Fight and Flight
When I decided to learn to fly, I wasn’t to know that things would never be quite the same again. I had been through a bad patch health wise. The cancer treatment was over, all bar the drugs, but I still was very unsteady on my feet, terribly tired and I hurt all over. I really couldn’t understand why I kept bumping into my friends!. I’m sure people at work thought I had a hidden stash of Gin in my office, as my speech slurred when I tried to talk to them and most days I could be seen staggering from side to side down our open plan office.
After numerous visits to specialists, I was diagnosed with Cerebella Ataxia. A neurological condition, which causes lack of coordination, and most likely I had the more nastier version of this called MSA. The consultant needed a refresher on his people skills, because after deciding on his diagnosis of MSA he sent us home with the webside written on a piece of paper. Leaving us to discover on our own, that the prognosis for this quite horrible condition was 3 to 5 years. Later that month yet another consultant diagnosed the pain I was experiencing, as another horrible condition – Fibromyalgia – a double whammy!! I must admit I felt so poorly that I put a call in to my Macmillan nurse and just sat down, took all the painkillers, and waited for the inevitable to happen …………. until I got bored!!
When I first had cancer, by chance, I heard a radio program where Libby Purvis interviewed a councillor who worked with cancer patients. Her mantra was
Find Out – Face it – and Fight it
It helped me then and was just as applicable now.
So I found out …..I read everything I could about MSA and decided that few of my present symptoms reflected MSA and became more certain that the lesser condition Cerebella Ataxia was more likely to be my problem. I sent my husband shopping on his next trip to the USA, for a book ‘Fibromyalgia for Dummies’ from the same publishers as ‘Windows for Dummies’ and all the other yellow and black self help books. When I read it, the last chapter recommended that readers get tested for an under-active thyroid because sometimes fibro’ can be misdiagnosed for hypothyroidism . Well of course, I did, and thankfully, my thyroid was misbehaving itself!
And I faced it ……….So by the spring of 2005, due mainly to large doses of thyroxin and a great deal of will power, I was back at work and feeling much more optimistic about life in general. Most of the pain was gone and I could stay awake for a whole day. Although the lack of co-ordination was affecting my eyesight, speech and mobility, all of these problems were just inconveniences that could be overcome with a little organisation. Life was beginning to look good again, I had a new Motabily car and thanks to a wonderful government scheme Access to Work we organised a wheelchair for work and an electric hoist to put it in my car, stair lift for home, some speech activated software and upgraded my PC.
And I fought it ….. Flying was a integral part of my fight back to ‘normal’ life When I found out about the Disabled Flying Scholarship (FSD) scheme from a work colleague, I called Sue Whitby at the FSD office to find out about it. She recommended that before I put the application in, I had a few lessons, just to see if it was something I wanted to do. So I organised a couple of sessions at my local flying school at Sibson near Peterborough and began my real road to recovery. So much so that when I wrote the application form for the scholarship, I started out with a big thank you, for inspiring me to look at the future and leave the past behind.
When I decided to learn to fly, I wasn’t to know that things would never be quite the same again. I had been through a bad patch health wise. The cancer treatment was over, all bar the drugs, but I still was very unsteady on my feet, terribly tired and I hurt all over. I really couldn’t understand why I kept bumping into my friends!. I’m sure people at work thought I had a hidden stash of Gin in my office, as my speech slurred when I tried to talk to them and most days I could be seen staggering from side to side down our open plan office.
After numerous visits to specialists, I was diagnosed with Cerebella Ataxia. A neurological condition, which causes lack of coordination, and most likely I had the more nastier version of this called MSA. The consultant needed a refresher on his people skills, because after deciding on his diagnosis of MSA he sent us home with the webside written on a piece of paper. Leaving us to discover on our own, that the prognosis for this quite horrible condition was 3 to 5 years. Later that month yet another consultant diagnosed the pain I was experiencing, as another horrible condition – Fibromyalgia – a double whammy!! I must admit I felt so poorly that I put a call in to my Macmillan nurse and just sat down, took all the painkillers, and waited for the inevitable to happen …………. until I got bored!!
When I first had cancer, by chance, I heard a radio program where Libby Purvis interviewed a councillor who worked with cancer patients. Her mantra was
Find Out – Face it – and Fight it
It helped me then and was just as applicable now.
So I found out …..I read everything I could about MSA and decided that few of my present symptoms reflected MSA and became more certain that the lesser condition Cerebella Ataxia was more likely to be my problem. I sent my husband shopping on his next trip to the USA, for a book ‘Fibromyalgia for Dummies’ from the same publishers as ‘Windows for Dummies’ and all the other yellow and black self help books. When I read it, the last chapter recommended that readers get tested for an under-active thyroid because sometimes fibro’ can be misdiagnosed for hypothyroidism . Well of course, I did, and thankfully, my thyroid was misbehaving itself!
And I faced it ……….So by the spring of 2005, due mainly to large doses of thyroxin and a great deal of will power, I was back at work and feeling much more optimistic about life in general. Most of the pain was gone and I could stay awake for a whole day. Although the lack of co-ordination was affecting my eyesight, speech and mobility, all of these problems were just inconveniences that could be overcome with a little organisation. Life was beginning to look good again, I had a new Motabily car and thanks to a wonderful government scheme Access to Work we organised a wheelchair for work and an electric hoist to put it in my car, stair lift for home, some speech activated software and upgraded my PC.
And I fought it ….. Flying was a integral part of my fight back to ‘normal’ life When I found out about the Disabled Flying Scholarship (FSD) scheme from a work colleague, I called Sue Whitby at the FSD office to find out about it. She recommended that before I put the application in, I had a few lessons, just to see if it was something I wanted to do. So I organised a couple of sessions at my local flying school at Sibson near Peterborough and began my real road to recovery. So much so that when I wrote the application form for the scholarship, I started out with a big thank you, for inspiring me to look at the future and leave the past behind.
posted by judith | 12:06 AM
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