Like a hurricane

I was standing in the wind tunnel that is my daughter's school playground yesterday wishing I'd a) worn more clothes and b) weighted down my boots.

As I was pulling up my hood to (unsuccessfully) protect against the relentless gusts I was joined by a fellow windswept parent.

A parent who, I must admit, I have something of a mum crush on. She is immeasurably kind and wise - she's the yardstick I refer to (in my head) when I'm having a parenting crisis.

She is my distinctly non-religious and eminently capable female version of  "What would Jesus do?"

We got chatting about weekends - she'd just been on a mindfulness weekend to aid her working life and her personal one. (See! This is the kind of thing she does!)

The weekend had involved a visualisation exercise where she and the other attendees were asked to create an image of all their worries and concerns, write them on the side of a log and sit on the riverbank and watch as those logs drifted downstream.

You weren't allowed to touch the logs as they went past, you weren't allowed think of an answer to the concerns they raised and you certainly weren't allowed to launch yourself full-pelt into the river to slow down the logs.

You simply watched and acknowledged the logs as they drifted by.

This had really helped her, she said, as she's prone to hurrying to find solutions rather than taking time to calm herself down and think without clouds of anxiety hampering any decision.

I like the thought of it. I'm also prone to leaping into decisions, to reacting on panic, to blindly trying to clear lots of things off my list without properly thinking them through.

I don't know if it's a personality thing, a distraction thing or a reaction to MS mayhem thing - a way of gathering some sort of decisive control from the uncertainty this disease brings. Even if that decision might be the wrong one.

At the moment, I feel that I'd like to try for a bit of calm in the middle of the mayhem and if it's some floating logs that will do this for me, then I'm willing to sit on the bank and give it a go.

:: Like a hurricane by Neil Young

Fakin' it

The new work life that I have found myself in is really quite different to my previous familiar worlds of public and charity sector employment.

It is a tech-driven industry in which a whole host of remarkably impressive people stand up on stage in front of hundreds of their peers and present brain-frazzlingly complicated talks.

It's quite the spectacle.

And while I am enjoying it, I do often find myself so utterly bewildered by the amount of stuff I don't know that I wonder how on earth I manage to stumble through the day.

But then I heard a podcast from one of these Silicon Valley types about something called Impostor Syndrome and I suddenly felt a lot better.

In essence, this hugely successful and obviously immensely brainy chap was speaking about how he doubted his achievements and worried about being exposed as a fraud.

From an outside listener's point of view, this was clearly bonkers. But it did make me stop and wonder about just how many of us are going through life feeling this way too.

I know I have achieved some stuff in my working life, I know I have done the same in my personal, but I do feel a lot of the time that it's been down to luck or somehow talking a good talk.

I'm not sure it's false modesty, I really do feel like I've gotten away with stuff for quite some time.

Yet if my friends were to say the same, I'd easily be able to sit them down and list the things that they've done and the qualities they have that make them nothing like an impostor.

In fact I used to make lists for my friends to stick on their mirrors detailing all the attributes they have and why they should be proud to be who they are.

Much as I don't want to do the same for myself because a) cringe and b) I don't believe it anyway, perhaps we all need to ask a friend for a bit of positive feedback.

It'd be nice to know that we're actually not the impostors we feel we are.

:: Fakin' it by Simon and Garfunkel

The joker

Multiple sclerosis brings with it a whole host of entertaining* features.

Not enough danger in your life? Go out in your highest heels with your worst balance.

Want to feel like you’re studying Latin? Read Pot Noodle preparation instructions when you’re fatigued.

Need to experience more art? Wait for your next bout of optic neuritis and see the world like a Monet painting..

But one of the lesser known entertaining* features is that of the pseudobulbar affect or PBA.

This impressively-monikered symptom is also charmingly known as emotional incontinence and can take the form of involuntary crying, wild episodes of laughing or other highly emotional displays.

We might find ourselves weeping at something only moderately sad, laughing uncontrollably at something only vaguely amusing and in both cases being unable to stop ourselves.

Episodes may also be mood-incongruent: we might laugh uncontrollably when angry or frustrated, for example.

And most entertainingly*, sometimes the episodes may switch between emotional states, resulting in us crying uncontrollably when having sex.

Particularly tricky to explain away the first time you sleep with a new partner.

This particularly messy symptom of MS is caused by lesions occurring in the areas of the brain that govern emotional pathways.

It can be upsetting, frustrating and embarrassing and at present is treated through the use of off-label antidepressants.

.

I don’t think I’ve experienced PBA yet. But to be honest, it’s hard to tell.

I’ve always been a bit emotional, so blubbing buckets at any number of those ‘help the children/animals/earthworms’ adverts is pretty much par-for-the-course for me.

Equally, laughing inappropriately when trying to be stern with my daughter or explain a serious situation is fairly standard behaviour and one that was there before my diagnosis.

Added to which, MS can be a pretty depressing and/or desperately hysterical condition on its own, never mind any sneaky lesions butting in, so how do I know?

It’s a difficult one.

I guess the only way I’m going to be able to tell for sure is if I suddenly start bursting into gales of uncontrollable mirth watching Mrs Brown's Boys.

Then I’ll know it’s definitely time for another MRI.

:: The Joker by the Steve Miller Band 

*by which I mean distressing

Overload

Oh dear, I think I've been taking too much on.

What with work, half-term socialising, trick-or-treating, bonfire parties and constructing a Crystal Maze game for the family (as you do) I am in danger of overbalancing.

Not the physical wobble (although there is a risk of that) but overbalancing the precarious MS seesaw.

The one that keeps everything just about in check as long as you learn not to push your luck. Not to take that extra call, plan that extra activity or enjoy that one more late night.

You see, with MS, we all know that the sensible thing is to pace ourselves.

But with MS, we all know the over-riding panic is do it now or we may never be able to.

I don't know at what point I am going to learn to balance the two. But if I haven't learned it in nearly 15 years of living with this energy-zapping disease, I'm beginning to wonder if I ever will.

Probably worth some proper consideration.

But can't stop now. Things to do. While I can.

:: Overload - Alfie Zappacosta