Lynn recommended I read a book that she has recently read, about MS. So I got it from the library and I launched into it with enthusiasm, having not read any MS books for a long time.

I sort of wish I hadn't read this one.

It was really right on the button in a lot of ways; it reminded me of all the social problems MS brings when trying to deal with a world that, by and large, really doesn't have a clue what is wrong with us and doesn't really want to find out. It reminded me of all the silly big/little things that are wrong - the ones that seem trivial and almost hypochondriacal in nature to those who don't know what they feel like, especially when they've all got together for a hoe-down. It reminded me of the futility trying to maintain formal patterns of living that fit in with fulfilling the numerous roles a single parent has to fulfil and be able to take care of oneself at the same time. It reminded me that how I feel is perfectly normal for someone like me. It reminded me that, while it's mostly in my head, I'm not a raving nutcase, although being a nutcase might have been easier to live with. I don't have any of my MRI films or I could show you where I'm only dotty.

You might be reminded of that, too, the next time you are lying in a burning mud pool with worms crawling and wriggling up and down inside your leg whilst it dances with joy at 3.12 in the morning and you haven't been doing drugs.



Of course, it could be worse - you could have drunk all the tequila and got the worm.

I hate tequila and I've never even tasted it. My only encounter with it involved a pub lunch on Tequila Slammer Saturday with Rich and Cush and David when I was pregnant with Heather.

And so not drinking.

But the smell that came off those three later in the day when they had been licking, sucking, sipping and slamming tequila all afternoon whilst I was suffering terrible morning all day sickness will live on forever, stored in my memory banks in a deposit box marked "Things not to EVER do again".

It's a really big box.