Category: Empower Yourself

What a wonderful afternoon! My first ever proper group Xmas meal with the Pilates peeps! 25+ ladies & 3 gents!

I was so nervous about going because of my MS and how anxious I get about every silly little thing! As always there was no need for me to worry, Hannah Bailey our Pilates instructor made sure of that! Thank you so much for looking after me Hannah! Did I get you when I threw my drink across the table? That ‘was’ an accident I promise, don’t make it a hard pilates class because of it! 😉

It was a lovely meal which I managed to cut by myself becasue I remembered to take my ergonomic cutlery! This may seem odd to people but I feel so proud of myself for doing that, that’s a massive step to acceptance for me.

I loved how people in the group kept coming to our end of the table to mingle as it meant I could stay sitting which wouldn’t add to my fatigue!

Thanks to Kate King (old *not in years* pilates instructor) for making an appearance! I’m amazed I managed to keep that suprise to myself!

Thanks to Hannah (1 of our current pilates instructors) for looking after me! Even though for some reason she was hanging onto me on the way out!
Really Hannah! Not a good idea to hang onto a wobbly MegaSpecial especially one that was as fatigued as me after that busy busy wonderful lunch 😉

Lisa Perry, you were definitely missed girly! I hope u are resting up and not feeling to poorly now 😐

And lastly a huge thanks to Linda Treadwell for organising the whole meal! What an amazing job u did! ❤

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Left to right: Kate, Hannah & me sitting down
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Left to right: Hannah & Kate
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Left to Right: Kate & me
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Left to Right, Top row: Hannah, Colin, me & lovely lady I sat next to! 😨 MeSsy moment... I forgot her name! Oops!
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The Pilates peeps!


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Improved pain scale

Improved pain scale, much better than the one with the faces! I especially like number 9: ‘Mauled by a bear – or ninjas’

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The regular pain scale used by the NHS here in the UK

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I personally prefer the humour to the first one
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Facebook page ‘Living life the MegaSpecial way’

Did you know I now have a Facebook page?
Why not pop over and give it a like?

https://m.facebook.com/Living-life-the-MegaSpecial-way-520490294782965/

Cheers! Love u  forever 😉

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Multiple Sclerosis fact #5, vision problems

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Needle point, one of my favourite things to do!
Threading A needle is fun when there’s TWO of them (thank you double vision)

Sewing a seam is joyous when you need the cloth and the thread to be identical in colour. This means with my MS vision I can’t tell where I have sewn and where I need to sew (thank you loss of contrast)

It’s no wonder I always end up with a pile of items waiting to be repaired!
When something joyful becomes dreadful!

40 minutes later and I’m still trying to thread the needle!

Obviously the danger is this, having a disease that drains my energy so rapidly means that I do tend to fall asleep at the drop of a hat! This always happens if I’m stationary for a long time. If you weren’t aware, sewing requires you to sit on the same place for a certain amount of time. It really wouldn’t take much for me to nod off & poke myself in the eye with the needle!

Thats why we’re MegaSpecial! Because we do really silly things, the great thing is, we train ourselves to laugh at the silly things! It gets us through!


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This is funny!
So my dominant strength is intelligence? My brain may work diligently and be keen to learn new things so that every topic can be thoroughly explored but,
1: I had to look up what ‘diligently’ means
2: I learn new things and forget to retain that new information
3: What does diligently mean? I must find that out, bare with…..
4: What was I doing?


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MS Exercise class

Today I went to an exercise class purely for people that have MS. This class is funded and run by the MS Society at my local Leisure Centre. It’s on twice a month and I go to it whenever I possibly can.
I’ve been going to these classes on and off since the summer. They are challenging, tiring and great fun!
The class is taught by Laura, a wonderful fitness instructor I know from a class called ‘Forever fit’. This class is for seniors and is on after the Pilates class I attend on a Wednesday.
All of the exercises in the MS class are done whilst sitting down, which means that everyone can take part, no one is excluded from these classes!

Who’d have thought marching your legs and lifting light weights with opposite arms at the same time would be so confusing!
Who’d have thought lifting your legs whilst tapping your feet forwards, centre, back, opposite leg and repeat would be so confusing!
It’s like patting your head with one hand and rubbing your tummy with the other! The brain has to do two things at the same time with both hands, you have to really concentrate.

So let’s now imagine everyone in the room is tapping the floor with their feet at the same time, great!
But then…
What, what, someone is out of time! Now I’m getting confused because the beat is changing. It was then that I realised the lady wasn’t tapping out of time but her right leg had started to tremor and was tapping uncontrollably. Now everyone had lost their concentration, we all started to laugh as the lady with the tremor tried to control it!

It’s moments like those that are priceless, when a group of people all with the same debilitating disease can laugh at it. When we see the funny side to our ‘uniquely different’ debilitating disease!
This is where my other saying for ‘MS’ comes from, ‘ManySmiles’
If you know anyone with MS (if you have MS yourself you’ll ‘get this’), take notice next time you are in the company of these wonderfully MegaSpecial people. See how much they smile! Hear how much they laugh! Then notice that it’s normally at ourselves!

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I had a lovely card off one of the ladies at the exercise class today, unfortunately it’s in the car and with the temperature somewhere near 0°c I’ll leave it there and share it with you tomorrow! All I’ll say is, it’s beautiful! Its so lovely that I needed to hug her directly after reading it!

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That was my workout done for the day!
Deb got home from work at 17:45 had a cup of tea and went off to the gym! What a difference in us both!

1: We now exercise regularly
2: We eat healthily
3: I only did one work out today!

Yep! What a difference! I hung up my Wonderwoman suit! I said to myself (and Deb of course) when we got back from our lovely holiday that it was definitely time for me to apply the brakes, so that is exactly what I have been doing! And I feel proud for doing it! I hurt more because the hormones released when exercising help me manage my pain but, I feel proud!

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