Multiple sclerosis  is My Living Hell

Chronic Illness Reality

All posts tagged Chronic Illness Reality by Multiple sclerosis is My Living Hell
  • Posted on

    ⚠️ 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 Tuesday. Allegedly. My head swears blind it’s Sunday. Sometimes it feels like both at once, which is the joy of progressive MS brain fog. You don’t just lose track of time, you lose the bloody concept of time. Hours, days, weeks it all dribbles into one big puddle of confusion until you’re sat there thinking, what the fuck was I just doing?

    That’s the real head-fuck. It’s not just forgetting your keys or leaving the milk out. It’s thought itself freezing mid-air, like someone slammed down a steel shutter in your brain. You go from “I’m making tea” to “Who am I? Where am I? Why does this kettle look like a spaceship?” in seconds. It’s surreal. It’s exhausting. And it happens over and over, until you stop panicking and just shrug: oh, here comes another blackout in my head.

    And yeah, I knew these days were coming. You don’t get diagnosed with progressive MS without seeing the future written in big black letters: this will get worse. But knowing it’s coming doesn’t make it easier when it hits. It just means you sit in the fog muttering, ah yes, the prophecy is fulfilled.

    That’s why I lean on AI now. Because my spelling’s shot, my coherence goes missing like a drunk in a hedge, and some days even stringing a sentence together is like trying to herd feral cats. So I use my AI mate to bang it into words. And it works. No fluff. No “inspiration porn.” Just my reality in print.

    Meanwhile, real life keeps grinding on. Two weeks from now, I finally get a call from wheelchair services. Six months I’ve waited. Six months of struggling without a powerchair. Six months of suffering because someone’s paperwork sat in a pile. A phone consultation is coming because what I needed all along was more time sat still on my arse waiting for the system to remember I exist.

    And the pain clinic? They’re fine. Professional. A bit of NLP-lite sprinkled in, which makes me laugh. You can’t gaslight me I’ve been gaslit more times than a Victorian street. They mean well, but until you live inside this mess, you don’t get it. You can nod. You can sympathise. But you don’t know.

    Here’s what I know: I don’t want their “coping strategies.” I don’t want another rebrand of pseudo-science telling me how to breathe through my agony. I’ve done the pills 20, 30 a day. I’ve done the needles. I’ve done the zombie shuffle where you’re doped so heavily you forget you even exist. No thanks. I’ll take my medical weed, roll it up, and live in a way that actually calms the spasms without frying my brain into porridge.

    I’m not delusional. I know there’s no cure. Death walks next to me every day like a bad smell that won’t piss off. And when you face death daily, not in the cinematic “battle cancer and win” way, but in the slow, grinding “death is waiting in the next room” way, it changes you. You stop being afraid. You start being blunt.

    Friends? None. Illness strips them away. Chronic illness is a private club and only those inside it get the membership card. That’s not bitterness, that’s just reality.

    And because the universe has a sick sense of humour, I’m plagued by bloody flies. Everywhere. The zapper’s gone on strike. Motorhead’s blaring loud enough to melt glass, but even Lemmy’s bass won’t fry a single one. So I’m left in the fog, swatting flies, laughing at the absurdity of it all.

    So yeah. Tuesday. Sunday. Who cares? It’s another day in the trenches. Another day in the slow death suit. Another day where brain fog fucks with me, the flies mock me, and I carry on anyway.

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

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  • Posted on

    ⚠️ 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.

    Here’s the thing they don’t tell you when you first hear the words multiple sclerosis. You don’t just get MS. You get a whole carnival of imitators, tag-alongs, and evil twins that either look like MS, act like MS, or make MS worse.

    Doctors call them “related conditions.” I call them the bastard cousins of MS.

    The Lookalikes

    MS is a great pretender. It shares symptoms with loads of other conditions, which means many of us start on a misdiagnosis rollercoaster. You might’ve heard of:

    Neuromyelitis Optica (NMO): Like MS, but meaner to the optic nerves and spinal cord.

    MOG-antibody disease: Same symptoms, different culprit.

    Transverse Myelitis: Attacks the spinal cord — paralysis, pain, bladder hell. Sounds familiar, right?

    ADEM (Acute Disseminated Encephalomyelitis): Long name, short fuse usually hits kids, but looks a lot like MS on scans.

    Doctors use fancy words like “differential diagnosis.” Translation: “We don’t bloody know yet, but it might be one of these.”

    The Tag-Alongs

    Even once you’ve got the official MS stamp, the fun doesn’t stop. Other conditions love to hitch a ride:

    Depression & anxiety: Not just because life’s hard, but because MS literally messes with the brain.

    Chronic pain disorders: Neuropathic pain, fibromyalgia… like the universe thought one wasn’t enough.

    Autoimmune pile-up: Lupus, thyroid disease, diabetes — the immune system goes rogue in more ways than one.

    Basically, your body joins a union of diseases and forgets to tell you.

    The Quiet Killers

    This is the bit nobody talks about enough. People with MS don’t usually die from MS itself. It’s the sneaky add-ons that do the damage:

    Infections (pneumonia, UTIs that turn nasty)

    Heart disease (made worse by being less mobile)

    Blood clots, cancers, you name it

    It’s like MS weakens the castle walls and the other invaders just stroll right in.

    Why This Matters

    Because when you’re told you’ve “just got MS,” it’s a lie of omission. MS is a syndrome, a spectrum, a spider’s web of conditions.

    And if you know that, you can push back. You can say to your doctor:

    “Are you sure this isn’t NMO?”

    “Could this be something else?”

    “What else should we be watching for?”

    Knowledge isn’t a cure. But it’s armour.

    Final Word

    MS is the headline, but the fine print is where the bastards hide. Don’t let them gaslight you into thinking your illness is simple. It’s not. It’s layered, it’s messy, and sometimes it’s a trickster wearing another mask.

    I live with that knowledge every day. And I’d rather face the whole ugly truth than be fobbed off with fairy-tale simplifications.

    Because in the end? It’s not “just MS.” It’s never just anything.

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

    enter image description here