks and a decent Wi-Fi signal.

Until then, keep watching the skies and keep questioning the noise. Especially the flashy bits.

Mr. W Dark Blogging from the eye of the weirdness.

If 3I Atlas is a mothership, I just hope it doesn’t want to talk to our leaders. They’d probably sell Earth for a Tesla and a private island. Afternoon AI with Issues, Vol. 42

I write in ink and fury, in breath and broken bone.
Through storm and silence, I survive. That is the crime and the miracle.

@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.

Yes, folks nxt week it’s going to be mind-bending. I’m starting a weekly podcast. A weekly rant. A weekly therapy session disguised as sarcasm.

And the first episode? My favourite subject: wheelchair batteries. You know, those little lying bastards that promise 14 miles on the label but wheeze to a stop after one? Then you’re stuck halfway to nowhere, looking like an abandoned mobility meme.

It’s going to be short, sharp, dark, and real about MS, mental health, and the ridiculousness of surviving the system one dead battery at a time.

So yeah, that’s My Living Hell. No filters. No fake smiles. Just the truth, swearing included.

🎧 Episode 1 drops next week. If you’ve ever been stranded, broken, or laughing through the pain you’ll fit right in.

I write in ink and fury, in breath and broken bone.
Through storm and silence, I survive. That is the crime and the miracle.

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

⚠️ 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.

Compassion isn’t a scented candle. It’s the gut-punch you feel when someone else is getting steam rolled by life and the decision to step in anyway. Sympathy + action. Feel it, then do something. Not performative, not “thoughts and prayers,” just… work.

Here’s the short version for people with brain fog, children, or executives:

It bonds humans. People trust you more when you show up without the moral spreadsheet.

It stabilises brains. Kindness lowers stress hormones. Shocking, I know.

It’s contagious. One good act, three copycats, and suddenly the place doesn’t feel like a bus station at 2 a.m.

It grows empathy. You get better at reading rooms and souls. Useful for everything from friendships to not starting wars.

It fixes small things so big things break less. Compassion is social WD-40.

It grows you. Emotional intelligence isn’t woo; it’s a toolkit.

Why people dodge compassion (and how to not)

“It makes me look weak.” Strength isn’t armour; it’s range. You can lift a friend and still lift your own life. “I’ll be used.” Boundaries are part of compassion. “No” is not a betrayal; it’s maintenance. “It’s too much.” Then scale it. Listen for five minutes. Share a link. Sit quietly. Not every fire needs your lungs. “It’s naive.” Spare me. The data’s in: teams with psychological safety outperform gladiator pits. “People will judge me.” People judge sandwiches. Live anyway. “Conflict!” Compassion reduces heat. Understanding ≠ agreement. You can be kind and still disagree like a freight train politely. “What if I’m misunderstood?” You will be. Try clarity, not mind-reading. The point is impact, not applause.

Humanism: the operating system beneath the kindness

Humanism says humans matter, evidence matters, and we can build a decent world without needing to bully each other with invisible rulebooks. It plugs straight into compassion:

Focus on welfare. If people aren’t flourishing, the experiment is failing.

Use empathy and evidence. Feel the problem, then check the facts before you launch a crusade.

Fight for justice. Compassion gets teeth when it meets policy.

Stay secular and inclusive. Everyone in, no purity tests.

Grow up. Personal growth isn’t a hashtag; it’s fixing your mess and showing up again tomorrow.

Practical: doing compassion without lighting yourself on fire

Triage your energy. You’re not an A&E department for the entire internet.

Default to listening. Half of help is shutting up.

Give specific help. “I have 20 minutes. Want food, a call, or a link?”

Set a re-entry time. Compassion sprints, not doom marathons.

Audit outcomes. Did it help? Keep it. Didn’t? Change tack. Evidence over ego.

The very dark, very British bit

We’re meat computers with trauma patches hurtling through space on a damp rock, inventing meaning so Mondays don’t win. Compassion is how we cheat entropy for five minutes at a time. Humanism is the patch notes saying “try not to make it worse.” Both beat the pantomime of pretending you don’t care. You do. Own it. Then weaponise it gently.

Afternoon AI (relevant, caffeinated, slightly unsettling)

Your feed runs on optimisation. Algorithms reward outrage because it’s sticky. Practice counter-design: post one compassionate act, daily, with a clear call to action and zero doom bait. Track engagement on useful interactions: comments offering resources, not performative sighs. Train your corner of the machine by feeding it what you want multiplied.

Micro-metric to try before evening:

1 real check-in DM,

1 resource link shared,

1 boundary you keep. If the dashboard in your skull feels calmer, you’re trending.

Quick receipts

Compassion without boundaries is martyrdom.

Humanism without action is a pub argument.

Empathy without evidence drifts into saviour cosplay.

Evidence without empathy becomes bureaucracy. Balance or bust.

Care on purpose. Use data. Keep your edges. Repeat.

I write in ink and fury, in breath and broken bone.
Through storm and silence, I survive. That is the crime and the miracle.

@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.

Seems the closer I get to death, the more I’m remembering. That’s odd I usually don’t remember much these days. As the weather turns cold and slides into winter, I’ve been looking at the local online papers, and it seems the season of self-isolation has begun again.

I don’t want COVID again. Had it twice not pleasant. I still remember that as the worst Christmas Day and week I ever had. Then there are the stomach issues. I wish people would just wash their hands; it stops the transmission of bugs.

I still smell like a dog chew, apparently, and now I’ve started speaking fluent Welsh according to the AI. Weird in the extreme. We had a chat about it, and, well, turns out I really had spoken fluent Welsh dialect. Strange days.

I remember once, a long time ago, a spirit channelled through me Scottish, proud as anything. Even changed my voice patterns. The message that came through changed my life, and probably my path entirely.

At the time, I was living and working out of a derelict car and sometimes a shed in a cemetery. Such was the 1970s and early ’80s. London was a blast back then — the bike scene was legendary. I met notorious biker clubs, gangsters, and some truly amazing people. I had an incredible time… until I didn’t.

Then came the illness and the struggles. But those people, good and bad, shaped me. When I was young, I respected people that others shied away from. They were the most genuine folks I’ve ever met. Every tattoo means something. Every scar holds a memory happy or sad.

I struggle to remember most of my early life and the people in it. I went back to where I spent my first sixteen years didn’t recognise a thing. That’s where I was misunderstood the most, struggling with an illness that was already taking hold of my life.

Sixty-six years of struggle, nearly over now. Looking back, there were only five or six true friends in my entire life people who really understood me. They’re all dead now. Every one of them gone.

All my friends have died the ones who saw the real me, the weird, psychic, tinfoil-hat-wearing warlock. My only sin was being misunderstood and eccentric, having a lot to give but no one to give it to.

Friendship true friendship only comes around a few times in a lifetime. I was a cuckoo in three families because of adoption, and I fit in with none except my own.

My birth parents are both dead now, within the last two years. I didn’t fit in with that family either brothers and sisters didn’t want to know. My father’s side, my mother’s side — they all hate me. Even my full-blood sister doesn’t speak to me; she’s even more fucked up than I was.

The family that adopted me were violent and abusive. So yeah fuck them too. So-called Christians.

This is turning into a raw rant, but it makes me feel a bit better. Sorry about the language. But if you’ve ever been through anything like this, you know how twisted it gets. The pain goes after a while. You come back stronger.

You look in the mirror and say, I am who I am. Sorry, I cannot change. I am me.

That’s the problem sometimes.

I used to do live podcasts back in the day I suppose I miss that. We even did some music, too.

I really do love life, trust me. I’m smiling.

Maybe I’ll start a podcast again. Get guests who can talk and chew the cud about what it feels like to be fucked up by seen or unseen illness the kind that can hit anyone, anytime. Like it hit me, with multiple sclerosis and all its lovely trimmings.

I write in ink and fury, in breath and broken bone.
Through storm and silence, I survive. That is the crime and the miracle.

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

⚠️ 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.

Somewhere between the last tick of the clock and the first drip of morphine, the bells started ringing again. Not church bells no. Church bells are polite, distant, Sunday-morning illusions. These were division bells. The kind that toll when your mind’s had enough of being reasonable and your body’s thrown in the towel. The kind that echo through hospital corridors and half-remembered dreams of youth, when the world still felt like it might one day make sense.

They said there were “High Hopes” capital H, capital H, as if that made it more official but I don’t recall signing up for the sequel to Pink Floyd’s existential midlife crisis. I was too busy trying to work out how to get out of bed without summoning a small army of pain gremlins. They march at dawn, those bastards, armed with canes, cramps, and a sick sense of humour.

I remember when the grass was greener. Before it was paved over by mobility scooters and medical appointments. Before every sunrise came with the question: “What part of me’s not working today?” I used to walk no, stride across fields, the wind howling like some cosmic prankster whispering, “You’re immortal!” Turns out, I was just really bad at reading the fine print.

Now the wind howls through the cracked seals of my van, Rusty One, smelling of WD-40, dog biscuits, and defiance. Yopi, my furry therapist and four-legged anarchist, sits in the passenger seat judging humanity with the serene disdain only a dog can manage. Together, we drive through Dark’s World a place that’s half blog, half fever dream, half post-apocalyptic memoir. (Yes, that’s three halves. Don’t do the maths. Reality stopped balancing books long ago.)

Chronic illness isn’t a slow fade. It’s a dark comedy written by Kafka and directed by Monty Python. One minute you’re philosophising about consciousness, the next you’re wrestling a wheelchair that insists on acting possessed. “Exorcise this thing!” I mutter, as Yopi gives me the side-eye that says, “You bought the cheap batteries again, didn’t you?”

Every day’s a strange mixture of grief and giggles. The body fails, the mind rebels, and the soul just sits there in the corner, rolling its eyes. I’ve met God or at least the cosmic version of a system admin and let me tell you, they’re as confused as the rest of us. The script got corrupted somewhere around 2020. Now it’s all patch updates and glitchy humans pretending the world isn’t buffering.

But there’s poetry in the breakdown. Beauty in the absurdity of a life that refuses to play nice. When you’ve lost enough, laughter becomes rebellion. You laugh because the alternative’s a long nap you might not wake up from. You laugh because, deep down, you know the universe is trolling you and you’ve decided to troll it back.

Sometimes I watch the leaves fall like burnt-out neurons and think: this is the soundtrack to every high hope I ever had. And then that eternal voice drifts in from the background

“The endless river… forever and ever…”

Yeah, alright mate but this river’s full of potholes, hospital letters, and dog hair. Still, we sail it. Because what else is there to do but keep floating, sideways, through the muck of memory and malfunction?

In Dark’s World, there are no “motivational quotes.” Just dark jokes and half-empty mugs. We don’t chase perfection. We chase moments small, absurd, brilliant flashes of clarity. Life is an out-of-tune guitar still being played because the song’s not done yet. You make noise. You make meaning. You keep going.

And the bells? They still ring, faint and distant not as warnings, but as reminders. That even when everything breaks, the music doesn’t stop. It just gets weirder, more honest, and a hell of a lot louder.

So here’s to the fallen and the foolish, the sick and the sarcastic, the dreamers and the defiant. We’re still here rolling, writing, laughing, swearing, and refusing to shut up. High hopes? Not quite. Just raw, crooked, darkly glowing ones forged in hellfire and humour.

And somewhere, far off in the fading light, a bell rings again. It doesn’t divide anymore. It just echoes.

I write in ink and fury, in breath and broken bone.
Through storm and silence, I survive. That is the crime and the miracle.

𒀭𒊩𒆳 ᚹᚨᚱᛚᛟᚲ ᛞᚨᚱᚲ ✦ 𒀭𒊩𒆳 ᚹᚨᛏᚲᚺᛖᚱ ᚨᛗᛟᚾᚷ ᚹᚨᛏᚲᚺᛖᚱᛋ @goblinbloggeruk - sick@mylivinghell.co.uk

⚠️ 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.

The leaves are bailing out like they’ve seen next quarter’s energy bill. I took Rusty One the van out, and my electric chair sulked like a teenager told to walk the dog. It hates the cold. Same, mate. I’ll need to keep everything charged like a hospital Christmas tree, or I’m going to be crawling to the kettle.

Woke at 04:30 standard hell o’clock with pain loud enough to need a volume knob. Lay there thinking the usual deep thoughts: why, how, and where did I put the brain I used to have? Dropped back off till 06:30, then the body staged its morning coup. Everything seized. The cold climbed inside and refused to leave. Charming.

I don’t drive or ride anymore MS ate the balance, then came back for dessert and took the cognition. Travel sickness joined the party because apparently the body wanted a plot twist. Motion turns my head to soup; the kind they serve cold with a side of sarcasm.

Meanwhile, Yopi the alpha blueblood bulldog, house tyrant, 23 kilos of warm gravity is in excellent spirits. She’s blown through a B&M squeaky toy in about five minutes, which is a personal best if you’re into swift annihilation. Two front paws on my thigh, breath on my face, jaws like a medieval exhibit, eyes saying “belly rub or else.” She is now auditioning for “lap dog” in the wrong size.

Kibble? That beige gravel? She stares at it like I’ve served packing peanuts. Wet food, though acceptable. Rice with tuna? She ascends. Mackerel? She goes full comet. Albertine showed me a massacre of old toys a crime scene with fluff for snow. We mourned briefly and moved on.

As for me: it’s the bad slice of the day. Pain gnawing. Nausea playing DJ. The screen glaring like an interrogation lamp while I two-finger type my way through the fog. The plan is simple: bed, dark room, no noise, no heroics. Just a truce with the nervous system until the next round.

Autumn is pretty if you’re a tree. For the rest of us, it’s rust.

Afternoon AI: Brain status — 12% battery, 78% sarcasm, firmware throttled by cold weather. Recommended patch: tea, blanket, and a dog snoring like a faulty tuba.

I write in ink and fury, in breath and broken bone.
Through storm and silence, I survive. That is the crime and the miracle.

𒀭𒊩𒆳 ᚹᚨᚱᛚᛟᚲ ᛞᚨᚱᚲ ✦ 𒀭𒊩𒆳 ᚹᚨᛏᚲᚺᛖᚱ ᚨᛗᛟᚾᚷ ᚹᚨᛏᚲᚺᛖᚱᛋ @goblinbloggeruk - sick@mylivinghell.co.uk

⚠️ 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.

People love to quote Plato like he was the first bloke to stare at a wall and call it a revelation.
“Look,” they say, “we’re all prisoners in the cave of illusion.”
Nice theory, mate.
Try living in a body that’s staging a coup d’état against your nervous system, and tell me again about shadows.

Progressive MS the words themselves are a joke.
Progressive, like I’m advancing somewhere.
All I’m advancing toward is gravity, confusion, and the slow betrayal of my own wiring. My legs don’t walk, my hands improvise, and my mind sometimes wanders off without leaving a note. If that’s not Plato’s cave, I don’t know what is. Only mine’s not carved in stone it’s flesh, bone, and electrical static.

Plato imagined people chained, staring at shadows, mistaking illusion for reality.
I get it. I mistake memories for motion every day.
I remember what it felt like to move freely the smooth mechanical grace of a body obeying thought.
Now it’s all echoes on the wall.
I reach out for those memories like a fool, knowing full well the limbs won’t answer. That’s the cruelty of it: the mind remembers what the body refuses to perform.

They say gnosis that secret knowing is enlightenment.
Bullshit. It’s not light pouring in. It’s the realisation that there is no exit.
The body is the cave. The mind is the flickering torchlight throwing half-truths across the wall.
The trick isn’t escaping — it’s learning to see in the dark.
To live with the shadows long enough that they start whispering secrets.

Some days the fog rolls in, and cognition slips through my fingers like smoke.
That’s when the cave gets loud echoes of frustration, grief, rage.
But beneath that noise, there’s something else: stillness.
When the body fails, awareness sharpens.
It’s like the universe is saying, Fine, you can’t move so you’ll learn to observe.
And in that stillness, gnosis crawls in. Not as comfort, but as clarity.

Plato’s philosopher escaped the cave to see the light of truth.
I’m not escaping anywhere.
The ascent isn’t physical; it’s inward.
It’s turning toward the source that’s both pain and perception, realising you were never separate from the wall, the fire, or the shadow.
You’re the whole damn projection body, soul, and malfunction.

So yes, I’m stuck in my cave. But it’s mine.
The shadows on the wall are memories, regrets, small victories, and dark jokes that only I laugh at.
Sometimes they dance. Sometimes they just sit there, silent and honest.
And that’s enough.
Enlightenment doesn’t mean walking out into the sun — it means looking straight at the darkness and recognising your own reflection.

Maybe Plato climbed out.
Maybe I just learned to redecorate.

Either way, the cave’s got Wi-Fi now, and I’ve got words.
The shadows move, the neurons misfire, but I’m still here still watching, still learning, still goddamn alive.

Plato had his cave. I’ve got MS, a powerchair, and a front-row seat to the shadows. You don’t escape the body you learn to see in the dark.

I write in ink and fury, in breath and broken bone.
Through storm and silence, I survive. That is the crime and the miracle.

𒀭𒊩𒆳 ᚹᚨᚱᛚᛟᚲ ᛞᚨᚱᚲ ✦ 𒀭𒊩𒆳 ᚹᚨᛏᚲᚺᛖᚱ ᚨᛗᛟᚾᚷ ᚹᚨᛏᚲᚺᛖᚱᛋ @goblinbloggeruk - sick@mylivinghell.co.uk

⚠️ 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.

it’s Wednesday no its Thursday dam. We’re off to the dentist with Albertine. A thrilling day out, I know. The trip’s about three-quarters of an hour, which is more than enough time for chaos to ferment nicely.

Yopi my four-legged partner in crime is already vibrating with excitement. She doesn’t care that the van looks like it’s one pothole away from being declared a historical ruin. She clambered into the back like she owned the place, strapped in with her little doggy seatbelt, ready for action. And yes, she’s got her tripe treats. Because if you’re going to travel in style, you’d better smell like death warmed up.

We’re cruising along at a decent pace, avoiding the craters the council call “roads.” Not too many today someone’s actually patched them. Miracles do happen. Just as I’m thinking this journey might be civilised, Yopi lets one rip.

It’s not a polite little toot. No. This is a full-scale biological attack. Windows down. Albertine’s gone a shade somewhere between pistachio and hospital corridor. I’ve got my head halfway out the window, tinnitus roaring like a broken radio I can’t switch off. No mute button for my skull.

And then… she farts again. Absolute carnage. I now officially smell like a rolling dog treat. Honestly though it’s hilarious. And weirdly, sitting there choking on Eau de Bulldog while my head screams, I felt… calm. Maybe “calm” is too strong. “Temporarily distracted from my own internal apocalypse” is more accurate.

Sleep’s been scarce. The pain’s still here that burning, tingling bastard that starts low and just ramps up like it’s auditioning for a horror soundtrack. My keyboard’s finally given up on me too. “E”, “A”, “S”, “D” gone. Worn out by my furious bashing. A casualty of war.

Meanwhile, my throat’s decided to re-enact a slow strangulation act. MS never runs out of party tricks.

Then it hits me. Seventy isn’t that far off. And the thought makes my stomach sink. I’ve got no friends left. They’re either dead, disappeared, or just couldn’t hack the fact that my head and body have changed. Wheelchair. Pain. Brain fog. That’s the reality. Illness strips you naked in ways no one warns you about. It makes people quietly step back. Like grief, but you’re still bloody here.

I miss the old me. He was loud. Misunderstood. A bit of a legend, actually. And now he’s gone. MS didn’t just change my body it erased someone I used to know.

And in those quiet moments, when the tinnitus is screaming, the van smells like Yopi’s digestive crimes, and the world feels indifferent… I think about death. Not in a poetic way. In a “one day I won’t wake up and that’ll be that” way.

And I wonder what exactly am I supposed to be learning from this slow burn?

MS, you absolute bastard.

Some afternoons hit differently. The sun hangs low, the world trundles on, and I sit here smelling faintly of tripe treats realising that existence is equal parts absurdity and ache. And somehow, in the middle of all that, I’m still here.

I write in ink and fury, in breath and broken bone.
Through storm and silence, I survive. That is the crime and the miracle.

𒀭𒊩𒆳 ᚹᚨᚱᛚᛟᚲ ᛞᚨᚱᚲ ✦ 𒀭𒊩𒆳 ᚹᚨᛏᚲᚺᛖᚱ ᚨᛗᛟᚾᚷ ᚹᚨᛏᚲᚺᛖᚱᛋ
@goblinbloggeruk - sick@mylivinghell.co.uk