Back to Blog

For the last few months I have been avoiding the blog. I have been struggling with new medications to control the migraines. Fatigue levels have been high, mood has been low. Could it be the medication, is it the menopause, or is it simply that life with MND is so shit? I've been here before - in the sense that I have been reluctant to share on the blog. If it's not real, I don't write about it here because I have to be honest. On the one hand, I don't want these pages to be simply a boring moanfest - on the other hand, this is meant to be about the reality of living with MND and that's where I've been at.I put finger to keyboard early this month and was not happy with the result, but I publish it below to give you a flavour of the mood.

It's complicated having Carers here. Roch copes with it a lot better than I do. My room has become my sanctuary but although I have more time to write, I have hit a brick wall. I seem to have lost my motivation and my confidence has plummeted. The only way up and out is through and I know this but no matter how much I tell myself to get on with it, just do it, write ANYTHING, I stare at the blank page or at best produce a paragraph of rubbish and I don't know where I'm going with it.

So, welcome to the moanfest.

Blogpost 6th April 2016

Seven Years On - Does it get easier?

The word for me at the moment is Intrusion. For so long I looked forward to a time when the day to day caring tasks could be shared, giving me more time for myself, resulting in a less exhausted Deirdre. Now we have what might be called a team of Carers (or Personal Assistants) and I’m still not happy. I tell you now I did not anticipate how difficult I would find the constant intrusion into our home, our space. It’s not that they are not lovely people or that they don’t look after Roch well but essentially they are strangers in our home. I thought I would get used to it but having someone here every day - although this was the plan, the plan for ME - I find incredibly difficult at times. 

I mentioned this to an old friend recently, and I found her response very helpful. Maybe some of you will too. She reminded me of a time in her own life when she had to accept help in her home. It made her angry, she told me, and she resented the intrusion so much that she sometimes found it difficult to hide her feelings from the people who came to help her. She said she felt so bad about this that she spoke to her priest about it and he told her “You don’t have to be grateful, you just have to be civil.” She said that helped her enormously. 

It can be hard work, too - there are lots of issues to deal with, both personal and practical. We have a lot of help from RUILS but employing a bunch of Personal Assistants brings its own challenges in many ways. Rota, training and induction, insurance, payroll (Roch and RUILS deal with this) - simple human interaction feels beyond me sometimes. Their presence, welcome though it is on a practical level, is a constant reminder of how much further this disease has ravaged him physically. It’s hard for him of course. He’s not an old man. He’s only 54 and who wants to be wholly dependent at that age? I know it’s hard for the kids, too. It’s been seven years and the last four years have been gruelling. Our kids are marvellous. They are, quite simply, the Blessings of my life. People tell you to count my blessings and I have.

Count Your Blessings

The weight of her head on my shoulder,

the warmth of his fingers in mine;

these are the blessings I treasure,

their hearts beat the measure of life.

DM 2016

                           

Oddfellows

After a long absence, I recently attended an MND Carer’s Meeting. My situation was very different from that of the other Carers present. Both had partners recently diagnosed. I feel for them but how can they support me? My needs are very different from theirs. I mentioned that now we had Carers to help.

“What do they do?”

“Well, they get him up in the morning and shower and dress him…” I began.

“Oh I don’t mind doing that for my partner.”

I know the remark was less a comment on me and more a personal reflection on their own situation, perhaps checking in with themselves about where they were with that task - but it was difficult to hear and inside my immediate response was defensive and angry.

“You wait until you’ve been living with it for seven years, mate, and showering your partner for four of them.” 

Of course I didn’t say that. 

Roch calls himself a freak. His Neurologist calls him an Outlier. I felt like an Outsider, a Veteran, if you will, somewhat jaded by experience, careworn and still struggling with feelings of guilt, anger, resentment, grief. But I didn’t feel I wanted to express any of those feelings there. Our Seven years brings others hope but the reality is that the longer it goes on the harder it gets.