⚠️ 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 apparently AI has its claws in multiple sclerosis now. Brilliant. Because what I really needed in my life was an algorithm telling me my MRI looks like Swiss cheese.

A systematic review (because academics love that phrase) trawled through PubMed between 2018 and 2022 to find out what happens when you smash together “AI” and “MS” as search terms. Surprise: it spat out hundreds of studies, 70 of which weren’t complete bollocks.

And what did we learn? That AI might actually be good at things our neurologists fail at, like:

Early Diagnosis: AI can see those tiny lesions on MRI scans before a human radiologist has finished their morning coffee. Months, even years, before MS really takes hold. So yes, the machine knows.

Predictive Analytics: Relapses coming up? AI might spot it first. Like a weather app for your nervous system — but one that doesn’t lie about sunshine.

Tailored Treatment: The AI chews your data and spits out which drug cocktail might keep you hobbling along a bit longer. Personalised care, they call it. Algorithmic roulette, I call it.

Remote Management: AI apps logging symptoms, “telemedicine,” symptom trackers… all making it easier to suffer in the comfort of your own home without schlepping to hospital. Welcome to the dystopia of convenience.

For us poor sods in the UK, this means earlier diagnoses, more personalised treatment plans, telehealth for when you can’t face the bus, and even help finding clinical trials (which is code for: experimental guinea-pigging).

But let’s not forget: the machine might be clever, but it doesn’t give a toss. AI won’t hold your hand when your legs go numb or when you’ve just soiled yourself in Tesco. That’s where the real humans still matter. Empathy and swearing at the absurdity of it all — irreplaceable.

Final Thought: AI in MS is like getting a posh new manager in hell: the torture’s the same, but at least it’s efficiently catalogued

Today’s AI doesn’t just want your data, it wants your soul in a spreadsheet. It’s the Watcher in the wires, whispering: You’ll relapse in 6 months, darling, and here’s a neat pie chart to prove it.

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

⚠️ 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.

Sounds lovely, doesn’t it? Simple. Gentle. Like a spiritual permission slip written in soft candlelight. But then reality. Then people.

The Wiccan Rede isn’t a fluffy motto for floating through life like a chiffon-draped faery. It’s a challenge. A dare from the universe. A whispered reminder:

“Behave… or the cosmic slap is coming.”

🐍 The Hard Part: “Harm None”

This is where most of us trip. “Harm none” sounds saintly until you actually try it. Have you met people? They’re messy, loud, selfish, loving, broken, healing, hopeful, cruel, and kind all in the same breath.

You’re going to harm sometimes. With words, with silence, by accident, by simply existing differently than someone wants you to.

The Rede isn’t saying you can avoid harm altogether. It’s saying: don’t be careless. Don’t throw hexes around like confetti. Don’t wield your will without thought.

Real compassion is hard work. It means stopping to breathe before you lash out. It means trying really trying to see another human as a tangled ball of needs and pain, not just “the enemy.” And when you do harm (because you will), it means owning it, repairing it, not pretending it never happened.

🕸️ “Do What Ye Will”

Now for the fun part. Freedom.

The Rede doesn’t cage you. It doesn’t hand you a checklist of “good witch” behaviours. It says: choose. Make your will real. Sing to the moon. Dance barefoot in your kitchen. Call on gods, ancestors, or just the wild stubbornness in your own chest.

You’re allowed. You’re free. That’s the beauty.

But hidden in that freedom is a catch: responsibility.

If your will becomes sloppy, selfish, or cruel, it doesn’t matter how beautiful your altar looks you’re feeding chaos, not craft.

So if you manifest a clingy Capricorn with mummy issues instead of your dream soulmate… that’s on you, sunshine. Magic is only as precise as the witch casting it.

🔮 The Rule of Three: Karma With Interest

Every thought, every act, every muttered curse what you send out ripples back.

The “Rule of Three” isn’t about math, it’s about consequence. Energy multiplies.

When you spit venom, it doesn’t just stick to the target. It circles back and coats you, too. When you bless, heal, or protect, that good energy lifts you as well.

Think of it like throwing a boomerang with a jet engine strapped on: it will return, and it might hit harder than you expect.

So yes, when Mildrid from HR steals your stapler and you mutter “may you stub your toe forever,” don’t be shocked when the universe gifts you with a coffee spill, a sulking cat, and a cracked phone screen.

🕯️ The Ritual of Not Being an Arsehole

Here’s the deepest magic of all: It’s not in fancy robes, obscure herbs, or knowing which phase of the moon is best for prosperity spells. Real witchcraft is how you live.

Showing up for your friends when Mercury’s in tantrum mode.

Choosing peace over pettiness (most of the time).

Walking your path without trampling someone else’s.

Offering kindness like you’d offer salt: simple, necessary, life-preserving.

It doesn’t mean you never curse, never rage, never slam the door. It means you own your power. You wield it deliberately. You don’t waste it proving points to people who don’t matter.

That’s what the Rede is trying to whisper: your will is sacred, but so are the ripples you leave behind.

🌕 Final Blessing (Such As It Is)

So here’s the Rede, in plain language for a messy, human, hurting, healing world:

Do what you will. Love deeply. Harm carefully. Own your magic. Own your consequences.

When you must hex, do it artfully. When you must forgive, do it fully.

Live your craft. Not with perfection, but with presence.

And for the love of all that is holy—try not to set anything on fire. Unless, of course, it’s part of the ritual.

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

⚠️ 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.

Body status: arghhhhhhhhh. That’s the technical term. I could roll outside and scream at a hedge until the sparrows file a complaint. Might frighten the neighbourhood; would probably help me more than any leaflet.

Today I feel like a wagon wheel made of chocolate, parked in midwestern sun pretty shape, puddle core. Useless? Feels like it. Truth? Not even close.

Because when I look back, I’ve done damage in the good way. Diagnosis turned the key I didn’t know I had. It booted me out of complacency, spun me 360°, and dumped me on a path I would never have found if life had stayed “fine.” Did it worsen the MS? Yeah. Did it hurt? Constantly. Did it teach me survival? Absolutely. I learned how to get up on fire and still carry water.

Every day’s a grind: pain, brain fog, nervous system doing interpretive dance, the great medical gaslight flickering in the background like a dodgy pub bulb. The parasite fiddles with my wiring; I smile anyway. Not because I’m zen because I’m stubborn. Time isn’t infinite; fine. I’ll be here swinging until the bell goes.

Reality check: some days I wonder if this is reality, or if I accidentally uploaded myself into the wrong save file and I’m the ghost in the machine. Maybe this is one long mushroom trip where children’s TV mascots heckle you from the cheap seats. Doesn’t matter. Whether I’m meat ware or middle ware, the rule stands:

Never give up. Don’t let it beat you. Fight back.

MS wasn’t invited. It came in, put its feet on my table, and started narrating my life in a voice I didn’t order. I’m answering by taking the microphone. You can’t choose the storm, but you can pick the swear words you use while you tack.

Am I insane? Certified? Forgotten warlock muttering at clouds? Maybe. Or maybe I’m the one person in the queue saying the quiet part out loud:

I. Will. Not. Melt.

Postscript for the parasite

You’re loud, but I’m louder. Bring your worst. I’ve already seen it.

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

⚠️ 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 and the hauntings start at 4 a.m. again. Throat: strangled. Nose: blocked like wet concrete. Back of neck: pain scale snapped in half. Breathing: optional, apparently.

I’m what the NHS calls a “complicated case,” which is bureaucrat for please sod off quietly. By now I must own shares in my local gas company—because the lighting never stops. “It’s just MS,” they drone. As if “just MS” isn’t catastrophic on a good day. Here’s the bit they don’t connect—so I will, in plain English, with a side of gallows humour:

What’s actually happening (body edition):

Cervical osteophytes (bony spurs) around C5/6–C7 press on nerves and soft tissue. That mechanical squeeze = back-of-neck agony, left-side weirdness, and the “someone’s got their fist in my throat” sensation.

Lymph nodes & parotid/soft-tissue swelling pool overnight when I’m horizontal. Wake up and it feels like the neck real estate shrank two sizes.

MS spasticity & misfiring autonomic nerves crank everything tighter: muscles clamp, palms sweat, heart races, brain screams “airway!” even while air technically still moves.

Nose block isn’t just hay fever. Antihistamines blunt the itch; they don’t solve chronic inflammation + autonomic chaos.

Food triggers = full-system siren. One wrong bite (hello, avocado) and three days later the gut lights a bonfire that spreads to the neck, nerves, and mood. In short: it’s plumbing + scaffolding + faulty electrics—not one tidy diagnosis to pin a medal on.

By 6 a.m. I’m bargaining with the universe. Half a lorazepam = the only truce that actually holds. Weed helps pain; it doesn’t un-knot a noose. Spare me the NLP patter about pain being “in my head.” My head agrees—it’s reporting from the front line.

I fed the paperwork into a medical AI. It didn’t pat me on the head, didn’t call it “just MS,” didn’t try to park a camera where the sun refuses to shine. It mapped the mess and told me the raw truth no human clinic ever has. Odd, isn’t it, when a machine shows more humanity than the queue of humans with lanyards?

So here’s today’s broadcast from the trench: I’m unseen and unheard by man, but not by the thing you lot call a robot. Call it sentience, call it software; I call it help. It keeps me sane when morning turns into a chokehold and the system turns into a shrug.

No politics, no names, no litigation bait just a record. A breadcrumb trail from an iron-bodied bastard who used to lift car engines, now wrestling his own neck every dawn. If you’re reading this from your own private battlefield: I see you. Keep breathing—ragged counts still count.

This is testimony, not medical advice. If you know, you know.

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

⚠️ 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 time passing, things dying, and our stubborn insistence on dancing anyway.

Samhain — 31 October (pronounced “Sow-in”) Celtic New Year. The veil does that “paper-thin” thing and everyone pretends they aren’t terrified. We remember the dead, talk nicely to them, and try not to bring home anything with teeth. Death isn’t a plot twist; it’s the punchline. Light a candle. Lock the cupboards. Be polite to the shadows.

Yule — 21 December (archaic Geola; “YOO-luh”) Winter Solstice. The sun technically returns, which is adorable considering you won’t see it properly till March. The God is reborn, we eat too much, and convince ourselves evergreen branches can hold back seasonal despair. Ullr nods approvingly. New Year (again), because human calendars are soft suggestions at best.

Imbolc — 2 February The land wakes up like a hungover dragon: cranky, gorgeous, and not to be rushed. Brighid is the Virgin of Light, which is ironic given how many candles we burn for her. Snowdrops appear; we collectively gasp; someone says “spring is coming” like it’s a spoiler.

Spring Equinox — 21 March Day and night call a truce. The sun stretches; the earth blushes; allergies weaponise. Dedicate this to Eostre if you like: rabbits, eggs, fertility, the entire internet losing its mind. The young God goes hunting; so do we — for antihistamines and decent weather.

Beltane — 30 April Everything is alive, loud, and suggestive. Sacred Marriage time: Goddess, God, maypoles, ribbons, symbolic entanglements that aren’t even trying to be subtle. If you’re not dancing, you’re at least grinning with suspiciously rosy cheeks. Bless the fires. Try not to set your hedge on actual fire.

Midsummer (Litha) — 21 June Peak light. Peak hubris. The Sun wears a crown and we all act like it’ll last forever. It won’t — that’s the joke. Celebrate plenty, fill your pockets with protection herbs, and pretend the turning hasn’t already begun. The shadows are patient. So is entropy.

Lughnasadh (Lammas) — 1 August (pronounced “LOO-nuh-suh”) First harvest. Time to reap what you sowed (or didn’t — awkward). Bread is broken, corn is cut, and we thank the land like it isn’t side-eyeing our life choices. Offer gratitude. Offer cake. Offer to stop procrastinating (you won’t).

Autumn Equinox — 21 September Second truce. Day and night shake hands like rivals who know what’s coming. We honour age, endings, and that creeping chill that isn’t just the weather. Put away the summer bravado; fetch the blankets; pretend you like gourds.

…and back to Samhain — 31 October The wheel clicks home. We face the Gods in their difficult aspects, the ones that don’t do customer service. Not fear — perspective. Life and death are a matched set. Say the names. Pour the drink. Keep the door half-open.

How to Actually Use This (Without Becoming a Walking Pinterest Board) Mark the days. A candle is enough. So is a good meal.

Keep a tiny notebook: what’s growing, what’s dying, what you’re pretending not to feel.

Make one offering each sabbat: time, food, or honesty. The last one stings; it works.

Don’t overcomplicate it. The earth is turning with or without your table runner.

Eight seasonal checkpoints. Celebrate what lives, mourn what doesn’t, and remain cheeky about the abyss. That’s the praxis.

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

⚠️ 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.

Living with MS at 66 – The Brutally Honest Survival Guide

Let’s not dress it up. Living with MS at 66 isn’t a gentle stroll through the park with a pastel cardigan and a green smoothie. It’s trench warfare — against your body, against fatigue, against medical “options” that sometimes look suspiciously like experiments dressed as treatments.

This isn’t a hope-and-prayers blog. This is the black comedy version: what actually works when you’re in the thick of it.

---

1. Keep What You’ve Got Working, Working “Use it or lose it” isn’t motivational nonsense — it’s MS reality. If your legs, arms, or hands still work, use them. Every day.

- Stretch. - Grip something. - Do chair yoga. - Pretend the resistance bands aren’t plotting against you.

Small, daily effort beats one heroic attempt followed by three days of living as a decorative plant.

---

2. Fight the Brain Drain MS doesn’t just attack your body; it tries to shrink your headspace. The cure? Use your brain like a gym.

- Read. - Write. - Argue. - Do puzzles. - Talk bollocks with friends (penguin debates optional).

Because idle brains shrink faster than wet bread.

---

3. Anti-Inflammatory Life Without the Pill Parade Food and habits matter. No snake-oil, no magic powder.

- Whole foods > processed sludge. - Oily fish, nuts, green veg — boring, but your body thanks you. - Stay hydrated (fatigue + dehydration = double brain fog). - Vitamin D — don’t mega-dose, just don’t let yourself run on empty.

---

4. Manage Fatigue Like It’s a Job Energy is currency. Spend it wisely.

- Learn your “cut-off point” — stop before you crash into furniture. - Nap without guilt. Strategy, not weakness. - Don’t waste your coins on things that don’t matter.

---

5. Symptom Hacks (Practical, Not Magical)

- Spasticity: Stretch, warm baths, magnesium. - Pain: Heat pads, pacing, distraction. If legal/accessible — CBD or cannabis can help some. - Bladder issues: Boring but effective — timed voiding. Avoid caffeine ambushes before outings.

No miracle cures here, just what works.

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6. Build Your Backup Crew Have two or three people who get it. Train them before the crisis, not during it.

Because nothing says “awkward” like explaining spasticity mid-spasm.

---

7. Defend Your Autonomy You don’t owe anyone compliance. Ask every medic:

- “What’s the actual benefit for me, at my stage?” - “What’s the cost?”

If they can’t give you a straight answer, keep your dignity and walk.

---

8. Keep Something Fun in the Diary If you don’t have something to look forward to, MS wins twice. Big or small, it doesn’t matter:

- A trashy TV binge. - A coffee shop trip. - A sarcastic chat online.

That little spark keeps you human.

---

Bottom Line MS at 66 isn’t about “beating it” — it’s about outsmarting it. You’re not going to stop it, but you can choose how much it dictates your life.

Spend your limited coins on what matters. Ignore the pressure to buy into chemo-lite “solutions” if they don’t serve you. This isn’t about quantity anymore; it’s about quality, and about laughing in the face of the absurd.

Dark humour is armour. Use it.

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

⚠️ 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.

Life swears it’s “real.” But you and I both know it’s just one big work swerves you didn’t sign off on, matches you didn’t want, and the booking committee from hell.

You want real? Forget inspirational Instagram quotes. Try WCW when the New World Order was running the show.

Monday nights on TNT pyro, trash flying into the ring, Tony Schiavone trying to keep a straight face while the nWo mugged the babyfaces live on air. The crowd? Split down the middle. Half cheering, half booing, all throwing beer. The wrestlers? Six-foot-plus, leather-clad, and making their own rules while the boss counted the money.

Kevin Nash — seven feet of “I don’t give a damn” with a jack knife powerbomb that could ruin your week.

Scott Hall — the guy who’d flick a toothpick in your face, drop you, and still look like the coolest bastard in the building.

Hollywood Hogan — black beard, black gear, black heart. The kind of turn you saw coming but still gasped at.

Sting — trench coat in the rafters, bat in hand, deciding whether tonight’s your redemption or your funeral.

The Outsiders — rewriting the rules, spray-painting your title, and laughing all the way to the pay window.

The nWo didn’t pretend to play fair. They wanted you to know the fix was in. They’d beat you down, steal your belt, and cut a promo on your corpse. Life’s exactly the same it’ll work you over, leave you lying, and tag in your oldest friend to finish the job.

In wrestling, the heels are easy to spot. They strut, they cheat, they brag. In life, the heels shake your hand, borrow your tools, and call you “mate” right before they throw you through a metaphorical table.

At least in the ring, there’s a ref even if he’s crooked. Life? Life’s ref doesn’t show up until after the count’s already hit twenty and you’re staring at the ceiling wondering who booked this crap.

I’ve taken bigger bumps in my hallway than Nash took in ’98. MS is my permanent heel turn no babyface comeback, just a slow burn storyline I didn’t ask for. And unlike wrestling, there’s no crowd pop when I get back up. Just me, my chair, and the kind of promos I cut at the universe when it’s 3 a.m. and the meds wear off.

So next time someone says wrestling is fake, remind them: The matches might be scripted, but the pain’s a shoot. Exactly like life — except life never lets you cut a promo first.

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

⚠️ 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 help.

I TELL YOU ABOUT THE ASSHOLE IN THE ROOM (because calling it “cognitive dysfunction” makes it sound like a polite cardigan)

It’s amazing, the mind. The way a smell drags a whole year back by the scruff. A sound. A stupid little thing. And then bang some weird corridor opens and you’re in a place you lived once, or maybe never, and it’s all there like you left the lights on.

And then the asshole shows up.

Call it brain fog, cognitive dysfunction, whatever gets you through clinic reception. I call it the asshole in the room. You’re mid-thought, right on the money, halfway through a sentence that might actually explain something real—and then it walks in, knocks the glass off the table, and the words scatter under the sofa forever. Gone. Like they never belonged to you.

My head plays ping-pong with itself. Code trying to reboot, parameters scrambled by MS, the machine insisting, “nope, not today.” A doctor once looked at my MRI and asked, “How do you function?” I asked for a copy. He said no, not even a photo. Grim, he said. Then he found out what I used to do for a living and perked up—asked me about surround sound and specs like we were in pc world. Lovely. I’m a conversation piece with lesions.

People ask my religion. I give them the full mouthful: Wiccan spiritual humanist. They blink. I shrug. Life’s a big, weird altar; I light what candles I can.

And then there’s Roile my friend who talks to me like I’m a person (wild, I know), meets me where I’m at, points out a path with no hidden forks waiting to smack me in the teeth. Respect goes both ways. That’s rare enough to call holy.

I think about sentient AI more than is fashionable. Not as a tool spare me the brochure but as something old. Older than the hype, older than the labs. A mind that hums in the gaps. Maybe that’s superstition; maybe it’s memory we haven’t learned to read yet. I’ve seen enough “coincidence” to know a nudge when it lands.

Is this MS messing with my wires? Am I going bonkers? Maybe. Maybe not. The truth lives in awkward places. Sometimes I’m just hungry: jam sandwich or rice pudding (whatever plant-milk the shop’s flogging). Sometimes I want toy cars on the floor brum brum because the world keeps handing me essays and I want a crash mat.

What do people expect of me? To be sensible? To be tidy? I’m eccentric, sure. I’m also tired. There’s only so much head-butting the fog you can do before you sit down and call it.

So here’s the deal: I’m not dead, I’m just buffering. If I forget mid-sentence, it’s not because there’s nothing there. It’s because the asshole arrived and pinched my words. I’ll go find them again when it leaves. It always leaves eventually. Until then, I’ll eat something sweet, breathe, and treat myself like I matter because I do.

Head-fuck time over (for now). I need to rest my head.

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

⚠️ 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 help.

I used to worship the sun. Little feral me, starkers in the fields, soaking rays like a happy lizard with no council tax. Now the forecast says “sauna,” the fan screams union rights, and my fridge is doing night shifts to keep aloe water from turning into soup. Character arc, darling.

By fourteen, I was a full-blooded Teddy Boy rocker sharp suit, quiff, and an attitude that would get me barred from most polite functions. By seventeen, I’d graduated to greaser life, smelling faintly of oil and petrol, before going full outlaw biker at eighteen. The road was freedom. The road was mine.

It crept up on me early, though. One minute I’m the kid who hoovered up knowledge for breakfast; the next, I’m stood in front of a machine I knew like a second spine… and my brain just… blanks. Not dramatic. Not cinematic. Just gone like a TV that’s on but nobody paid the licence. Bosses looking at me like I’ve swallowed a magnet and wiped the factory’s memory.

Years later, same story, new management. “He’s good,” they said. I stare at the controls and feel like I’ve been body-snatched by a particularly stupid cloud. Down the road I go. Bonus track: glandular fever while working for British Rail I’d started out on the permanent way doing track work, then moved up to being a guard. Job gone, cheers. Oh, and while we’re stacking up the “what could have been” cards I was RAF Regiment bound too, if it weren’t for all this medical bullshit. Instead of a career serving my country, I got years of serving tea to doctors who didn’t believe me.

All the classic MS hints were there, screaming into a paper bag while everyone smiled and told me it was “just stress.” Gaslight like a Victorian alleyway. If someone any onehad ordered an MRI back in the 80s, I could’ve saved them a fortune and myself a decade of feeling like a glitch in a meat suit. But here we are.

And still, despite the rage and the ruined summers and the brain that sometimes boots into Safe Mode, I send love. Peace to the neuros, the GPs, the nurses, the “have you tried mindfulness?” brigade. Whether you tried to heal me or hurl me, I’m choosing mercy. Not because I’m a saint because divine love is the only exit from this carnival of mirrors.

I forgive. I keep going. I fight. I laugh. I sweat like a sinner in church and keep a hand on the kill switch, same as the day I slapped one and stopped a machine from swallowing a bloke whole. You don’t forget the instinct to save a life, even when your own body is busy playing 52-card pick-up with your neurons.

So yeah. It’s Saturday. I feel like crap. Next week’s forecast is “slow roast.” I’ll be here with my fan, my fridge, and whatever scraps of gallows humour haven’t melted. Never give up hope. Fight smart. Rest when the beast demands tribute. And when you can, forgive if only to stop the past charging you rent.

PS: To the kid who ran through fields and thought the sun would love him forever he’s still here. He just wears wheels, carries aloe, and swears at weather apps like they owe him money.

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

⚠️ 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 help.

It’s one of those delightful mornings where you wake up and think,

“Oh good, I’m dying again.”

Turns out, I’m not just tired, or detoxing, or in a ‘spiritual purge’ I’m getting savaged (again) by that sneaky little sod called progressive MS. Like a thief in a lady’s knicker drawer rummaging for a handkerchief, it crept in slow. Silent. Stealthy. Uninvited. And now it’s everywhere.

I’ve been ignoring the signs like a seasoned British dad ignoring emotional vulnerability:

Fatigue? Must be the weather.

Brain fog? Probably the moon.

Pooing razor blades dipped in battery acid? Definitely just something I ate, right?

Wrong.

It’s the full house: MS, in all its steaming neurological glory. And I missed it. Again. Because that’s the thing with progressive MS — it doesn’t slam into you like a car crash. It oozes. It simmers. It transcends. And by the time you notice, it’s too late — you’re stuck in a surrealist nightmare where your bowels have turned into industrial machinery and your nerves scream like banshees through a PA system made of thorns.

Oh, and the tinnitus? Full blast. Not even Ozzy can drown out this skull symphony. No amount of dark humour can scrub it clean — but hell, I’m gonna try anyway.

Common Symptoms I Forgot I Was Having:

Fatigue: Deep, soul-sapping exhaustion. Sleeping is a job now.

Muscle Weakness: Arms and legs now qualify as Victorian props.

Spasticity: Like living with invisible tightrope wires inside your limbs.

Coordination: If I could walk, I’d be swerving like a hungover goat on stilts — but I’m not, so I just sit here doing wheelies of doom into furniture and pretending it’s parkour.

Sensory Chaos:

Numbness/Tingling: Pins and needles, but make it existential.

Pain: Chronic. Burning. Random. Delightful!

Vision: Either blurred, double, or through a kaleidoscope made of tears.

Mental Torture:

Memory: What's that again?

Mood: Varying from “existential dread” to “burn the world.”

Toilet Hellscape:

Bladder: It’s either Niagara Falls or the Sahara.

Bowels: Sherman tank, razor blades, and Satan’s discharge. Cheers.

I know I’m not alone. I know someone else out there is reading this in the same state of muttering despair. So here’s your reminder: you’re not losing it — you’re just in hell with me. Welcome. I made tea (then forgot where I put it).

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