The Butcher's Dog Hasn't Been Feeling So Good

Generally speaking, I am remarkably healthy, in spite of my severe disability thanks to multiple sclerosis.

I often describe myself as as fit as a butcher's dog.

That is until this week. From Boxing Day in fact, I have suffered one of those things that go around at this time of year, and I suppose because of why underlying condition, this has severely affected me.

So much so that one of my carers, that had the brunt of looking after me when I began my antibiotic course, said that perhaps the butchers dog is dead. She has really been quite concerned for me, and as she has two great hounds herself, I have no doubt she means no harm to the butcher’s dog.

It did make me smile at the time, and it is only now 10 days after starting my treatment that I am beginning to feel human again. I haven't felt quite so ill in a long time.

It is a reminder if one were needed of how much we take for granted when we can function well, and I suspect it will take another couple of weeks before I can function as well as I did before this dreadful bug.

It has been so strange not to even check my e-mails for a week, simply not feeling up to it. And I haven't wanted to watch films, certainly not until the last day or so. And how strangely powerful and moving they have seemed because of the newness of the experience.

And now, after another week during which I have only slowly surfaced as if from under a suffocating weight, I am still not able to function in the way that I did.

I am still taking the antibiotic, and liquid paracetamol. I suppose the only benefit has been the way in which the films I am able to watch still have a strangely moving effect, which is quite extraordinary. Though I do not watch many. Too tiring.

But  I must work hard to recover what I can, and hopefully this will just become one of those memories, of a time of trial.

One of my carers has succumbed to something that sounds terribly similar, and as she is off work I can only hope that she will be able to read the manuscript of my first novel, and that I can therefore look forward to publishing it in Kindle format.

Goals. The essential means of moving to the future, whatever it holds.