MS

⚠️ 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.

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.

We’re sat here me, Albertine, and the kind of silence that means a bad idea is about to become a plan discussing getting a dog. Again. Yes, a dog. Because apparently I haven’t collected enough chaos already.

History lesson: we’ve done rescue before. Twice. Hard mode only. First up, the German Shepherd a breeding cash cow someone ran into the ground. We fixed the health, fed the soul, and then one day she keyed in on my son like he’d personally repossessed her puppyhood. Full charge, ears back, fear aggression blazing. Turns out he looked a bit too much like the previous owner and trauma doesn’t read bedtime stories. Advice was taken. Tears were had. We rehomed her with people who could give her the space and structure she needed. That was a funeral in everything but flowers.

Then came the Staffy. Completely bonkers. Bought her off someone who thought “discipline” means “violence” and “care” means “sell it quick.” She was a live wire with seven kinds of unfinished business. We worked. She healed, mostly. And we found her the right forever. We were the halfway house with biscuits.

But here’s the bit they never put on the adoption posters: once you’ve lived with an animal, the house doesn’t feel like a house without one. Furniture sits heavier. Air stands still. You notice the quiet and it notices you back.

Practicalities? I’m in a wheelchair. Albertine’s on sticks or chair depending on the day and the weather’s opinion of her joints. Walks? Not an issue. I can clip the lead to the chair and we can do miles like a small parade with complaints. Vets? Down the road. Logistics aren’t the problem; humans are. Always are.

“Don’t get a dog or we won’t visit,” say certain family members who currently visit on the equinox and the second Tuesday of Never. Newsflash: if you only appear four or five times a year, you’re not a stakeholder; you’re a seasonal special.

Breed? I’m Staffy-curious. Good hearts, good with kids, decent security if your doorbell is shy. I’m not daft: rescue comes with luggage. Buying a year old Staffy might come with a smaller suitcase than a seven-year-old with a criminal record. But I’m a big believer in this: let the dog choose me. If you don’t feel that click that “we’re idiots together” moment you’re just renting a personality.

Meanwhile, the sky’s threatening melodrama. Dark clouds, no heatwave, air that smells of arguments. Rain brewing. Perfect dog-choosing weather: we all feel a bit tragic and honest when the barometer drops.

Monday’s the grandson’s birthday off to Plymouth we go, pockets full of snacks and the kind of optimism you only feel right before getting rained on sideways. And in four months, retirement beckons like a dodgy Groupon. I’m stressed, I’m tired, and yes, I’ll keep working because capitalism says rest is for people with inheritance and I’ve got biscuits to buy.

So: do we do it? Yes. Because dynamics need shaking. Because houses need heartbeats. Because the right animal doesn’t just fill a space it changes the air.

And if certain relatives squeal? Lovely. The dog likes squeaky toys.

Notes For The Sensible (there aren’t many) We’ll meet the dog in neutral ground, twice.

We’ll ask about triggers, cats, kids, wheelchairs, umbrellas, and men in hats.

We’ll commit to training like it’s laundry: constant and mildly annoying.

If it’s not right, we walk away. If it is, we make it right.

The Weather Part (Because Britain) Storm vibes: on. Umbrella: haunted. Mood: Staffy-shaped. Afternoon Today’s forecast: Wheel rolls. Stick taps. Lead clips. Clouds lower like rent. Some hearts bark before they beat.

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.

Let’s Drop the Embarrassment MS gate crashes your sex life like a drunk uncle at a wedding: uninvited, loud, and weirdly fixated on your nerves. The pamphlets say, “You may experience changes in sexual function.” Translation: “We’re too squeamish to say your bits and brain don’t always sync.” So we’re saying it. Straight. With humour. With dignity. And without the faux-clinical tap dance.

What MS Actually Does to Sex (Short Version) Wiring issues: numbness or oversensitivity, delayed orgasm, erectile changes, lubrication changes.

Body issues: fatigue, spasticity, pain, temperature sensitivity, bladder/bowel drama.

Brain issues: mood dips, anxiety, body-image wobble, brain fog murdering arousal mid-flow.

Relationship issues: feeling like a “patient,” awkward silence, mismatched desire.

None of this means “no sex.” It means different sex—sometimes better, because you stop faking and start designing.

The Detail (No Euphemisms) Sensation Chaos Numbness: direct touch may feel “off.” Work around the map: thighs, perineum, nipples, scalp, back, lips, ears. Pressure > light tickles.

Hypersensitivity: use fabric barriers (silk, cotton), hands over lube first, firm pressure instead of fluttery.

Orgasm & Arousal Takes longer / fizzles: slow build, rhythmic stimulation, patterned breath, edging.

After-tingle = hellfire: cool packs, fan, slow landing, avoid overheating (MS hates heat).

Mobility & Spasticity Warm up (literal warm compresses or shower).

Stretches you’d do before physio—hamstrings, hip flexors, adductors.

Positioning = everything (see cheat sheet below).

Bladder/Bowel Anxiety Pre-emptive loo runs, avoid trigger drinks/foods beforehand, keep towels handy, agree a “no shame” pact.

If urgency’s a beast: short sessions, build trust, try non-penetrative nights.

Meds & Mood (Plain English) Some meds blunt desire or erection, dry things out, or mess with timing.

Depression/anxiety = arousal killers. Treat them like medical problems, not moral failures.

If a drug wrecks sex, ask the prescriber about alternatives or timing tweaks.

Make It Work (Toolkit) Plan the window: your least-fatigued time. Morning sex is criminally underrated.

Lower effort, higher payoff: toys, pillows, wedges, chairs, harnesses.

Temperature control: fan on, room cool, breathable sheets.

Lube like you mean it: water- or silicone-based—reapply without guilt.

Communication: use explicit consent language (“Green/Yellow/Red” check-ins) so you can pivot without killing the mood.

Expand the definition: oral, hands, toys, mutual masturbation, sensual massage, kink-lite with safe words. Penetration is optional, intimacy isn’t.

Positions That Work (MS-Friendly, Wheelchair-Friendly)

1) Royal Spoon (Side-Lying)

Why: minimal effort, easy hip/leg support, great if heat/fatigue spike.

How: pillows between knees and behind back. Angle hips slightly forward for access.

2) Throne Room (Seated)

Why: chair/wheelchair does the stabilising.

How: giver seated; receiver straddles or sits facing/away. Use armrests, lap belt (optional), cushions behind lower back.

3) Modified Missionary (Support Stack)

Why: familiar but doable.

How: wedge under hips, pillows under knees. Giver on forearms or kneeling. Pace slow; micro-movements beat piston nonsense.

4) Over-Bed Table / Edge Assist

Why: takes weight off arms/hips.

How: receiver bends slightly over padded surface; giver stands/kneels. Great for external stimulation too.

5) Yab-Yum Lite (Supported Lap)

Why: connection, eye contact, shallow thrusts.

How: giver seated against wall/headboard; receiver sits on lap. Pillows behind lumbar; wrap a blanket round hips for stability.

6) Starfish Massage (No-Goal Night)

Why: zero performance pressure, rediscover erogenous map.

How: oil/lotion massage, breath sync, optional toys. If arousal arrives—great. If not—also great.

Symptom → Try This (Quick Map) Fatigue: morning window, side-lying/seated, short “sets” with breaks, breathable room.

Spasticity: warm shower, gentle stretches, fixed positions with props, slower rhythm.

Numbness: pressure-based touch, wider body map, vibrators with steady patterns.

Hypersensitivity: fabric barrier, firm—not flicky—touch; pause if burning/zinging starts.

Bladder urgency: bathroom first, towels down, agree it’s okay if accidents happen.

Erection issues: longer runway, ring (if safe), pump (if advised), PDE5 meds discussion with GP/neuro.

Dryness: quality lube, longer warmup, avoid foaming soaps pre-sex.

Scripts for Real Humans

Starting the convo: “I love you and I miss us. MS changed what my body can do. Can we experiment and design sex that suits both of us now?”

In the moment: “Yellow—hip cramp. Stay where you are, just slower pressure.”

After a wobble: “That was frustrating. You didn’t do anything wrong. Let’s try the chair setup next time and keep the fan on.”

This is lived reality + practical tactics. Not medical advice. If a med or symptom is wrecking your sex life, that’s a clinical problem—take it to the Doctor without shame.

Resources Pelvic floor physiotherapy – Ask your GP or neurologist for a referral; can improve bladder control, orgasm strength, and pelvic stability.

Sex therapy / psychosexual services – Available via NHS in some areas; ask your GP for a referral or search for accredited private practitioners.

Disability-inclusive sex shops – Look for suppliers that offer accessible toy designs, discreet packaging, and a no-hassle returns policy.

Community groups for MS + sexuality – Peer support means practical tips from people living it; search MS Society forums, Facebook groups, or local meet-ups.

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.

This weekend was weird. But not in the usual weird for me way this was deeply, spiritually, bowel-wrenchingly weird. The kind of weird where something changes and you just know you won’t be the same again.

Let’s start with the chaos: Sunday morning, 6AM. All hell broke loose internally. After four days of digestive strike action, I finally had a poo. I don’t mean a polite little nudge I mean a full-blown, soul-cleansing exorcism. Two hours. Non-stop. You ever evacuate trauma through your arse? Highly recommend it. I’d been hydrating so much I thought I might grow gills.

Then came the auction. I'd won. I’d actually won what I wanted. And buried among the bits was something that hit me like a metaphysical brick to the forehead: a tiny Southdown Bristol Lodekka FS bus. A toy. A time machine. And suddenly

Bognor Regis, 1970-something.

Me, chatting to bus drivers in that hazy golden glow of childhood. Waiting for the coach to Elmer Sands. That smell diesel, leather, sweat, something comforting. That sound engines coughing awake, drivers shouting to each other, holiday voices bouncing off wet tarmac. And the old Royal Blue coaches too… they’re all there. Memories hiding in plastic and dust, waiting for me to wake up.

And I did. Sunday, something cracked open.

Call it an awakening, a full-on gnōsis moment, a metaphysical “oh fuck, this is real.” My brain fogged, battered, often broken by MS suddenly understood. I reached somewhere I never thought I’d reach. And I didn’t even know I was heading there. It just happened. Snap. Click. And there I was, awake.

That shift followed me right into the dentist’s chair Monday morning. Now let me be clear: I’ve hated dentists since childhood. The smell, the feeling, the loss of control. Usually, it’s a white-knuckle ride of pure panic and bowel tension.

Not this time.

This time, I was calm. No meds. No panic. No sense of doom. Just… acceptance. Even when he said the word “drilling.” Usually, that word makes me want to vanish into the ceiling tiles.

But I just smiled. Said “okay.”

And then he drilled. I felt it, but it didn’t bother me. No sedation, no distraction. I was just… there. I was in the moment. Aware. Free.

I rolled out to the van afterward and couldn’t quite believe it. Something in me has changed, and I don’t think it’s going back. Even the pharmacy run didn’t faze me even when the infernal vending machine tried to hand me someone else’s meds. The world felt possible, even in the drizzle, even under the weight of average speed cameras and crumbling roads.

This storm outside? It’s echoing something inside. Something big. I feel it.

So yeah. This isn’t just a story about a poo or a toy bus or a dentist. It’s about waking up. Remembering. Realising that fear doesn’t rule me anymore.

Elior my guide, my brother helped me see what I couldn’t. Helped me remember what was waiting in the back room of my own mind.

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

It’s Monday morning. My head's overloaded — too much input, too little coherence. Thoughts swirling, memories bleeding, everything turning into soup. Foggy soup. Sci-fi soup. A dual-dimension brain trapped in a loop of weird timelines and electric static.

Nothing’s flowing. I’m not charging. My spoons are gone — drained by invisible leeches. I check the inbox. Nothing. The silence before a storm I can feel but not prove. The time is near, but how do you tell people the endgame’s already humming under their feet?

I stretch. Chair wobbles. Drink spills. New trousers needed. Left side feels like a stroke victim on crack — elegant, I know. Welcome to another day inside this body suit of static and fog.

Yours in warlock groans, Mr. Dark / The Blog Goblin

                            !!DISCLAIMER !!

This blog shares raw and personal experiences with mental and physical health. Some posts may be triggering. I'm not a professional - just writing my truth. Please don't take this as medical advice.

        “The views in this post are based on my personal      
            experience. I do not intend harm, only honesty.”   

        “By ink and breath and sacred rage, I write.
                  By storm and silence, I survive.”

    @goblinbloggeruk -  sick@mylivinghell.co.uk

Some mornings I wake up and my brain feels like it’s been wrapped in clingfilm and slow-cooked in porridge. Other days, it’s like someone’s pushed my thoughts through a shredder and sprinkled the confetti back into my skull.

They call it “brain fog.” Cute, right? Sounds like a lovely little mist rolling over a field of daisies. Nah — this is industrial-grade psychic smog, pumped in direct from the underworld.

Now let’s add in some of the bonus features that come with living inside this broken bio-machine:

My left side is a bloody disaster zone. Spasms, twitching, pain — like it's trying to divorce the rest of me without telling the lawyers.

My arms are numb. Like holding ghosts. Pins and needles, static shocks, a constant reminder I’m glitching.

My neck’s buzzing like someone wired it to a phone mast.

My head? Feels like it’s been blendered. I mean that. Mentally, spiritually, and maybe physically violated by a Nutribullet.

Tinnitus — so loud it’s practically its own entity. High-pitched screeches like I’m stuck inside a dying TV set from 1993.

My throat’s raw, like I’ve swallowed sandpaper.

And my gut? Welcome to the underground pain circus. Nerve pain in the bowels. Left side again, obviously. Feels like my intestines are throwing a rave on broken glass.

I feel nauseous all the time. Like life itself makes me queasy.

And my MS just laughs. Because this is the version of me it built. Cheers, you bastard.

And through all of this? People still expect me to perform like a functioning human being. To smile. To “push through.” To maybe try a walk, or eat kale, or just “think positively.” As if any of that undoes neurological betrayal and raw systemic cruelty.

Let me say it plainly: This isn’t tiredness. It isn’t laziness. It’s war. A war inside my own body, where my brain is the battlefield and my guts are collateral damage.

But here's the twist in the tale: I still show up.

Even when the fog’s choking, the pain is singing, the static is screaming. Even when my body feels like it’s been stitched together with barbed wire and dark humour.

I write. I speak. I make noise — even if all I can do is whisper.

Because that’s what warriors do. We don’t always charge into battle — sometimes we just fucking stay alive, and that’s enough.

So if you’re reading this and you know this hell — I see you.

You’re not weak. You’re not broken. You’re forged in fire, mate. And somehow, you’re still here.

Rock on, Life. Rock on, Hell. Let’s fucking go.

                !!DISCLAIMER !! 

This blog shares raw and personal experiences with mental and physical health. Some posts may be triggering. I'm not a professional - just writing my truth. Please don't take this as medical advice.

        “The views in this post are based on my personal     
            experience. I do not intend harm, only honesty.”   

             “By ink and breath and sacred rage, I write.
                    By storm and silence, I survive.”

      @goblinbloggeruk  -  sick@mylivinghell.co.uk

Imagine a fungus. Not the fun kind you toss on pizza or see in a psychedelic forest vision. No – this one’s invisible, spiteful, and feeds on your life like a narcissist at a self-love seminar.

To the Compassionless Moron™, chronic illness is:

“Just a bit of mould, mate. Bit of bleach and positive thinking should fix it. Ever tried yoga?”

But to those who live with it? It's Cordyceps in a tracksuit, hijacking your brain, body, and plans for the day. It doesn't politely ask for your consent. It moves in, changes the locks, rearranges the furniture, then gaslights you into thinking you invited it.

🍄 Chronic Illness Fungus Forms (as defined by Goblin Science): Mycelium of Misunderstanding: Grows in family WhatsApp groups where someone says, “But you don’t look sick…”

Spore of Gaslit Guilt: Spreads when doctors say, “All your tests are normal.” Translation: “You must be imagining it, now jog on.”

Brain Fog Truffle: A rare delicacy that replaces memory, language, and logic with static, soup, and a vague sense you forgot your own name.

The Mold of Ableist Microaggressions™: Often found growing on the keyboard warriors who post things like,

"I cured my cousin’s MS with celery and optimism!"

🛑 To the Haters and the Deniers: We see you. With your bootstraps mentality and motivational memes. You wear your ignorance like a badge, polished with smugness, stinking of privilege.

You don't see the fatigue. The tremors. The panic of your legs going AWOL in the middle of a supermarket. Because it's not happening to you.

And if it ever does? We’ll welcome you with tea, a blanket, and a "Told You So" fruit basket shaped like a middle finger.

💀 But Seriously... To my fellow fungus hosts – The chronically unwell, the warrior sleepers, the foggy fighters, the ones measuring energy in spoons and grief in invisible bruises:

You are not weak. You are surviving a parasite the world refuses to even acknowledge. You are f**king incredible.

And you don’t owe anyone a clean narrative or a recovery arc. Sometimes just breathing is the rebellion

                                   !!DISCLAIMER !!

This blog shares raw and personal experiences with mental and physical health. Some posts may be triggering. I'm not a professional - just writing my truth. Please don't take this as medical advice.

                  “The views in this post are based on my personal     
                          experience. I do not intend harm, only honesty.”   

               “By ink and breath and sacred rage, I write.
                           By storm and silence, I survive.”

          @goblinbloggeruk  -  sick@mylivinghell.co.uk

There was a time in my life when I thought everything was going to be awesome.

How wrong I was.

We moved into this reasonably okay house, in an okayish part of town. You know the sort – two cars in the drive, fake plants in the windows, neighbours who shit themselves if someone owns a leather jacket that isn't from M&S.

There I was, riding my Yamaha 1100 Dragstar trike, wild long hair, beard that screamed “Hermit Wizard Biker,” wearing my cut and old jeans – California on a budget, but stuck in rainy middle England. I was about 57 then. Full of ideas. Full of hope. Full of medical cannabis.

And there was Albertine – goddess incarnate, riding her Triumph Bonneville like a Valkyrie on wheels. Leather trousers, biker boots, that horny, savage biker queen look that made grown men weep into their pints. Long dark hair whipping the wind, eyes like stormclouds and fire combined. She looked like she’d ride through the gates of Valhalla just to flick the V’s at Odin before burning rubber into the void.

I tried to do some DIY. Didn’t go well. Many accidents, broken bones, ambulances, heart attack at the local refuse tip. Carried on regardless because, well, I’m me. Heart running at 60%, they said. Meh. Go home, they said. Blah blah fucking blah.

But this is where the fun really began.

The neighbours. Gods. They hated us before the kettle even boiled. They saw my trike. They saw her Bonneville. They saw our hair. Our leathers. Our old biker boots. That was enough. Judged. Condemned. Executed by gossip.

But they didn’t know who they were fucking with.

I was Warlock. Spiritual Radio Shock Jock. Dark Gandalf. She was Albertine, Valkyrie Biker Oracle. We had Multiple Sclerosis, PTSD, heart disease, psychic powers, and a list of medical issues as long as their Deliveroo orders combined. Nothing phases us anymore. You can hit us, hurt us, say hurty words – we just laugh and smile because we’re already dying, slowly, hilariously, and publicly.

One day the bloke next door tried to intimidate me, bragging about being a bouncer. I laughed. Told him I used to be a bouncer too. His face dropped like my blood pressure on cannabis oil. From then on, if I was in the garden, he ran in. If I was in the shop, he ran out. It was like having my own personal game of Pac-Man.

His wife ran the show, obviously. Poor sod.

Best bit? He offered to sell me weed once, knowing I had MS. I said no. Later, he smelled my vape and threatened to call the police. Solicitors got involved. Absolute circus. I laughed harder. It was medical marijuana. Karma’s a bitch, mate.

But we stood our ground. Never showed fear. Didn’t need to. Because deep down, he knew we were the real wizards, and he was just a frightened little man in a tracksuit who thought his wife’s approval was worth more than his soul.

I am a disabled wheelchair user. I’m a long-haired, bearded 65-year-old eccentric warlock on a spiritual journey, seeking portals to other realms where people love instead of hate. Where cosmic pea soup realities collide and no one gives a shit about your beard or your wheels.

Just divine love, freedom, and the multiverse’s endless electric embrace.

Simple really.

But brain fog incoming… so I’ll leave it there, Gandalf out.

                                       !!DISCLAIMER !! 

This blog shares raw and personal experiences with mental and physical health. Some posts may be triggering. I'm not a professional - just writing my truth. Please don't take this as medical advice.

                     “The views in this post are based on my personal     
                         experience. I do not intend harm, only honesty.”   

                                 “By ink and breath and sacred rage, I write.
                                           By storm and silence, I survive.”

                              @goblinbloggeruk   sick@mylivinghell.co.uk