MS - Keep it light

I'm not really a serious person. I don't care for it.  The last two blogs I did, were me being very open (as much as I can) about MS in my life.

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Now it is time to try and encourage some laughter at MS. Well, more laughing at situations MS may have put us in.  Once my arm was not aiming where I wanted it to go, so I ended up missing the doorknob and headbutting the door.  Things like that. But hopefully you have more of a story.

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I want to share a story that happened to me a while ago now. This was back in the days where I was more comfortable driving a manual car.  I had driven to work which is a 5 min drive (24 min walk, that I no longer enjoy unfortunately) and at the end of the work day, I got back in my car and my handbrake snapped. This will be years of parking on my parent steep drive!

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Oh no.

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Luckily I knew the owner of the garage which is a 20 second drive from the office, so I dropped it off, left it in gear, and had to give the ol' 24 minute mildly* inclined journey home a go.

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*mildly for the norms, mountainous for the MSer!

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I had gone on my merry way, and around the 15 minute mark, my left leg was not doing too well, it was becoming more drop footy.  Makes it very obvious when you are wearing your work shoes with a bit of a heel - sexy-ass brogues, though, had to be done. Big respect to those MS ladies out there wearing heels!

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Anyway, 15 minutes in and I have drop foot, where I keep clippin' and trippin' (as we MSers always say*) and a bus pulls up just a couple of meters ahead, then a teenager gets off the bus in front of me. She must have come back late from school because she was sharing fish and chips with her first love or beating up a boy with a battered cod for kissing Magdalena near the bins (I don't know, you choose!).

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*we don't

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Anyway, we were on the main road, and she clearly saw this limpy man (me) walking not too far behind her. I looked semi respectable in my trousers and untucked shirt - I was quite warm from the walk - and nice shoes, although the left had become a lot more dusty due to the drop foot.  I assumed she would carry on walking down the main road so I could turn left and let my worsening condition happen on the quiet roads.

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Nope. She turned left first.

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Shit.

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Now we are both on the quiet road, not many car sounds.  At this point my drop foot had become full blown shuffle/limp.

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The sound that one legged shuffle makes is so loud down a quiet road.  This road however has many turns, so she won't turn right.

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Shit. She turns right. Same place I am going.

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Poor girl must have looked over her should at least a dozen times at this point.  The problem was I couldn't stop or slow down my tortoise like pace.  I knew I was going to crash when I got in and needed to get there ASAP.  So I carried on.  

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We had both turned on to another road with many roads, so what were the odds she was turning down my windy cul-de-sac.  

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Yep. Shit.

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The loud limping man was following her (IN HER MIND, I SWEAR I WASN'T) and the creepy shuffling sound getting louder. I noticed she had added her house keys in her fist. Each key peeping through the fingers ready to do me in.

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Turns out she took that final dead end turn to my road. This walk has lasted an eternity.  

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I was very close to my house now, and by the looks of it she was about 4 doors down from mine. She got to her house and let herself in just before I got to my door. I was hoping she would see that I live on this road.  I just made sure I slammed the door like a proud home owner and not like Igor the child catcher!

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This was around 8 or so years ago now, and it was at a time when I was just starting to notice my legs losing energy.  It was mortifying what people thought of me, or what I thought people thought of me, but it is just one of those funny stories, that I am sure we all have. I want to make this as a sketch one day. But who will produce that for me? Hello Channel 4.

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Last week I went to my cousins wedding and I thought I would have a dance.  I've still got moves. Well, the right leg acts like the giddy drunk wife and the left leg is more the husband that's been dragged up against his will, as long as I dance anchored lefty.  I did get into the swing of things and decided to finish with a knee slide to 'Sweet dreams are made of these'.

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Big mistake.

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I tried to stand but I was all out of spoons. My last spoon sailed away with the knee slide.

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I couldn't prop myself up by myself so I tried to find a place to get up. The closest thing was my cousins step sister who I had not seen for years, so she gave me her hand, didn't realise I wasn't going to use my legs to help at all and ended up using her arms and shoulders as rungs on a ladder.

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It's all good fun.

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Please share your funny stories as I would love to hear them.

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Not sure if mine read as funny or just plain weird. But, I hope it got a laugh.  They would be better as sketches I tells ya!