Success!!!

Long time no blog I know.

Megan and I have had so much to do, so many documents to file, so much internet research and phonecalls, and so much busyness...

But it's all paid off!!

Megan was granted her 2 year Visa to live in the UK as my Spouse yesterday!!!

We're so excited and so pleased, there just aren't the words!!

Because of a technical hitch we didn't know about, Megan has only 28 days to enter the UK from yesterday, so she will be coming over to visit for a week or so before the end of July! She could wait until after the wedding and the honeymoon, but that then has a knock on effect of reducing her two years because we didn't realise we could post-date the visa.

Her visa has multiple entries in it, so she can visit the U.S. as often as she wants during the next two years, and return to the U.K. We were worried at one stage that when she got the Visa, she wouldn't be able to go home for two years, but thankfully that was mis-information!

After all our prayers and worrying, her visa was granted in three days!!! God has been very good to us, and those of you out there in the blogging world who have prayed or held us in your thoughts, whether briefly or contsantly, thank you so, so much!

I'm off to be domestic and clean, as I've got a day off today!!

I will try and keep more up to date with blogging now that all the Visa stuff is over, and work is starting to calm down a bit.

Oh yeah, work.

Hmmmm. Far far too much has happenned in work over the last few months to explain in a sentence, so I'll post on that and on my general health in the next blog...

Only 40 days to go until I'm married!!!

:D

:p

Exciting & Frantic!!

That is my life at the moment!

2 months and 18 days till I marry the woman of my dreams, and theres still suits to sort out and a visa to apply for, but I'm at least in my ownplace with running hot and cold water, electricity, tv, a bed and three piece suite and most importantly, internet access!!

I don't ask for much, do I? ;)

I shall blog a bit more now that I'm online at home, because I just don't have the time in work at the moment.

tarrah for now!!

Moving!!

No, no I've not been weeping tears of joy or sadness!

I'm leaving home, my parents hone, for good tommorow!!!

I'm moving furniture into my and megan's flat tommorow (or should I say today cos of the time), and then I'll be living there!!!

It's so exciting!!

Anyway, I'd better get to bed, I'm up in six and a half hours...!!

:-)

Roll On Holidays...!!

Update!!

Well, I have a house phone, a filter coffee machine, a 6ft fridge/freezer a kettle, an oak video cabinet, a tv licence and running water...

That's about it at the moment!!

I haven't moved in yet, and I've kept the electricity switched off at the moment to save money, but I'm hoping to hire a big van for the 17th, and that weekend will be my official moving in date!! It's only next weekend, it's not far away!!

In 2 weeks time, I should have broadband installed, although I've got to buy a usb wireless adaptor first. I've been advised to get netgear.

Well, that's it for now, I'm off on saturday so I'm going to go and clean like a maniac, hoovering and cleaning the oven and the kitchen and the fridge, etc while I've got the chance before I move in.

Life is at a hectic pace at the moment, but I'm surviving so far!

Our New Flat!!

The outside of the building... (I'm not telling you which number we are though!)
The door to our floor...

The front door of our flat (from the inside)

This is the second (spare) bedroom...

This is the entrance to our Master Bedroom, with en-suite shower and loo!

En-suite shower, with handy coathooks!

Master bedroom...

Bathroom... (separate to en-suite)

Hallway... (duh!)

Kitchen area off Lounge...

Lounge/Diner area with french doors...

there you go, that's a tour of our unfurnished future home!

We're so happy!!

:D

Exciting Possibilities!! :D

Well it's been all-go here at the Cullen parental Household.

After a few weeks of flat-hunting, and trans-atlantic messaging and phonecalls and texts and image-sending, I've found one that Meg and I are happy with. I signed the rental application today, and I have to wait 48 hours for my details to be checked out and for it to go through.

So, very soon I could be in Meg's and my new flat!!

:D

It's very exciting, we're really pleased with it, and because it's two bedroom, we could have guests stay eventually as well!

If there's any hitches (which there might because I've been low-income for a long time until I got the Manager's job - now I'm up to just below average - Christian Retail for you!) then my Dad has agreed he can step in as Guarantor for us.

Here's hoping the next 48 hours will hold some good news for us!

:-)

My sister

Isolation?!

It's just occured to me that I might seem a bit of a strange one if people really got to know me in the ms blogosphere, since I don't belong to any local chapters, or groups, whatever you'd call them, and I only know one other person with MS in the "real world".

It might look like I'm living in denial, I'm not I can assure you, but I don't tend to think about it alot, because I figure it's just better to get on with things, as there are a lot more people worse off medically speaking than me.

I'm not that bad, sure I feel tired alot, I get spasms and my legs feel like lead alot of the time, but apart from wierd sensory symptoms I'm not actually that bad and have a lot to be thankful for. When I was first diagnosed, just over five years ago, I went into a panic, and looked at groups locally, but (and correct me if I'm wrong people please!) my local MS group seemed to be very poorly organised, and full of older people who had had the condition for years and years, and were quite disabled. I felt kind of out of place, but was confused as when I attended a newly diagnosed session organised by my local MS nurses, there were loads of people around my age there. (I was 29 at the time)

I went to look at the website of my local group last week just out of curiosity, and the website is exactly the same, and the same dates on it even! It just looks old and dated and out of touch to me, and frankly puts me off. I do feel a bit isolated at times though...

Would anyone know of a group that meets in Liverpool UK, young adults, twenty or thirtysomethings? I've not found anything, though I guess I could ask my nurses at my next appointment.

One of my biggest fears was realised the first phone call I had with one of the main organisers of the group, who I'm sure was in his sixties (no offense meant, I just mean in comparison to me) and was very very negative. I guess once the MS really kicks in, and you have to endure increasing levels of disability, it must be very difficult to remain positive and to lighten up, but as I've not experienced that yet, it's hard for me to understand. Not that I'm saying that we shouldn't share our hurts and struggles, just not all the time constantly!

I was put off my local group, because when I spoke to the gentleman, he obviously asked me when I was diagnosed, and what symptoms had brought about the diagnosis. As soon as I had told him, he basically replied with "well it'll get much worse than that don't you worry", and also "you work full time? Well you'll have to give that up eventually... I did, you know" which I realise is true, but wasn't exactly the best thing to tell someone when they're newly diagnosed!

Maybe it's that experience that put me off, maybe it's just because I can be quite introspective at times. *sigh* I don't know.

I've been thinking lately that I want to meet with people with a similar experience of life, but I don't want to meet just to moan about my symptoms, or discuss ailments or treatments. Heck, I can do that when I'm older with practically anybody, and probably will!!

Are there any positive, fun groups out there with normal people in them?!

(gee, I know this post sounds harsh, I was just being honest!)

It's Been One Of Those Days... *

Nuff Said.

(* = My nephew Jacob)

Wow.

Mytalented sister is at it again.

Her friend (Jay Norton) has produced one of her songs and given it an electro/dance feel, and it's so good, I honestly would buy it. It sounds incredible, I'm trying to encourage her to send it to Radio 1.

Anyway, before I brag anymore about my sister, here's the link:

Ruth's Player

The song is called How Long, though she has other songs of hers on there.

How Long just blows me away, it's so professional!

Go Ruth!!!!!!

:p

Sense & Sensibility...

So, I haven't really had a good week, and I find myself getting ready for work not having had a good weekend either.

One of the wierdest symptoms of M.S, I've found, is one that starts when you've overdone things. Your body kind of rebels against you, and the only way I can try to describe it, is that your whole body feels "on edge".

Everything you touch literally gets on your nerves, and you long for the numbness to come back. Seriously, it's like your sense of touch goes nuts, and everything you accidentally brush up against, or knock into (your balance is usually off as well so this happens alot) sends your senses reeling.

You find that you have a background sense of irritability as your nervous system goes into overdrive, and everything upsets you, to the point where you want to shut yourself away from the world and go lie down in a darkened room alot, or go be a couch potato and let "Doctor TV" try his mind-numbing therapy on you.

I've hardly done a thing this weekend, mainly because my body had had enough. There was one point last week, where I was so stressed in work, that I started getting dizzy out of the blue and had to stop for 5 minutes to go and have a cup of (decaffeinated) tea.

The hardest thing I find about all this, is sharing it with others. I should have talked to Meg about it, but when I'm really tired and fatigued, I find it hard to find the words and express myself. It's like my brain is emmersed in thick pea soup and there's a constant fog and mental block to battle against.

I'm hoping today will be different.

Frustration Part Deux

*sigh*

My computer (desktop) is very ill. It's only about three years old, but it seems the usb ports are failing on it. (apparently I've overloaded them and caused a permanent conflict in the main usb circuit board)

I've sent it away to see if it can be fixed, and meanwhile I'm using my Dad's laptop during the evenings, but I'm not holding out much hope, because hard wired usb's are notoriously hard to fix apparently, and just putting in a temporary one doesn'y work for my Voip Phone, it has to be hard wired...

On the health front, I've been having very painful itchy swellings on the soles of my feet and also near my arch and on my wrists stretching down towards my little finger. They almost look like an injection site reaction, being very red and angry and swollen, and then after a few days they die down and then reappear again somewhere else!

I've had this problem for more than a week now, and it's very uncomfortable to walk on at times. The desire to scratch the affected area is almost more than I can bear, and so far my local G.P. has no idea what it is, and the M.S. Specialist Nurses say it's nothing to do with M.S. (and I quote) "because M.S. is an invisible disease, it doesn't have physical symptoms"...

Right.

Tell that to my muscles in my legs when they twitch and spasm. Tell that to my waterworks that aren't working properly at the moment for which I will (in a couple of weeks as I'm waiting for them) be self-catheterising myself on a weekly perhaps daily basis.

In fact, tell that to my back that often has severe lower pain, and also to my whole body when I've occasionally run out of spares, and am down to my last teaspoon!

I just don't know what it is, it happens in work and at home, sometimes it looks like an insect bite but I've compared the cleaning chemical stuff at work and at home and they're completely different. I'm very good with personal hygiene, it's not mites or anything, if it was my shoes that I wear, why would it have started randomly this last week?! Besides, my doc examined my feet and said that my arches were fine, no collapsing, etc. You don't have lymph nodes in your hands and feet, so thankfully it can't be any nasty white blood cell stuff...

The only thing my poor G.P. made a guess at (and he admitted it was a guess!) was that it was possibly arthritic, as the swellings had happenned near joints. Why would I suddenly have developed arthritis though?! I don't have a physical job, and yes I walk a lot cos I don't drive, but not any amount that is excessive?

I really have no clue and I wish I did, it's extremely annoying to have no answers to this particular malady.

Any suggestions I can look into, apart from me developing a resistance to Copaxone? (I'd thought of that, but my Consultant thinks that Highly unlikely, I'd be the first person literally to do so, and besides, I've only been injecting it for maybe three years)

*sigh*

Any suggestions of areas to look into anyone?!

Frustration.

Summed up by one word when you are enduring a 4,000 mile separation from your wife-to-be...

COMPUTERS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Nuff said.