Ahem...

A couple of people lately have mentioned the posssible/probable diagnosis has opened a can of worms. Which is no doubt has. But that doesn't mean there was nothing there before.

The possible/probable (depends who you talk to) is compelling to me because it is so elegant. I mean in a mathematical sense: I had these weird-arse symptoms, and it explained them all in one neat package. Elegant. Isn't that Occam's Razor?

Yeah, obviously it's not exactly good news. But MS as a label doesn't force any further action. If I were clinically definite, then I would have the option of disease modifying drugs. I wouldn't be forced to take them. There's actually a strange relief in having a box to put weird-arse stuff into. Put a tick in the MS column, and just move on.

You see, the worms - vague worry about weird-arse health problems - were already there. I went back through some old journals, and for the last 2 years in particular, there's been a recurring theme of "gosh, I have yet another slight health problem... it almost seems like there is something really wrong with me..."

Having a can to put them in (open or not) didn't create the worms. And it does contain them.

What I loathe and detest about my symptoms is that I am feeling that I can't trust my own perceptions:

I see the world as kind of shiny and scintillating and blurry. But I'm told my eyes are fine. So the problem is in me, in my perceptions.

If I feel cold, that doesn't mean it's cold. If I feel hot, that doesn't mean it's hot.

If my right leg aches, that doesn't mean anything is wrong with it. If it is numb, and I can't feel the floor, that doesn't mean the floor isn't there.

So how can I trust myself? How can I trust a reality that is so obviously flawed? How can I navigate the world when I can't even perceive it properly?

Yesterday, after listening to the live version of this rant, the lovely Miss M asked me if I had studied philosophy at uni. I replied: "apparently not".