Eight months on and still writing

Christmas is almost upon us and the end of the year is looming. It’s traditionally a time to look back and reflect on the last year before looking forward to a new one. There were three big things that happened for me this year. I started to take part in a clinical trial for a drug for Secondary Progressive Multiple Sclerosis, I went to Australia and I began this Blog.

My MS over the last couple of years or so moved has from the more common Relapsing Remitting kind to the Secondary Progressive kind. The short version to explain this is that in the early stages of the illness, when the body goes all wrong, it then pretty much repairs itself. After a bit it gets fed up with its work keep being undone and stops bothering to fix it. And so when there’s a flare up, whatever damage it does, stays. It’s called secondary progressive because it’s the second stage of the illness. If you have Primary Progressive MS, it starts at this stage. Either way, at this point there is currently no treatment licensed and available to treat it. Hope starts to run away. There is, however, an enormous amount of research happening, some of which is becoming really quite exciting. So when I was given the opportunity to join a trial a light appeared at the end of the tunnel.

Now that I no longer have a restriction on how long a holiday I can take, I decided to go to Australia, and take the time to see all my friends. They live at opposite ends of the country you see.

I’d been thinking about setting up a blog for a while but didn’t know if I had the motivation to keep it up. Having a trial to write about, gave me that. I’ve enjoyed every minute of the challenge of writing a short piece to post every week. I hope you’ve enjoyed it as much as I have. But I think it’s time to take a break over this busy time of year, to refresh and rejuvenate my writing.

I wish you all the best Christmas and New Year and look forward to seeing you all again in January 2015.