This Could Be the Last Time

Fear grips me.

Marijuana relaxes, eases pain, and helps my body work better.

It also stirs paranoia, but only when you let it.

In bed, a fretful waking dream.

This is a problem when you actually have something to be paranoid about!

I don’t remember all my last times doing something. Some I do.

The last time I got to work on my own. The last time I climbed the stairs to bed. The last time I attempted wheelchair tennis. Bizarrely, the last time I rode a bike! That was so long ago I’m amazed I managed it with MS. The last time I still had some balance.

It’s the opposite of growing up. Milestones turn into yardsticks. My world is shrinking.

Sorry, but at my age, my metaphors will be imperial!

We all know MS is a debilitating disease — feeling your body imperceptibly retreat is hard to accept. Like climate change, it’s easier to reject it. But that doesn’t stop the glaciers from melting!

So, has the inevitable happened?

My right leg wouldn’t bend last night.

I was at work. Big, burly doormen were having to wrestle it into a wheelchair.

You’d have thought it didn’t have any strength left. Somehow, it became like an immovable object. Thor’s hammer in leg form!

I have to negotiate getting out of my wheelchair and transferring to a stair lift — admittedly with oodles of help.

How much longer will I manage?

Dunno.

It seems to be a race between my body and Brexit to destroy my part of the service industry.

Streaming services are enough pressure to prevent people from going out. Plop on top of that Brexit causing billions of lost gross domestic product in the U.K.’s economy, and live entertainment and restaurants especially feel the effects. Countless restaurants have closed in the last few months.

We all have a lot on our plate — unless you try to eat in one of those closed restaurants.

I couldn’t get into bed on my own last night. OK, it was the early hours of the morning. I had to wake the wife.

I couldn’t get out of bed in the late hours of the morning, either.

Luckily, my oldest son was at home today.

My wife was still in bed. Some brute had woken her in the middle of the night.

At least he no longer gets really drunk and tries for a sneaky pee in the wardrobe.

Amazingly, this still gets mentioned, even though that was the last and only time he tried to do that!

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