I’ve moved!

To find out  what happened next, check out my new blog at:

chronicallywell.blogspot.co.uk

Sometimes you have to go easy …

After successfully navigating a fortnight of full-time work without mishap, I’m spending a few days trekking around the country visiting some of the people I love most and generally chilling out. I couldn’t have achieved those 2 weeks of working without carefully following the wonderful OMS Recovery Programme for over a month, and won’t beat MS without it, but that doesn’t mean that life suddenly has to become unbearably serious and dull. So here I am staying up past midnight, because my insanely talented younger brother is rehearsing with his exciting little band and I want to stay up listening to them putting their new numbers together, rather than lights out at 10:30pm as usual. 

I haven’t done my daily meditation or daily exercise, haven’t had my daily veggie juices but I have had a glass of wine, and I’m feeling more blessed than I can express. There is so much love in my life, and so much to be grateful for, but for some reason I sometimes need to slow down and change my location and routine before I’m able to recognise it. I don’t doubt for a second that I’ll be straight back on the programme when I’m home in 48 hours, but equally I’m feeling comfortably relaxed about being in a position where it’s not practical to stick to it now. And that’s just fine.

The 60-Day Reboot: Day One

Undeterred by a false start yesterday, and my own techie limitations today, I have  this morning started my 60-Day Reboot!

This comes not a moment too soon. Yesterday I was so exhausted that I could hardly get out of bed. I had to call in sick at work, as a single 50 minute lesson – my entire teaching schedule for the day – was more than I could manage.

This is the reality of MS fatigue: it’s completely debilitating and utterly unpredictable. And it’s stopping me from living my life. Am I grateful not to be in a wheelchair? Of course! I thank God and my good fortune for this all the time. But if a daily juice and a few judicious lifestyle + dietary changes can keep me out of a wheelchair, what could 30 days on only juice do for me? And a further 30 on juice and raw, whole plant foods?

I can’t wait to find out…

The fight-back goes nuclear!

“Between the unexpected, unpleasant events in our lives and our response to those events is a space, and in that space we have a choice in deciding what our response will be. We can either give up or get up each day and do our best.” – Dr. Terry Wahls

Veg & Fruit – the answer to our troubles?

According to WordPress I started this post on 25 October 2012. So that makes it almost 9 months since my MS diet supposedly “went nuclear”. I discovered Dr Wahls’ challenging but amazingly effective protocol and, with a few adaptations to keep costs down, started to implement it most of the time … ish.

Even with that partial approach, dramatically increasing the quantity, quality, and variety of fresh vegetables and fruit I eat every day has had a positive effect on my health, energy levels and mood.

And yet …

… here I am almost 9 months later in July 2013, having improved my diet a little, and even going away for a 2-week juicing & yoga retreat. There’s no doubt that I’m better than I was: I’m off most of my medications, and I’m no longer suffering from so-called ‘minor’ MS symptoms like the neuropathy I used to have in my hands & feet.

But I’m still sick and overweight, still exhausted, still depressed, still struggling with ‘brain fog’, with persistent painful digestive problems, and – most debilitating of all – with a complete all-encompassing fatigue. I want a full-time career, but the best I can manage is a few hours a day of piece-work. I want to make love to my husband, but rarely, if ever, get to the end of a day with any kind of energy or self-confidence  intact. I want a social life, but can’t find the va-va-voom to get out and meet people.

In short, I’m sick and tired of always being sick and tired.

And suddenly I realise: “this is not good enough, I can do better“. I don’t know why I’ve always believed that I can be fully 100% healthy, that I can make MS and depression a distant memory. I’m just stubborn I suppose.

I now realise that as long as I’m half-hearted about beating this thing, it will stick around, and I’ll always be ‘a bit poorly’. I’d said that my MS Diet was going nuclear, but in the end I was just playing marbles with diamonds again. It’s time to find some good old fashioned discipline and stickability from somewhere, and actually follow through on my grand plans. I’ve  always known that the answer is out there, but I have to do more than find it  ‘out there’ – I have to bring it ‘in here’, make it real in every part of my life.

So as of 15th July 2013, I’m undertaking a complete ‘reboot’ of my health and my life. For the first 30 days, I’ll consume only the most nutritious freshly extracted vegetable and fruit juices. Then for the following 30 days, I’ll add some fresh whole raw vegetables, fruits, nuts and seeds. In this I’m drawing my inspiration from Joe Cross, who reversed his own auto-immune condition after rebooting his health with a 60-Day diet of freshly-extracted veg & fruit juices only. In his inspirational film Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead, Joe admits candidly that despite juicing prior to his revolutionary ‘juice fast’, “in the past, I’ve always gone back to my old ways“. So of course his health worsened again. And that’s precisely the kind of see-saw I’ve been on for years: improving but never fully recovering with a dietary intervention like a 7-Day juice programme, then falling back into old habits and into my previous state of (poor) health.

Well, no more. I’ve planned by reboot to be long enough to shake loose my attachments to the harmful eating habits that seem to cause and maintain my MS, depression and chronic fatigue. This 60 days is about more than cleaning out and re-building my system, it’s about starving out the entrenched addictions and habits that have been making and keeping me sick for too long.

I’ll let you know how I get on. Feel free to post any questions or comments!

Untitled

In the past these intriguing words from Meister Eckhart may have seemed pretty or trite to me. On another day perhaps they will seem so again. But today, right now, this is the truth of my experience.

All I needed to do was to stop for a moment and ask “Who is it that experiences pain and suffering?”, and when the answer “My body” arose, to ask the question “Who is it that experiences the body? Who sees the thoughts, the experience of despair, and the mind that seeks to answer these questions?”
And I fell into a peace that needs no answers … a peace that “(sur)passes all understanding”…

Of course, when I say that’s “all” I needed to do, I’m not denying that it’s actually a pretty big “all”. It’s profoundly simple, but it isn’t easy. I was spiraling downloads in a weir of my own miserable thoughts, and I needed someone to throw me a rope. I’m very fortunate to have a lot of wise and compassionate people in my life, and one of them, a beautiful woman who sometimes does Journey work with me, visited me this morning and led me through the process I’ve just tried to describe above, which is often called Inquiry or Self-inquiry.

Sometimes what we need is not a change in external circumstances, but a complete u-turn in perspective.
I am not those thoughts or this mind that so often believes them: I am eternal.

Another relapse … another fight-back

Last month I had a relapse. This is now MS attack number 4, over 6 years. I don’t know if that’s about average or not, as I don’t have a lot of contact with other MS sufferers. Mmm, should do something about that I suppose. Anyway, average or not, it’s still 4 more attacks than anyone would want, and given that it was partially self-inflicted, I’m more determined than ever to try to make it my last.

“Partially self-inflicted?” you ask. Well actually, yes, in a sense.
Of course I didn’t ask to have MS, and in all likelihood it was originally created by a perfect storm of rotten genes, geography, personal history, 20+ years of less-than-ideal eating habits and an almost obsessive avoidance of any kind of physical exercise … plus a heap of bad luck for good measure.
But now, knowing what I do now about the benefits of eating fresh raw fruit + veg and avoiding dairy and gluten, I must have been out of my mind to load up on so much chocolate and other rubbish while working overseas back in January! Add to that the stress of a new job, in a country where I didn’t speak the language and didn’t know anyone, late nights, dark mornings and general gloom, and hey presto: another perfect storm creates another relapse!

What frightens me most about this is that everything I’m reading right now is underlining the theory(?) fact(?) that what you do in the first few years after diagnosis determines the course and the severity of the disease for the rest of your life. And I don’t seem to be doing everything I can to keep as healthy as possible.

So, I’m going back to basics. One of my first actions has been to seek out a good hypnotherapist, to see if that helps me to re-programme that self-sabotaging part of me that reaches for the foods most likely to hurt me. In re-reading the source materials, I’ve also discovered that I wasn’t following the Best Bet Diet fully anyway: we’re supposed to cut out eggs and yeast, as well as the gluten, dairy and legumes that I’d already (theoretically) eliminated from my diet.

Better still, I’ve discovered this superb book by Judy Graham, editor of the MSRC’s New Pathways magazine and all-round superwoman. This remarkable lady has had MS for 36 years, she is over 60, and she’s still healthy and busy. Whatever she’s selling, I’m buying!
In fact, she doesn’t really “sell” at all; she’s refreshingly even-handed and hype-free in her discussion of the many options open to people with MS at this time. She’s also honest about what she’s tried herself. The book is jam-packed with inspiring personal success stories of people reducing and even reversing their symptoms, and, crucially, with oodles of references to scientific peer-reviewed research backing up all her recommendations. This is particularly important when dealing with the medics in my life, all of whom are frustratingly resistant to anything I want to try that they didn’t originally suggest or that wasn’t included in their training decades ago!

My new "Bible".

This superb offering is, as I say, comprehensive, so it will take some time to implement every action that seems to make sense. However, that is my plan. Using a combination of this book, intuition, and trial and error, I’m going to throw everything I can at this disease. The gloves are coming off!

Bouncebackability

I’ve just returned from a totally rejuvenating week at a mountain retreat in southern Turkey (I know, lucky me!)

Sunset at our mountain retreat

Our liveliest day at the retreat

What is truly astounding is just how big a difference a week can make, if you’re spending it in a healing environment, consuming only the purest, most nutritious foods, detoxing your brain from all that advertising and junk TV and depressing news, and moving your body every day in all sorts of fun ways: yoga, volleyball, tai chi, circuit training, rebounding …

I was amazed to find that, although I slept a good deal, and felt sluggish at first from the absence of caffeine, by day four I was able to take part in the vast majority of these activities … and I really enjoyed them. For the first time in years I temporarily forgot my diagnosis – what bliss!

After just 7 days of this I find myself with more energy, better moods, clear glowing skin, 7lbs less of that surplus weight to carry around, and an increased certainty that I can, I will, and I AM defying this diagnosis!

On departure day - glowing with health!

When nothing’s wrong, but nothing’s right

Recently a good friend of mine who is also a talented writer suggested that I might want to try making my blog a bit more immediate, more ‘warts and all’. Being English and therefore born with a stick up the proverbial, that kind of public navel-gazing hasn’t been my habit so far, but I’m always up for a new experience, so here goes.

Today I have no pearls of wisdom to share with you. I have no sense of MS being a gift, and I am more aware than usual that my bigger problem is depression. On the face of things, life is good. I have just been offered a short teaching contract for this summer, we have successfully made an offer on a house, and the spring has finally arrived, bringing an end to the eight grey soggy months that usually drown my mood and health.

feeling gloomy

And yet, I’m still operating under a cloud, or perhaps more accurately, in a cloud. I find it hard to commit to doing anything, despite the fact that there’s more than ever to be done. The smallest physical symptom feels like a grave omen. Like the sore throat that I’ve had for months, and the headache that comes and goes with seemingly no regard for my health habits, good or bad. And the fatigue that kicks in when I try to have an active day that would usually cause no problems.

Compared to so many afflicted by MS, there’s nothing major wrong with me. Likewise, compared to the many thousands in this country debilitated by mental health issues, my depression’s really not that bad. I have sufficient perspective to recognize that.
So why do I feel so totally disabled?

This is the other side of chronic illness, the face that we mostly try to hide. It’s not dramatic, tragic or inspiring,  it’s just crappy. But you don’t put your pennies in the collection box for people you suspect may be feeling sorry themselves or refusing to ‘battle bravely against their cruel fate’. You need us to be heroes.

Sorry folks, today I’m not a hero.

False dawns, obstacles and surprising revelations

I’ve not written in this blog for some time. In fact, I’ve not done anything creative or self-helpful for months. At least, not consistently.

So far my ‘path to healing’ has been littered with obstacles, broken promises and false starts. I want to heal. I have discovered many of the things that would help me to heal. And yet, somehow I cannot commit to using any of these tools with any consistency. Why not?

I find it utterly incomprehensible that an intelligent, young-ish woman, blessed with all the support and resources needed to generate good health and so avoid the nightmare of suffering witnessed in her own mother’s life, would not grab these weapons and fight with all her soul! So why am I not fighting?

I have recently realised that the true obstacle is not the complexity and unpredicatability of Multiple Sclerosis. Neither is it my age, gender, history, genes, geography, work situation, romantic attachments or any of these other externals that I focus on so eagerly. What prevents me from taking responsibility for my recovery and health, and indeed for my whole life, is that monkey on my back since I was about 13 years old: Depression.

It’s becoming very clear that my healing journey is not about beating MS, it’s really about making friends with Depression. I say ‘making friends’ because I know from 20+ years of experience that if you treat it as your enemy, it just fights back harder.

Is this the ‘gift’ of my diagnosis? Is the purpose of this MS diagnosis to bring me to the place where I can no longer fight my Depression, but instead, by some miracle, befriend and tame it? And if that is what I must do, how will I do it?

Still Me

Still Me

One of the real bummers about this illness is its unpredictability. Too often it’s a case of ‘two steps forward, one step back’.  I can be pootling along, steadily improving, feeling pleased with myself about how well I’m doing without the help of some gloomy neurologist, and then suddenly find myself struggling to walk up stairs, to walk home. 

This doesn’t only effect my mood in the short-term, it threatens the very optimism and courage that seemed to be carrying me towards recovery.  It would be so easy to fall into that familiar wallowing that was my favourite hide-out throughout my depression years.  But depression is a luxury I can no longer afford.  In fact, perhaps I never could: I’ll never know what part it has already played in the development of my condition.  I’m one of three kids, so presumably three of us in my family inherited my Mum’s genetic tendency to MS.  Yet I’m the only one who contracted it: why?  Could my twenty years of depression, suicide attempts and self-harm have created the environment in which the disease could take hold?

So no, depression is not an option.  I choose to fix my attention on whatever keeps me strong and positive, like the incredible Christopher Reeve, who from within his paralysed body declared that he was “Still Me”.  People talk about courage, but really aren’t we all just doing what we feel we must?  And what I must do is this: keep learning about health, keep prioritising my physical and spiritual needs, keep building my fitness when I’m well and resting when I’m not, and most of all, keep teaching, learning, singing and loving.  Because those are the things that make me ‘Still Me’.