coldutewarmheart

Today is Functional Neurological Disorder awareness day. This time last year, I don't think I even knew what FND was. How things have changed.. This time last year, I had already had a stammer many months- the only symptom that pointed to FND prior to my health well and truly collapsing due to this disorder in October 2015. This time last year, a family member had recently had their first recognised seizure- the seizure that would lead to their FND diagnosis. FND was creeping into our lives, but little did we know the devastating impact it would have in the months to come. FND has caused some of the most distressing, horrendous symptoms and experiences I have ever been through. Some are so awful that they haunt me and I feel unable to discuss them openly. It's hard to write about all this, so tempting to let this awareness day pass without speaking out, but if I don't create awareness among the people I know, then who will? My journey with FND started innocently enough- fal...

Advanced warning - this post is long ! Fellow fatigued people in particular- you may not want to read all at once! In the past I've shared all my medical battles and worries on here very openly. In the past, things have gone quiet only when I was too ill to write, too busy to, or there was little change so little to share. This time it's been a bit different. My long silence hasn't really been entirely for any of those reasons. The truth is that I needed some time and space to process things and understand things privately. When I received my first chronic illness diagnosis, it was many months before I talked openly about it with anyone; this time I was having to have daily discussions with doctors for months and was having to communicate with lots of different people fairly constantly. I couldn't, and didn't want to, hide my illness in the same way as I did back in 2010, but there were certain elements that I didn't want to share publicly/openly. I wanted the p...

This is a bit of an essay, but I just want to have my say. I'm in the UK and we are lucky enough to have a National Health Service. The NHS means a lot to me as a patient. I have a lot of chronic conditions- the NHS has done a lot for me over the years, and if the government runs the NHS into the ground (which seems to be its intention), an insurance company wouldn't want to take me on. It'd be an inconvenience for many healthy people, but an absolute disaster for the thousands of people like me. I am totally in support of the junior doctors strike. The team of junior doctors were incredible while I was in hospital. Some of them were always there each day when we were woken up, and still there when we were settling down into bed each night, including over weekends. The team of junior doctors took all the bloods, were on all the ward rounds, discussed diagnoses with family members, supervised students, made life-saving decisions, re-assessed patients whenever a new symptom e...