ms reality

⚠️ 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

⚠️ 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 Many Faces of MS: Four Shades of the Same Beast

Doctors love tidy categories. It makes their conferences neater and their PowerPoints prettier. They say there are four main types of MS: CIS, RRMS, SPMS, PPMS. Add a few rarities for spice malignant, benign, radiological-only and voilà: a zoo of acronyms.

But here’s the truth: those tidy boxes don’t mean a damn thing when you’re living it. MS doesn’t give a toss about your labels. It just chews through nerves at its own pace while you try to hang on with your fingernails.

My Version of the Four Types

The Intruder Phase

The first knock at the door. A rogue signal. Something’s off, but you don’t yet know the squatters have moved in. Fear mixed with disbelief, like waiting for a verdict you already know is guilty.

The Checkerboard War

Flare, heal, flare, heal. A sick game of snakes and ladders, only the dice are loaded. You learn strategy: rest, attack, regroup. But the house always wins in the end.

The Slow Burn

Relapses fade, but the damage doesn’t. Inch by inch, it eats. You don’t need a flashy MRI to prove it you can feel the slow rot in your bones, your mind, your will. This is SPMS: the bastard’s long game.

The Quiet Conquest

For some, there’s no drama, no storms, no sudden drops. Just a slow, relentless tightening of the vice. That’s PPMS: the quiet predator. It doesn’t roar, it whispers while it strangles.

And then there are the ghost forms: so-called benign (which feels like a cruel joke) or the malignant that slams into you like a train.

What These Labels Hide

• Flux & Overlap: The lines aren’t walls. You slide, bleed, convert. Boxes aren’t boundaries, just suggestions.
• Emotional Punch: Being told “you have PPMS” is like being handed a death sentence dressed up in medical Latin.
• The System’s Lens: These labels exist for trials, drugs, and insurance companies. They don’t guide your daily grind.
• Your Identity: To outsiders, you become the acronym. But you are not “SPMS.” You are a person dragging a monster.

My Hope, My Roar

These categories might help doctors, but they don’t define us. If MS insists on giving me a label, I’ll twist it into something else. I’ll call it by my words: intruder, war, burn, conquest.

Because at the end of the day, there isn’t four MSes. There’s one beast, swapping masks. Today it’s relapse and remission, tomorrow it’s slow suffocation. Same predator, different costume.

So when the next shiny study lands new drug, new vitamin, new miracle—I check the fine print. Who are they studying? “Active MS”? “Early RRMS”? The rest of us watch from the side-lines, left holding the bill.

I roar because I’ve been there. I’ve seen the trenches. I’ve lived beyond the tidy labels. And if MS dares to name me, I’ll name it back with rage, with metaphor, with gallows humour.

Afternoon AI Thought: MS has “four types,” they say. I say it’s one predator with a wardrobe problem today a wolf, tomorrow a vulture, always the same teeth.

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