(There are no apologies for the colourful language, it’s my story, I tell it my way) When you get diagnosed, not only does the bottom, but the top & all four sides fall out of your world. You’re sat there with this seeming 'diagnosis of death' hanging over your head, feeling helpless. So what could I do? It was time to nut up or shut. All the support in the world wouldn’t help if my inner warrior wasn’t up & ready for this battle. First off I Googled, asked, & at first only finding all the scary info, I carried on looking at the possible outcomes, treatments, testimonies, I looked at even the slightest little thing that has helped someone else. Then I thought about applying the suitable fixes to myself, not the fluffy stuff that looks good on paper. But the real stuff, the ones that I as an individual could either cope with or could actually bother to do & maintain. For me, these turned out to be vitamin D, healthier fresh & unprocessed food, limit stress, increased brain & body exercise & sleep. Yes, well, these all sounded logical & great but I’m a lazy toad who likes junk food, drinking beer & smoking too much while staying up late at night. I also don’t trust doctors, hate taking pills & going to the gym. So I’m buggered. At this point, I had a stroke of luck. My wife said, “I don’t want a husband in a wheelchair” & promptly divorced me. & yes I didn’t quite see it as lucky at first either. But it was one stress gone :) & also divorcing someone due to their health issue doesn’t sit well with the courts, so amongst other things, I got the house. Which due to my previous hard work & dislike of mortgages it was 98% paid off. So I sold it & sat there with a pot of cash working out my next move. Back to my list of life changes. Vitamin D, so I’m actually not bad at taking high dose Vitamin D but the real stuff & sitting in the sunshine must be better. Healthier fresh & unprocessed food, the easiest way was to limit my access to these unhealthy foods. Limit stress, now I’m a realist & this was going to be a tough one, it needed my attitude & my reactions to the world about me to change. Plus I was already aware that getting in a place less stressful, does actually involve loading up on new stresses first. Increased brain & body exercise, there was no way I was going to a gym, so I needed to plant myself in a more mentally & physically challenging environment. Sleep. Ye well bollocks, nothing was ever going to make me, go to bed early, then get up & be all bleeding cheery in a morning. The thinking box needed to be thrown out. Ignore conformity & my comfort zones, I looked so far outside my box, I eventually couldn’t see a box. Vitamin D is sunshine, but too much heat buggers me up too, so I needed a moderately warmer & sunnier climate, where fresh food is the normal, learning a foreign language would also be excellent for brain stimulation. Moving abroad? in an insane world, this seemed the sanest answer. It would also reduce living expenses making my pot of cash go further. A holiday to the island of Madeira proved the answer, it’s a steady climate of about 22 degrees all year, cheap to buy & live in, it has the Portuguese foreign language to stimulate the brain, but also as many speak English I can function & not feel totally isolated. The added bonus was it’s hilly, so I even get exercise is going to the pub. Within twelve months I was living there. The stress of buying & moving was fucking awful, I was so far out of my comfort zone, sometimes it seemed much harder to battle on than to just give in, but I did it & when the dust settled. I’m sat on my patio in the warm sunshine so very glad I persevered. This is where some people starting thinking, yes that’s all very nice but, I can’t just bugger off to another country, what about his health, insurance, income, leaving friends, family & support network, etc? First off this is just my story & I’m not saying this for everyone. For me the practicalities are; the average wage here is £500 per month, my cash pot/ pension covers that, health insurance I’m sure you could be insured up to the hilt, but personally I’ve got emergency repatriation for any big bombshells & I am properly legal registered over here so that covers the day to day health care. A support network is a different one, with no partner, grown-up kids (who actually love the fact they have a cheap holiday destination) the support? Well, when I set out to fight my own battles I realised I’m a tough independent bugger who actually needs very little help from other people & anyway the locals here have a real old fashioned sense of community, so I have support, just from new people. Now there’s the observant amongst you thinking, he hasn’t mentioned the big bit about managing stress & how you change your responses to the world around you, this is deliberate for two reasons, one: It’s a very long & complicated process so it would take another long rambling post to cover it all & two: I’m still working on it, although a perfect completion of this problem will probably mean I’d be some sort of guru with the answer to finding inner peace. I’ll certainly never be one of those, ever. But let’s face it sitting in a warmer country certainly does go a long way to helping with the stress. That’s my journey, so far. Am I advocating everyone bobbies off to an island paradise, sits in the sunshine drinking cold beer & eating salads? Certainly not. What I advocate is what worked for me, dig deep down inside yourself, summon up every ounce of courage, strength & determination you can find. Work out exactly what you want & what you need. Then stop at nothing to achieve those. Wallowing in a cesspool of self-pity doesn’t attract any real help or the things you actually need. (I’ve been there, done that, & got the T-shirt, quite literally it says “What has two thumbs & doesn’t give a crap - me”) Finally, I ignored convention, convention constrains, think outside the box, think outside all the boxes, I feel we are the trail blazes for the next generation of MS warriors, I want to show them what’s possible, show them I did with it. Never give in & leave a legacy.