A Reflection on Being 40 and the WEGO Health Awards

As many of you will know, I have recently had a ‘big’ birthday.  The celebration itself was beyond what I could have expected; a lovely surprise birthday meal with my oldest and best friends and family, generous presents and a fabulous mini-break in Sorrento with my husband.  It was truly lovely and made me feel so loved by everyone.

Perhaps not-so-surprisingly, I don’t feel any different being 40 than being 39; the only thing that has changed is the ‘about me’ blurb next to my photo on my blog – I am no longer a ’30-something’!  I have, however, been feeling even more reflective than I usually am.  I try so hard not to dwell on my Multiple Sclerosis and what it means for me and my family, but is hard not to when you are faced with thinking about everything that you have been though in order to get to this milestone and what may happen over the next decade.

I recently read this fab post by Invisibly Me – Caz doesn’t have MS, but has her own health challenges and expresses my feelings exactly.  Caz talks about the pressure to ‘do and achieve’ by certain points in our lives, citing examples such as having a family, getting to a certain level at work and becoming financially stable.  I am lucky in that, perhaps because my MS was pretty stable during my 20s, I was able to meet someone, have children and start building my career… but now I am at a stage where some things are falling apart and my health is now impacting on my life and family.  I am seeing things that I worked so hard to achieve – I was considered ‘highly specialist’ in my field of work – slowly disappearing: I have now been medically dismissed.  I recently told my kids that I am going to have some time away from the house when I start some new treatment and my daughter, in particular, has handled this news badly, no matter how positive a spin I try and put onto it.  I didn’t predict that when I was 40, I was going to bring worry to my family, that I was going to lose the comfortable salary that I had taken for granted and that some of my my long-held dreams would start to slip away, because I am not physically able to do them and never will be.

When I used to think about being 40, I just assumed things wouldn’t change, that I would still be working, taking an active (quite literally) role in my kids’ lives by running around with them, being a good role model for exercise and motivation.  I now see my friends going to ‘clubbercise’ classes and feel jealous; I recently watched a group of friends complete the Three Peaks challenge and felt frustrated that I wasn’t there to join them; my daughter asked me today to show how I used to dance in the clubs when I was younger, but I couldn’t.

Birthdays to me are bittersweet, frustrating and frightening; I’m not scared of growing old, so many people don’t have that chance, so I am lucky.  But they make me wish that I appreciated being younger and more able when I was and they make me worry about the future: If my life has changed this much in the last 6/7 years, how am I going to be in 10 years, at my next ‘big’ birthday?  Secondary Progressive MS is just that: progressive.  Just how much more am I going to progress in that time?  I’m not sure that I would want to know, even if I could have the chance to find out.

So please excuse me if I feel a bit melancholy for a little while; I know that I’ll eventually snap out of it.  Birthdays just feel like the perfect excuse to reflect on the past year and the coming year; and I know that I have a lot going on over the next few months, so maybe that is making me extra aware of my current circumstances.

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Something thing that I definitely couldn’t have predicted, when I was a fresh-faced 20 something, is the joy and sense of achievement that I would gain by blogging about my life with MS.  If I am completely honest, it all started as a way to ‘splurge’ out my feelings of living with this disease, so that I wouldn’t have to bore my husband so much!  But writing has given me so much more: the chance to ‘meet’ others, even if just online, with MS, or other chronic illnesses.  I feel like blogging has made me more aware of what others go though and it has made me learn about illnesses that I knew very little about before and how there is a whole community of people waiting to share love and support with those that need it.

I am really proud and excited to say that one of my online friends, Robert, who himself writes a fabulous blog about living with MS called ‘A 30 Minute Life’, has nominated me for a WEGO Health Award under the category Best In Show: Blog.  The WEGO Health website describes the awards as a chance to celebrate those patient leaders who are making a difference in the online community and I feel honoured to hear that he feels I have done so.  I certainly feel so happy when I receive messages from others that say that I help them not to feel as alone, knowing that I am going through the same things that they are.  I really hope that all my time moaning sharing my day-to-day life on my blog helps others to learn more about MS, what it is like to live with a chronic illness and the challenges faced or just to feel that there is someone out there who understands.  I love to hear from others and hope that I get that across.

So thank you again to Robert, I know that there have been many well-deserving nominees for the WEGO Health Awards.  Please feel free to take the time to have a read of all the nominees and, if you particularly enjoy my blog, I would love it if you would endorse me via the link below or using the button under my face at the top of my blog.

Endorse Me 🙂

The 3 patient leaders with the most endorsements will be invited to the final, so every vote counts!  Thank you so much.  Until next time,