After the party

This pic is via a friend on Facebook. It’s appropriate that I should get it today as Ronnie is only just a friend but I met her at my real friend’s hen party weekend. I think we all came away from the weekend looking a lot better than this.

I am not hugely comfortable in social gatherings where I don’t know many people. At this weekend I knew one person (the bride-to-be) well and one (a solicitor who works at a firm where I used to temp sometimes) vaguely.

Overall it felt like a big undertaking for me to go to the hen weekend. It was at a hotel near Cardiff. 

I don’t live near Cardiff. I broke my journey there at ExMyMan’s house. It’s not the first time I’ve stayed there since we split up. Fortunately, we are still on friendly terms but it is a bit odd being there and sleeping in a separate bed from him. Then on the Saturday night, of the hen party group, I was the only one to be sleeping in a room on my own. Originally I would have been sharing with another good friend who was supposed to be coming too but logistics of travel and young children meant she had to cry off. Another reason for me staying at ExMyMan’s the night before. I sometimes get really tired driving long distances.

Overall I was being very sensible. I knew in advance that I would almost certainly take part in the daytime activities and evening meal then retire to my bed whilst the others could go out clubbing in Cardiff. I had a lovely day. A reasonable drive to the hotel, arriving in time for lunch and then spa activities for the afternoon. I had a massage and was told to take things easy afterwards. No exercise. A great excuse not even to go for a swim in the pool. Because of the effect on my MS, I’m not supposed to swim on my own now and by that point the other members of the group had done all the swimming they wanted to.

There was a wedding party at the hotel. Lots of beautifully dressed people quaffing champagne and eating canapes. Several of us hen party women walked past their function room in our swimming costumes with white toweling gowns on top – I suggested we could have gone in and said hello at least but somehow that didn’t seem to be a popular idea. In general, we were not too outrageously raucous at our evening meal. The penis shaped drinking straws seemed a bit out of place for our vaguely mature group. We had plenty of giggles over the How-well-do-you-know-the-bride-to-be quiz and donned our Hen party sashes and badges over our Royal Blue dress code outfits, The bride-to-be had been instructed the colour for the evening was red or green and she looked fab in her red dress – a great contrast to our blues. Here is me in mine: 

This morning, having let the rest of our hen party group go drinking and dancing in town, I was up bright eyed and fresh faced with no hangover. It was a lovely morning and beautiful gardens.

I was able to witness some wedding party guests doing the walk of shame. I didn’t take photos of them.

However, there was considerable other evidence of it having been a good night for the wedding guests. Plenty of abandoned glasses and bottles, some incongruously containing soft drinks:

I’m pretty sure the TV had not been turned round by guests but you can’t be absolutely certain what a wedding party will have got up to especially when you see what some people had left behind.

A pair of shoes, a top hat, a tails coat, a cravat, a wheelchair…. What? A wheelchair! Who forgets their wheelchair at the end of the night?

By comparison, our hen party group were all pretty chirpy but, at breakfast, I was able to hear plenty of tales about what had happened the night before. I can’t tell you them because what happens on hen party weekend, stays on hen party weekend. I’m sure Ronnie will post photos on Facebook soon. Meanwhile my aftermath is a complacent smile at having been well behaved and perhaps a glass of wine to toast staying sober at and after the party.

Patterns of life

I have never had a fixed pattern to my life. I didn’t do anything regularly. Okay, I brush my teeth every morning when I get up. That scuzzy unbrushed feel is horrible.

Oh and I went through a stage of early bird swimming every morning. That’s getting into a swimming pool at about 7am and swimming x number of lengths. It was a long time ago. I was younger then. I lived in Hull. These things are not in fact related.

Now I have to schedule things – daily, weekly, so many routines. Meds at 8am, 2pm, 8pm. Restock week’s meds docket on Sunday. Hang on, that’s all there is in my repeated iPhone alarms. Thank goodness for no longer injecting Rebif three times a week. Each injection involved a series of alarms – cool bag in freezer, cool bag out and put on injection site, inject, take paracetamol.

Even with the alarms I will still sometimes forget to do something. For example, I will stop the alarm and then not take the meds.

And then there is the four weekly collection of repeat prescriptions and the associated phone call to/from the pharmacy. The bi-weekly reflexology sessions – a pleasure but I still have to remember to go to them. The four-weekly massage – again a pleasure. The weekly visit to the Disabled Living gym on a Wednesday morning. All these have to be programmed into my phone and written in my filofax.

Also there are non routine things. If it’s not written down, in multiple places, I will forget to do it.

Every hospital appointment is diarised. Social events are programmed into my phone and alarms set. This is not always a guarantee that I will leave on time or, sometimes, even remember to go. Once I had been really looking forward to a meal with actor friends at a house I hadn’t been to before. The occasion was going to be such fun. We don’t often all get together for non-work reasons. It was written in my filofax and I had worked with the host the previous week and said how pleased I was to be going to it.

On the evening I got a phone call at about 7pm. “Where are you?” He thought I might be lost on the way. I was sat at home blissfully unaware. I got in my car, drove for an hour or so, didn’t get lost. They waited the main course for me. It’s great to have good, forgiving friends.

Last minute doesn’t throw me. I am used to it. One of the consistent patterns of my life has been not to have consistency.

It’s a little annoying when it’s sleep patterns that are not consistent. Or rather when the consistency is waking up at 2 or 3am. I broke the pattern last night by not going to bed until after 3am. It was possibly not the best thing to have done. Especially when I woke well before 8am ready to take my morning meds. About two hours before. And I still brushed my teeth first thing.

Are you a creature of habit?

Well coordinated

Today (now yesterday) my masseuse commented that my knickers matched my walking stick. Let me explain.

a) I have had regular massages since suffering a work related shoulder injury many years ago. I wrenched something. It hurt. A lot.

b) Unusually for me, these particular knickers are patterned with red cherries.

c) I own a variety of patterned walking sticks. This is one of two recent bargain buys from Timpsons. It is bizarre how excited I now get about buying new walking sticks. Who’d have thought someone my age would get so much pleasure from a pretty stick! Not a euphemism.

I often coordinate the colours of my clothing and, to a certain extent, accessories – earrings, bags, walking sticks. This probably makes me sound far more fashion conscious than I could ever pretend to be.

Loss of coordination was one of the first symptoms to affect me when I suffered the MS relapse that led to my diagnosis. I don’t remember what I was wearing when I went into hospital (in an ambulance) but I bet it wasn’t in any way coordinated. I do remember I couldn’t write properly with my left hand. I am left hand dominant. Left-handed to you and me.

I had also started dropping things. I was already using a stick due to footdrop, balance and coordination difficulties when walking - and when standing or bending down. Sitting seemed to be ok but that doesn’t take a huge amount of coordination.

None of this is unusual for someone with MS but when you don’t know you have MS and these difficulties are accompanied by visual disturbances, extreme tiredness (fatigue), strange numbness/tingling in limbs and crushing pain round your midriff then the loss of coordination is disturbing. It was the midriff pain that landed me in hospital, It moved up to my chest and the out of hours doctor told me I had to phone 999. Best thing I did. Once in hospital I had the raft of tests that led to my diagnosis.

On diagnosis, I was told by the hospital MS Specialist Nurse that the crushing midriff pain, which felt like a far-too-tight twisting belt, is known as the MS Hug. I think of a hug as a pleasant thing. This wasn’t, and still isn’t, at all pleasant.

One of the problems with all my symptoms is that they didn’t/don’t feel coordinated. To a lay person like me, it’s like having a whole jumble of stuff wrong. So yesterday it was good to be told that one part of me was coordinated. My knickers matched my walking stick. I was well coordinated. Very important, I feel, to look your best... in case you get run over by a bus.