multiple sclerosis

Well, what a week it's been. I'm currently sat here talking to my speech-to-text app like some deranged oracle.

Battery life? Liar. Sporadic power at best. This so-called “smartphone” isn’t smart at all. I tell it to power down—it sends me to a bloody help page. In the end, I worked out a hack to switch it off. Because apparently, being disabled means needing a PhD to press a button.

My fingers are numb. Hands barely functional. Tactile feedback? Gone. Tiny buttons are useless ornaments to me. Touchscreens are a little better—still a pain, but I don't need to perform a séance just to answer a call.

I keep the phone in a Faraday bag overnight. No signals in, no signals out. Paranoid? No. Realistic. I don’t need Alexa learning how many antihistamines I pop daily.

Speaking of which—my allergies are off the fucking chart. Hay fever is now a cosmic entity. Took so many antihistamines, I’m practically embalmed. Side effects? Mild haunting. Random dissociation. Full-body brain fog. But hey, better than full-on freak-out.

MS loves to sprinkle in a panic attack for seasoning. The good kind—the ones that make you curl into a corner and question whether you’re even a person anymore. And if I forget my pills? Cue existential hell.

The electrical storms in my brain? Picture a lightning bolt shagging a power station. BANG. That’s what my neurons do for fun.

Today? Balance gone. No walking. Grabbed furniture, ended up grabbing air. Wheelchair day. Again. Will I never learn?

Overdid it. Spoons: gone. Days or weeks until I get them back. It’s raining. Of course it is. Put on some music to distract myself from my collapsing nervous system.

My throat’s spasming. Too much talking. Break.

Haha—just transferred this to my PC and the spellchecker is climaxing with all the red lines. Absolute filth. Press the magic button—bam, respectable writing.

Took some oil. Spasms eased. Neck still hurts. Tongue’s numb. Mouth’s a dead zone. Remember novocaine? It’s like that 24/7. Eating is a carnival of self-harm. Choking daily. Cheeks bitten.

And that feeling—bone-deep weirdness. Invisible sprites stabbing needles in a crown around my head. Madness, right?

If I posted this raw, people might think I’ve lost it. Maybe I have. Cognitive decline has me screaming at walls. Memory? What memory.

I stare at what I’ve written and it’s just a tangled mess of frustration, grief, and fuckery. But I still have something to give, even if the delivery system is fucked.

Maybe I’ll keep doing this. Write from my broken, unhinged, seen-too-much mind.

I want to talk about MS. I want to talk about other things too. Will that confuse people? Maybe. Do I care? Less and less.

I just hope someone out there—another broken soul with a half-working body and a mind full of static—reads this and feels seen.

Life is for living, no matter how fucked up you are.

All you need is love.

Love is divine.

The universe is love.

The One is love.

But that’s just me.

— End transmission.

        “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 ✨🧌

It’s kind of crazy — I never knew my grandfather. Not even a photo, not even a whisper. He died suddenly, somewhere in the Aylesbury area, back in the 1950s — that golden age when secrets were sealed with shame and buried under floral carpets.

Nobody in the family ever told me what he died of. “A very sudden illness,” was all I got. Probably delivered in the same tone someone might use to comment on the weather or sweep dust under the rug. Mysterious death, mysterious family — very on brand.

I asked my mother when I finally tracked her down, years later. She couldn’t (or wouldn’t) tell me either. Possibly she’d forgotten. Possibly she never knew. Possibly she just couldn’t be bothered giving answers to the cuckoo in the nest.

Here’s where it gets interesting, or tragic, or ironic — depending on your mood: Turns out my mum’s sister — my long-lost Auntie Valerie — also has multiple sclerosis. Same as me. Apparently, the same type. As if MS comes in flavours, like trauma gelato. She also has heart issues. Guess it runs in the family, right? The family that doesn’t know I exist.

Valerie lives in Australia. I’ve never spoken to her. Because, of course, I was adopted. Filed away like an inconvenient tax receipt from the 1950s.

I’ve spent years — decades, even — trying to find out how my grandfather died. But there’s nothing. It's like he evaporated. Maybe he was abducted by aliens. That would at least give me something to put on the family tree. As it stands, it’s just: [Grandfather] — cause of death: TBD. Whole existence: classified.

So I tried to contact Auntie Valerie. I figured maybe we could bond over mutual nerve damage and existential dread. But being a bastard (and not just in the literary, Victorian orphan sense, but in the real, modern “you’re not supposed to exist” sense), there was no reply. Not even a bounce-back email. Just the long, digital silence of “you don’t belong here.”

It’s sad, really. I wanted to know how she copes. I wanted to know what her life with MS looks like — or looked like. She’s probably in her 80s or 90s now. Maybe already gone. But I never got that chance.

No one in the family helped. They didn’t want to. I’m the cuckoo in the nest. I ruin the tidy little mythologies they built for themselves. The "perfect family" free of blemishes, scandals, or inconvenient babies. It’s easier, I suppose, to pretend I never happened. Easier to scroll past the DNA test notifications and sip tea with clenched jaws.

And just when you think it couldn’t get more delightful, you discover your own mother believed you were faking multiple sclerosis. Like I’m pulling a fast one for sympathy and early boarding privileges. As if I filled out a form to get chronic illness just to be dramatic.

But hey — she felt guilty. She gave two kids up for adoption and never told anyone. Probably thought she’d be judged. I mean, yeah, it was the 1950s — women were practically burned at the stake for sneezing out of wedlock. I get it. Sort of. Still, honesty would’ve been cheaper than all this generational denial.

Maybe one day, one of Valerie’s kids will spit in a tube, upload their DNA, and stumble across me. Maybe they’ll be curious. Maybe they’ll click “connect.” Maybe we’ll have one awkward, meaningful email exchange about shared symptoms and shattered mugs.

Speaking of which — Albertine just broke my Bob Lazar mug. Snapped the handle clean off. We got that thing 20 years ago at a Richard D. Hall show. Back when I still thought conspiracy theories were fun, not autobiographical. That mug had survived four moves, three breakups, and countless microwaved teas. And now? One slippery hand and it’s history. Just like my connection to my real family.

Let’s be real: I probably won’t get to meet Auntie Val. Or her kids. Or get that WhatsApp message that says, “Hey, turns out we’re related, and wow, MS sucks.” I’m the embarrassment. The smudge on the family photo. The ghost in the family machine.

I am the that which is not spoken of. The pecadillo best left in the footnotes of someone else’s better story. The unwanted chapter. The child made of shame and secrets.

But I’m still here. Drinking tea from a cracked cup. Waiting. Maybe for an email. Maybe for a match. Or maybe just for someone, somewhere, to admit I existed.

           “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 ✨🧌

Ah, cognitive dysfunction—the brain’s equivalent of tripping over a flat surface. Was it all an illusion? Ghosts, UFOs, stealth fighters, and prophetic dread… or just my mind on a downward spiral into weirdness? Either way, I’ve decided to lean in, light a cigarette, and call it a vision.

The wind howled like a pissed-off banshee across the cliffs of Devon and Cornwall, sea thrashing violently like it just read the news. The sky? Grim as a tax return. Grey-blue, heavy, like the Earth forgot how to breathe. And then dusk hit—everything looked dreamlike and wrong, like we’d walked into a David Lynch version of Coastal Britain.

Front and centre, the Biker Prophet sat—glorious, grim, and slightly nicotine-stained—in his custom apocalypse-grade black wheelchair. A perfect marriage of biker attitude and Mad Max tech. Chrome flashed menacingly. Leather straps held him like a pagan king ready for war. His jacket, part-open, clung to a body that had long ago said bollocks to surrender. His long dirty-blonde demi-wave hair lashed around his face, which wore a goatee and the expression of someone who’s seen the void and found it wanting.

One hand clutched the wheel—his war-chariot. The other? A cigarette, of course. Smoke curled like forgotten omens. Dog tags hung from his hand like relics of battles fought, both real and psychological.

Then there was Albertine—perched on her Bonneville like a leather-clad Valkyrie from 1977. Brown demi-wave hair, curves wrapped in attitude and zips, and the kind of expression that made traffic lights change just to get out of her way. She wasn’t posing. She was the pose.

Up above, a black stealth fighter cut across the sky like a glitch in the simulation. It shimmered, bent the air, then buggered off to wherever secrets go to die. Probably to report to some intergalactic committee on whether Earth’s ready for a toaster revolution.

The Dragstar 1100 grumbled in the background. Another ghost. Another beast of the past. And yet, he smiled.

“I had to no longer ride,” he muttered. “I cried, but no one heard me. Except the universe. And maybe Valhalla.”

But he came back. and Converted the bike, hello trike, I Converted fate.

“Started riding in ’75. Rode into ’2022. Then I hacked life and rolled on. Now it’s 2025, and I’m still bloody here. Old as fuck. Still kicking.”

Motörhead blared from somewhere. Tarot cards appeared. Palm readings followed. The biker prophet and Albertine—two relics of chaos—just were. Married 42 years, bonded by madness and music.

And in the sky—symbols. Like ancient software updates from the gods. Runes. Scripts. Or maybe just birds that got too poetic. Either way, something was coming.

                “The Biker Prophet Saw It Coming.”
              “Cognitive Dysfunction? Or Divine Glitch?”
       “They Thought He Was Broken. He Was Becoming.”
        “When the Sky Spoke, He Was Already Listening.”


             “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 ✨🧌

Welcome to the delightful circus that is multiple sclerosis, where the main act is your body betraying you in the most creative ways possible. Among the many charming surprises this condition throws your way, itching is like that one friend who crashes your party, drinks all your booze, and then refuses to leave. Let’s take a stroll through the hellscape of MS-related itching, shall we? The Itch That Just Won't Die

Picture this: you’re trying to enjoy a moment of peace, maybe contemplating why you just dropped your phone in the toilet. Suddenly, an itch strikes! But not just any itch—this is the kind that feels like a thousand tiny demons are having a rave on your skin. Welcome to the world of neuropathic itching, where scratching is as effective as using a spoon to dig a hole in concrete. Why Does This Happen?

Nerve Damage: Thanks to MS, your nerves are about as reliable as a politician’s promise. The myelin sheath is under siege, leading to all sorts of delightful sensations, including that relentless itch. It’s like your nerves are sending you a message: “Hey, remember when you thought you could have a normal life? LOL! Good luck with that!”

Unpredictable Fun: The itch can pop up anywhere—your back, your legs, even your scalp. It’s like a game of hide and seek, but you’re always “it,” and the prize is eternal discomfort. Who needs a spa day when you can have a full-body itch fest?

Triggers: Heat, stress, and certain medications can turn the itch dial up to eleven. So, if you thought a hot bath was a good idea, think again! It’s more like a ticket to the Itch Olympics, where the only prize is more itching.

How to Cope (or Not)

Scratching: Spoiler alert: it doesn’t help. It’s like trying to soothe a sunburn with a blowtorch. You’ll just end up with blood and scars to prove your suffering—because why not add a little flair to your misery?

Cold Compresses: These might provide temporary relief, but let’s be real—who wants to walk around with a bag of frozen peas on their skin? It’s not exactly a fashion statement.

Medications: If the itch becomes unbearable, consult your doctor. They might prescribe something to help, but don’t expect miracles. After all, this is MS we’re talking about. It’s like asking a magician to pull a rabbit out of a hat when all they have is a rock.

Alternative Remedies: Enter the world of CBD and THC oil—your potential new best friends. Medical marijuana has been known to help some folks manage their symptoms, including that relentless itch. Whether it’s through oils, edibles, or other forms, these alternatives might just provide a glimmer of relief in this dark comedy we call life. Just remember to consult with your healthcare provider before diving into the green goodness.

So, there you have it. Itching in MS is just another delightful layer of this hellish cake we call life. Embrace the chaos, and remember: laughter is the best medicine—unless you’re itching, in which case, it’s probably just more itching. Welcome to the club, where the only thing we have in common is our suffering and a dark sense of humor.

   “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 ✨🧌