Snow in March!!!!

Wow, what a freaky time of year? We actually had snow last week. Okay so it was a flurry for all of about ten minutes but overnight it actually stayed and when my husband went to work at 6 in the morning there was a layer of snow on the cars. Today is brilliant sunshine but freezing. My son and I have been stuck in bed all week with a horrible bug - temperature, headache, stinging runny nose and eyes - not quite a cold but definitely not well. My poor son, along with his autistic disorder he is physically quite weak and sickly just like I was when I was his age. I hate to even consider getting him diagnosed with ME too but tbh he has all the signs. God knows he doesn't need that stigma along with the autistic diagnosis so c'est la vie. All I can do is to do my best to get him to school every day and get him to eat which is a constant challenge and just get thru each day as it comes.

I've just seen a headline about something to do with digging up the Manson ranch looking for more bodies....nearly 40 years on, that's an interesting turn of events. Interesting how crime investigation has moved on, I don't know if they ever even looked at the ranch as being a body dump at the time. Not that there is ever any chance of him being released surely so what difference wd it make to find anything new now. Must go have a look.

Snow in March!!!!

Wow, what a freaky time of year? We actually had snow last week. Okay so it was a flurry for all of about ten minutes

Hello Goodbye

Additional to the last rant, I found this site with a selection of "facts" about this particular Beatles song. I heard this on the radio the other day and cdn't help but be struck by the content of the song's lyrics. http://www.songfacts.com/detail.php?id=132 quote = McCartney explained, "The answer to everything is simple. It's a song about everything and nothing. If you have black you have to have white. That's the amazing thing about life." It also observes how Paul lip-synced in the video for the song which he must have known at the time was against the rules. Surely this completely proves my point, nobody is exactly as they appear and Sir Paul McCartney is no exception.

Heather Mills - for every woman with emotions and feelings

Heather Mills may not be the most perfect person in the world but then I don't believe Paul McCartney is either. The world (or is it just the UK?) seem to hold up Sir Paul as this faultless genius. I personally don't find it hard to believe most of what Heather said about the way Paul behaved while they were living together because I live with someone like that...people that have known him for 30 years or more wd say he's not like that or if he did that you must have driven him to it. Admittedly Heather did not do herself any favours behaving as she has done in a lot of cases but I understand completely being so completely frustrated and depressed dealing with a man so used to getting his own way he won't listen and he won't adapt, sometimes you cannot be perfectly in control. Isn't it amazing how the world is full of apparently perfect people who have never had a hard time and even if they did they'd cope better than she did (you do know sarcasm when you hear it I hope!).

Someone pointed out what a fraud she is because she cd dance on a tv show one day and then turn up in a wheelchair on another day. That is something I can totally relate to living with ME. People see me in a wheelchair one minute then see me walking the next. I am capable of walking but not very far and I get very tired very quickly. That does not mean I am faking it, putting it on for sympathy or any other devious intention behind the simple fact that if you have a disability you have good days and you have bad ones. I completely accept that some days her leg may be just too painful to walk on and by being in her wheelchair she may be able to continue with commitments that otherwise she may have to cancel and yet the press can only condemn her for having feelings. How cd the judge not see how the abuse Paul received in the press when he did try to support her causes alongside her was a huge factor in the disintegration of that relationship. No matter how much Paul tried to support her and love her the press wdn't let him. To someone like Sir Paul, the public image is everything and he eventually began to resent Heather for not being Linda and for not being accepted by his public. Linda wasn't accepted either but she did have the knack of dealing with Paul's ego and staying very much in the background, hence not drawing the press's fire the way Heather has. Heather is certainly no shrinking violet and it's just a shame she never learnt how to let St Paul be the centre of attention he's been for the last 40 years. I still don't believe she set out to get his money, they loved each other to begin with and it was him who wdn't work at it, wdn't make any concessions to her and who ultimately ended the marriage. I know these are not popular opinions but experience has taught me people are never who they seem to be, you don't know what goes on behind closed doors even if you're in the next room. I think the public shd stop holding him up as such a hero and accept that maybe he's just as human as every other husband and that he made mistakes too.

mobile phones - curse or necessity?

How did we ever survive without mobile phones? True they have become an extension of our arms and we wd miss it almost as much as the hand that holds it BUT why is it illegal to use a mobile whilst driving but it is not illegal to walk down the street paying equally little attention to where we are and what's going on around us? I have just had a woman so engrossed in her mobile phone conversation she simply strolled into the road without even looking over her shoulder for a second to see if there was a car coming. I was turning into a petrol station for god's sake, there's a pretty good chance there will be a car there but she never even paused at the side of the road or looked around her. She was strolling slowly across the road so I lightly honked her to say excuse me I wd like to use the road. Instead of acknowledging someone else in the universe and just moving a little faster, she stopped in front of me and started shouting at me about what I thought I was doing. I shouted back one simple phrase - Look where you're going! She continued to shout various things at me and I simply repeated the same line. A few years ago there was a campaign to stop white van man from parking badly as they do called Pavements are for People. Does the same not apply then that roads are for cars? If we drove up on the pavement it wd be wrong but people just wandering in front of cars on the road is okay is it? Can we now start a campaign to teach people that mobile phone calls made by pedestrians are every bit as dangerous as if you're driving!!!!!!!

another trying day.....

I began the day being awake since my husband got up at 6.00 which means really low energy levels. I've also had abdominable pains even worse than usual. Then I cdn't get my son up. When I finally managed to get him to wake up he came down looking like something out of Dawn of the Dead! White as a sheet, complaining of stomach pains too, wdn't eat and nearly went back to sleep on the couch. I did manage to get him in the car but he was in tears on the way so I gave in and came home. It's days like this I severely struggle to find anything positive in my life. Hey ho tomorrow's another day......

My life with ME

I have called this My Life with ME because I truly believe I have had this problem all my life. I had a traumatic birth followed by every childhood illness known to man before I was two. A touch of polio, chickenpox twice, scarlet fever, etc etc etc. Clare Francis the yatchswoman who has had ME for many years once said how she had been a sickly child, often being collected from school complaining of stomach pains and just generally feeling sick. Several years ago I spoke to an old family friend about my condition and she said she remembered my mother doing that. Then in the last few days an article appeared in Canada http://tinyurl.com/2zqtpj about a woman who was severely disabled with this illness for many years and it suddenly occurred to me that I was in that state for years when I was about 18-19 only we didn't have a name for it. I was always sooooo tired and depressed but sheer bloody-minded independence and willpower forced me to carry on pushing myself to at least try to live a "normal" life. I still had a social life, I tried to keep working, I even tried to go back to college when working was obviously too much to cope with. I was absolutely as low as this woman but I simply wasn't in a position to "give in" to it. I was not the most rational person during this time, often hysterical and always weepy but I fought on for years until my first major collapse when I was 23 and I came home from work one day after feeling very low with a series of bad colds , went to sleep at 6 o'clock and woke up the next morning at 9.30!! feeling like I hadn't slept a wink. I continued to deteriorate over the following months until I got to the stage where I cd only eat toast and plain pasta and I cdn't bear to hear the phone ring let alone answer it. It was another 8 months out of my life before I cd cope with getting on a bus without having a panic attack. Once I felt capable of working again I was lucky enough to find a job in a very small company 5 minutes down the road from my flat. From then on for a few years I lived a reasonably normal life though I tended to go through periods of months where I did not feel up to going out at all, it was either work or social life but both was too much. Shirley Conran was another woman with ME who has described her battle to carry on running a business, having kids, dealing with a marriage all the while feeling so tired you can barely even breath anymore and crying almost 24/7. A huge problem with anyone accepting that I am really ill is this fact that I will carry on regardless and I try very hard not to show just how bad I feel so people don't see the reality. I am my own worst enemy in that respect.
When I met my husband 19 years ago, I was in a reasonably normal phase though the party I met him at was the first I had been to in probably years. I was working until after about a year I began to have panic attacks and spells of unexplained dizziness and nausea which eventually cost me the job I had. Then when the nausea became almost permanent throwing up and the exhaustion was 24/7 we were sent to a consultant at the local hospital who did every test he cd think of including a nasal endoscopy, berium meals and various xrays all of which came up fine. We had a certain amount of articles and info about this ME but I don't think that influenced him. He eventually concluded that this was the right diagnosis simply because there was nothing else wrong and the symptoms fit. At last I had an explanation for how I've always been but even then it didn't occur to me that the way I was at 18 was the same thing. I believe if I were any less strong, stubborn and independent I wd have sunk as low as the woman in Canada. But the pushing myself so hard to live normally resulted in the relapses and if I had ever got that bedridden etc maybe I wd have had a diagnosis earlier and my life cd have been so different. I now have an autistic son which I may also have had a lot more help with if the medical profession had been a bit more willing to look beyond my illness and believe that his behaviour was indicative of a problem with him rather than a problem with my ability to cope with motherhood (a comment on my medical records that I found motherhood to be overwhelming - well anyone wd if you had a child like this!!!!). When he was 8 I got a diagnosis from one of the world's leading experts in the field but it has still been a battle with the local education authority and if we had not been able to afford to have him in a small private school I doubt I wd be talking to you now, I wd have killed myself by now. That may sound over dramatic but anyone who has dealt with illness, depression and an autistic child (plus a husband who can't cope with stress and has undiagnosed problems of his own but that's a whole other story) - and trust me there are MANY of us - will know that I am not exaggerating, there was a time when I cd have driven a car into a brick wall without thinking twice about it. I have wanted to get all this out there for years because I believe it is important for anyone newly diagnosed or struggling with the symptoms without a diagnosis yet to know that they are not alone. I have often gained a great deal of strength from other people's history and experiences and if I can help even one person through that awful misery this illness reduces your life to, then it's worth the effort of all this typing! Many friends have said I shd write a book about my experiences but this is going to have to do for now. I guess this shd go under the "About me" section but for now it can stay where it is. I don't care if anyone's interested really I am doing this more for my own therapy I just hope it might interest someone.