The drastic change in my MS has had me living in retrospect the last few months and one of the things that has preoccupied my thoughts a lot is my level of education. Think the highest I have tested on an IQ test was 146. Though truth be told I can't even get past 123 and certainly no where near my usual 127 at the moment!
Thats really sad isn't it? When I am not really interested and couldn't care if my last MRI scan will show if my legs will ever work again (which the won't!) only worried if I am going to get dumber! lol
I am thinking of my school days, those nightmare mornings full of fear of bullies and teachers who couldn't give a shit and don't get me wrong there were many, many teachers there that I liked and respected. I just didn't have many of them! I did have Mr Williams for Modern Studies, who inspired a love of politics that remains with me to this day, The late Mr Conlan, RE and SVS (social and vocational skills) I was heart broken when I heard he had passed away the year after I left school, he was a brilliant teacher. Mr Barnett, English, what a pity I didn't get him until my 3rd year of high school, I have a feeling he would like to know I still read and be really pleased that I still have all the Shakespeare play books that I rescued from the bin at the end of that term! (that gave the bullies a new taunt for fourth year. 'Bucket Raker' How imaginative) see I even inspired independant thought back then! Finally Mr Mowat and Mr Melville. I still can't play an instrument or sing to save myself but I do love music Mr Mowat!
I know Mr Melville that we had our differences and although you only took our Latin class for a short time I recently amazed myself at exactly how much of it I actually do remember! (a lot more Latin than French if thats any consolation!) If there was just one subject that I could go back in time to take again it would be your Latin class!
I still write, though not as much as I should. Blame the MS, blame life, blame me.
I have been looking through some of the writing I have done in the last 25 years or so, A lot of it is missing (well coal fires needed something to burn when there was no money for coal when the girls were babies!)
Looking through my musings and scrawlings I did about school back then, which was lets face it were not the best years of my life. I found two that fit really well. I want to put the first one that I wrote in 1990 but it is so full of an anger and immaturity that I think would offend and insult the five great teachers that I have paid tribute to in this blog. So I will go with this one I wrote in 1999.
LESSONS
History taught me
That no solution is final
Geography showed me
That not all men are equal
Mathematics told me
That I would not be an accountant
Science truely informed me
That Physics holds both wonder and Horrors
English inspired me
To tell you this
That is All
Cath x
Wednesday 24 June 2009
Monday 1 June 2009
BAD NEWS - GOOD NEWS - BAD NEWS AGAIN!
Well aint that always the way of it!
Bad news - Your legs aren't really going to get better the MS is all down hill from here on in. It is no longer Relapse/Remitting it is now Secondary Progressive you will need to keep the wheelchair but you should get more help now your not being a 'malingerer'
Me - Yay! like I haven't been trying to tell you all that from last October!
Won't hold my breath for that help though! The last five years has taught me it isn't coming!
My council, who we rent our house from doesn't believe in help because things will always get worse! So the disabled access toilet and washing facillities I was supposed to get five years ago are still not here, they just fobbed us off year in year out saying that they were looking for a house that WE KNEW didn't even exist. If we knew it how can they say that they didn't know it? Not saying that having a showeroom or a more accessable loo would have made our lives perfect for those years but it would have made everyone in this house's life a damn site easier! No they just kept hoping to hang on long enough till my then 13 and 14 year old daughters would be old enough to force out of school and chuck out at 16. Girls didn't want to leave school or home but at 19 and 17 that is exactly what they have had to do. They hung on as long as they could but in the end they just had to go! The oldest does what she terms 'sofa surfing' as she maintains that since she lost the job she got after leaving school at 17 she can't afford a house and they did offer her one when she was still at school but she is at college now hoping to continue that and point blank refuses to claim benefits.
The 17 year old is a mum herself now but right through her pregnancy she stayed on at school and went back after the birth, as MS got worse here though she really couldn't stay on though and had to leave in November. She was hoping to go to college and get her highers this year so she could pursue a Degree in History which she one day hoped to teach! She can't do that now she has a third floor flat and a daughter to keep. The third one she was offered (two while at school) We still feed both of them, one has no money and the other hasn't yet got a cooker!
As I said it has been a sort of 'suffer now until you are suffering a whole lot more!' kind of policy and they are in no hurry to change that.
Months on from getting the wheelchair, I still can't leave the house. I have even been told that I am Wheelchair bound by someone who could change that!
Now if he had said housebound I could have let him off because technically as they wont give me the ramps I need to get out of the house I am housebound!
But wheelchair bound?
No one ties me to the thing! Perhaps I am missing out on some kinky wheelchair frolics or something! (should really look into that!)
It is like being called an MS sufferer. No one gets to decide if I am suffering, except me! There have been and still are times that I have been but not as much as my poor family have and still do thanks to Falkirk Council!
I might be 'disabled' but I don't think I think of disability the same as everyone else seems to because simply I do not think I am Disabled. Un-enabled maybe but not disabled!
I am in a wheelchair, I sleep on a very uncomfortable sofa and I have just about crippled my poor hubby having the 4 baths he has lifted me in and out of since last December!
The most disabling thing for me in that time though has been the 6 weeks I had to do without my computer thanks to viruses!
I was sure I had good news somewhere, haven't won the lottery, council seem determined to end a very strong and loving marriage, by killing my husband! Not enough that he has had to give up a working life of almost 34 years and the two jobs he had from injury and ill health caused by his caring. Having to help me do things I could do quite easily by myself. They want make him Scotlands first MS 'SUFFERER' that doesn't even have the disease!
Seems everyone else in Europe has a right to a family life and privacy except for us!
Oh I know what our good news was! We have got our Autistic 5 year old into a great school and the respite care we asked for last May might actually happen in July/August. The potential carers seem lovely and very experienced.
Anyone who knows anyone with an ASD child will know that routine is really an essential, A Paeditrician confirmed on the 21st that the breaking of his routines that have been caused by not being cared for at night by his night time carer (which is me!) and the stress in this house is having a detrimental effect on his Disability. He and his brother are lucky though they can now get legal help now as they are most definitely being Discriminated against by Association!
whew five weeks of writing but this blog is done, wouldn't say dusted yet but its definitely done!
Cath x
Bad news - Your legs aren't really going to get better the MS is all down hill from here on in. It is no longer Relapse/Remitting it is now Secondary Progressive you will need to keep the wheelchair but you should get more help now your not being a 'malingerer'
Me - Yay! like I haven't been trying to tell you all that from last October!
Won't hold my breath for that help though! The last five years has taught me it isn't coming!
My council, who we rent our house from doesn't believe in help because things will always get worse! So the disabled access toilet and washing facillities I was supposed to get five years ago are still not here, they just fobbed us off year in year out saying that they were looking for a house that WE KNEW didn't even exist. If we knew it how can they say that they didn't know it? Not saying that having a showeroom or a more accessable loo would have made our lives perfect for those years but it would have made everyone in this house's life a damn site easier! No they just kept hoping to hang on long enough till my then 13 and 14 year old daughters would be old enough to force out of school and chuck out at 16. Girls didn't want to leave school or home but at 19 and 17 that is exactly what they have had to do. They hung on as long as they could but in the end they just had to go! The oldest does what she terms 'sofa surfing' as she maintains that since she lost the job she got after leaving school at 17 she can't afford a house and they did offer her one when she was still at school but she is at college now hoping to continue that and point blank refuses to claim benefits.
The 17 year old is a mum herself now but right through her pregnancy she stayed on at school and went back after the birth, as MS got worse here though she really couldn't stay on though and had to leave in November. She was hoping to go to college and get her highers this year so she could pursue a Degree in History which she one day hoped to teach! She can't do that now she has a third floor flat and a daughter to keep. The third one she was offered (two while at school) We still feed both of them, one has no money and the other hasn't yet got a cooker!
As I said it has been a sort of 'suffer now until you are suffering a whole lot more!' kind of policy and they are in no hurry to change that.
Months on from getting the wheelchair, I still can't leave the house. I have even been told that I am Wheelchair bound by someone who could change that!
Now if he had said housebound I could have let him off because technically as they wont give me the ramps I need to get out of the house I am housebound!
But wheelchair bound?
No one ties me to the thing! Perhaps I am missing out on some kinky wheelchair frolics or something! (should really look into that!)
It is like being called an MS sufferer. No one gets to decide if I am suffering, except me! There have been and still are times that I have been but not as much as my poor family have and still do thanks to Falkirk Council!
I might be 'disabled' but I don't think I think of disability the same as everyone else seems to because simply I do not think I am Disabled. Un-enabled maybe but not disabled!
I am in a wheelchair, I sleep on a very uncomfortable sofa and I have just about crippled my poor hubby having the 4 baths he has lifted me in and out of since last December!
The most disabling thing for me in that time though has been the 6 weeks I had to do without my computer thanks to viruses!
I was sure I had good news somewhere, haven't won the lottery, council seem determined to end a very strong and loving marriage, by killing my husband! Not enough that he has had to give up a working life of almost 34 years and the two jobs he had from injury and ill health caused by his caring. Having to help me do things I could do quite easily by myself. They want make him Scotlands first MS 'SUFFERER' that doesn't even have the disease!
Seems everyone else in Europe has a right to a family life and privacy except for us!
Oh I know what our good news was! We have got our Autistic 5 year old into a great school and the respite care we asked for last May might actually happen in July/August. The potential carers seem lovely and very experienced.
Anyone who knows anyone with an ASD child will know that routine is really an essential, A Paeditrician confirmed on the 21st that the breaking of his routines that have been caused by not being cared for at night by his night time carer (which is me!) and the stress in this house is having a detrimental effect on his Disability. He and his brother are lucky though they can now get legal help now as they are most definitely being Discriminated against by Association!
whew five weeks of writing but this blog is done, wouldn't say dusted yet but its definitely done!
Cath x
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