Endless pain.
Then tablets,
so tiny,
such power.
Then the wait.
Warm and fuzzy.
Oh codeine,
I think I love you.
More on the placebo effect
January 19, 2011 By Leave a Comment
In my recent post about homeopathy I mentioned the placebo effect, how powerful it is, and that it can even work when the recipient knows that they received a placebo. Well as a follow on from that I suggest that you should watch this thoroughly entertaining video where Ben Goldacre talks more about the placebo effect at Nerdstock.
A rather boring story
January 11, 2011 By 2 Comments
When I began to write a blog post on what is wrong with me recently, I started out to write a simple description of the illnesses I have and some of the symptoms so that I could share the link with anyone that was curious about me . After an hour of writing and two thousand words I realised that what I was actually writing was a complete chronicle of my illness from school until present day. I have since written an outline of the whole thing that covers early minor illness, getting sick with flu and never recovering, then fighting to get a diagnoses, going bankrupt, fighting to get benefits. being given drug after ineffective drug, and eventually starting a business in the face of being unemployable, and my current relapse. It is likely to be near 10,000 words.
The question is, would anyone actually like to read that? I am not so bigheaded as to imagine that people want to read my autobiography. On the other hand I do want people to gain an understanding of M.E. and what it is like to live with. So should I finish writing it? Should I post it as a series of blog entries? Or perhaps as a small dowloadable ebook?
The post I actually intended to write is here if you would like to know what illnesses I actually have in more concise form, and it also contains links to and a video of spoon theory which does an excellent job of explaining chronic illness to the uninitiated.
What’s wrong with me?
January 9, 2011 By 5 Comments
I’m ill. I suffer from several serious diseases. As such it shapes my life, and affects everything that I do and say. When I am talking to someone, sooner or later my illness comes up when I have to explain why my life is a certain way or why I cannot do something. Many of those people ask what is wrong with me, and since it is very hard to explain it every time especially on twitter, I have explained it here for future reference.
So here’s the official list of diagnosis.
- Migraines
- ME / CFS (Myalgic Encephalopathy / Chronic Fatigue Syndrome)
- Type 2 diabetes
- Severe Restless legs syndrome
- Insomnia
I’ve had the migraines all my life. I get between one and four a week. The main trigger is fatigue, other triggers are red wine and some blue cheese. I get migraines with pain over the right eye, pressure throughout the head, tension in the neck, and aura including nausea, vomiting and bright flashing lights in my vision. I treat the migraines with Sumatriptan (Imigran) nasal spray which is fast and effective at stopping them.
I was diagnosed with Diabetes the day before my 30th birthday. Given my family history I had fully expected to become a diabetic one day but I had expected it to be at least another ten years away. I control my diabetes with tablets, but it is progressing absurdly quickly and so I may well be given insulin injections soon. Note to detractors and “it’s your own fault” idiots: I am not obese.
Restless legs is fairly common, affecting 1 in 12 people. I have extreme restless legs. It makes me move, twitch, stretch and convulse any time I am required to keep still, especially when trying to sleep or in a car. Combined with ME and an inability to move sometimes, it’s torture. It is a major cause of insomnia for me so that I am now afraid to even try to sleep. I treat it with Pramipexole which is a dopamine agonist aimed at parkinsons disease. It makes me feel horrible and sick, but if I don’t take it, my legs try to rip themselves off of my body.
Insomnia is an obvious one really. I don’t sleep when I should. It is quite debilitating in its own right since going to sleep at 6am makes it nearly impossible for me to get up and do anything at 8 or 9am. It is fueled by a natural obsessiveness in me that won’t give up on whatever I am doing just for sleep, but also by my Restless Legs and by an inability to switch my mind off and stop thinking, which is a common problem in those with ME.
I have had ME/CFS for 10 years now. Many people get ME after a viral infection such as flu. They simply never recover from it. I first got sick after being in bed for a week with flu. After the flu seemed to be clearing up, the exhaustion, the headaches and the muscle pain stayed on. Those are the primary symptoms of ME.
When I talk about chronic fatigue the words really don’t cover the reality of it. People use words like tired, exhausted, and fatigue all the time but they have no clue what it really means. When I say I am too tired to get out of bed it’s not hyperbole. I mean it. When I am that tired I can’t get the five metres from the bed to the toilet. When I am at my worst I cannot lift my head from the pillow or turn myself over in bed. If you have ever experienced sleep paralysis then imagine it continuing for hours. For the really unlucky ones it continues forever. One of the most frustrating things that people can say to me apart from “Have you tried…” is “oh, yes, I’m quite tired after work too.” I want to scream at them. You just have no clue!
The fatigue is not logical either. It starts about as low as energy levels can get so that every action is an extra effort. That effort must be gauged incredible carefully. Each action results in a bit more fatigue and in a bit more pain. Where most people could perform a physically demanding task for a day and then be refreshed by one nights sleep or perhaps a day off, when you have ME the refreshment doesn’t happen. A few minutes of extra effort can result in days of exhaustion and pain. Sleep can make things feel worse. The best analogy I can think of is that every bit of energy used must be borrowed from a loan shark. He isn’t forgiving. That energy will be demanded back the next day with menaces, and whatever you pay won’t be enough. The loan shark will be back again for more.
Other symptoms are many and varied. I have already mentioned fatigue, headaches and muscle aches. i also have burning pain in various muscles, brain fog, irritable bowel syndrome, problems with vision which appear when most tired, and more that I can’t remember.
Brain fog is worth explaining. Once again words are inadequate but it is often described as a head full of cotton wool or as thinking through treacle. Brain fog prevents me from remembering words that I need, from completing thoughts in my head, from finishing sentences that I am speaking. It’s frightening and horrible because it strikes at my own sense of self. It is brain fog that can prevent me from speaking at all on some day
For me, my illness varies a lot. I tend to have cycles of relatively good (~80%) health and then relapse for a few weeks of months where things get bad. I had flu, the real deal, not once but twice in the last few weeks. Since then my health has gone steadily downhill and I am now in a complete state of relapse. I have barely been able to leave my bed for the last few days and have been in a lot of pain with burning sensations in my muscles. I would say that i have rarely been as ill as this in the past.
I wrote about how ME affects me every time I wake up in my article A morning with ME.
For a full understanding of how chronic illness affects me I recommend reading Spoon Theory by Christine Miserandino or watch the video below to see Christine reading Spoon Theory to a conference. This is the origin of the #spoonie tag that you may have seen me use on Twitter.
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Life with ME: My technology lifeline
January 3, 2011 By 7 Comments
I have M.E. It’s a crippling disease that robs people of their capabilities and their independence. Here’s a good video about it on Youtube. I am not as badly affected as some people with ME. I am able to leave the house, ride my motorbike (sometimes) and generally don’t need constant care. I even spend part of my time running a business. Other people that I know are not always so lucky. Even with my relatively minor disabilities, I would have quite a miserable existence if it were not for one thing.
Technology
Technology provides a massive help to me in all aspects of my life. Technology helps me sleep, wake up, eat, communicate and rest. Here are some of the things that help me.
Communications
I often get so tired that I cannot speak. I also find that when I am that tired, my brain trips up even thinking of sentences to say. When I am in this state, I have found that I can still type on a keyboard or on a touch screen phone. Not only that, but I can type coherent sentences, partly because I can edit them before sending them.
Social networks like Twitter and Facebook allow me to talk to people about anything I want, at nearly any time of the day. When I can’t sleep at 4am, I can talk to people with the same problem. When I am stuck in the house for days on end and see no one except my wife, I can talk to people on the internet.
ME includes constant muscle pain which gets worse after any activity. This applies even to the small muscles in my hand. As a result I am unable to hold a pen for very long, and activities such as filling in long forms leave me in agonising pain within minutes. I am able to type where I cannot write with a pen.
Food
In a similar vein, I cannot prepare food or cook without severe pain. Carrying a saucepan is tricky. Carrying a kettle when I don’t have the strength could be highly dangerous. Stirring food hurts. Chopping food can make me cry out in pain. I avoid food preparation wherever possible but there are frequent occasions when I have no choice in the matter. This is where frozen meals and microwave ovens are lifesavers for me. If I didn’t have access to pre-prepared meals, (Often cooked and frozen by my wife) a freezer and a microwave oven, I would need much more care than I do.
Memory
ME can affect my memory quite badly. I also have a general problem of getting so into one task that I forget to take my medicine at the correct time, forget to take one of my regular rests, and even forget to sleep. I rely on Google Calendar and on my phone to help me there. Any event or task that I have to do goes in to my calendar, which will sound an alert on my phone at the right time. I have my all too frequent rests and my multiple times-per-day medicines set as alarms on my phone. The only thing I need to do now is actually pay attention when it beeps!
Bad memory also causes a number of other problems for me. I make extensive use of Springpad to help me out. A Springpad app on my Android phone lets me write quick notes and also take photographs when I am away from my computer. It all gets synchronised with their website, and when I need to remember something I can look up the photo and the note to help me. Sometimes I really can’t remember the words that I need, or what I was about to do. I frequently refer to Google search to look for keywords related to the concept I am after, and it usually provides the word or task that I needed to remember!
Sleeping
I struggle to go to sleep, and I struggle to wake up again. (You can read about the waking up bit in my earlier blog post, A Morning With ME.) One very useful aid to sleeping and waking is my Sunrise/Sunset lamp from Lumie. It has an alarm clock and a lamp in it. At night, I can set the alarm, then press the button to get a simulated sunset which isn’t that effective for me as it doesn’t stop my brain from whirling with thoughts, but it is sometimes helpful. In the morning, it simulates a sunrise over about half an hour and provides a much easier wake up than a straightforward alarm clock.
I also struggle to rest. A big problem with ME is having too many thoughts and being unable to stop thinking about things and relax. I have to spend 20 minutes resting several times a day in order to function well, and staying there to rest is very difficult to me because I tend to think of things like this blog post, then get up to do them! The solution is that I download podcasts of radio shows, put them on my phone, and play them when I am resting.
Computing
With all my use of the computer, being sometimes physically unable to use it can be devastating. I use a few tools to help me keep using it.
f.lux is an excellent bit of software that adjusts the colour temperature of my screen based on the time of day. This isn’t the same as adjusting brightness, it actually changes the mix of colours to suit the lighting that I am using and the level of daylight available. Using a lower colour temperature at night helps reduce eye strain and makes it more comfortable to use the computer, as well as making use of the computer just before sleep less of a factor in insomnia. You can download f.lux for free here.
Web pages often have small text, clashing colours, backgrounds that are too bright and worse. There are two ways that I cope with this problem. The first is Readability. Readability is installed as a bookmark button in the toolbar. When I find a long web page that is difficult to read, I only have to click the bookmark and the page transforms into large, good contrast text with a much darker background. Brilliant! Or, err, less brilliant. Cool. (Install Readability here.)
Sometimes I can’t physically sit at the computer. This is where a Kindle ebook reader is useful. The Kindle has an electronic ink screen which is designed to look like paper. It is not backlit like an LCD computer monitor is. It is equiped with WiFi and documents can be emailed to it. I use a tool called RekindleIT which again, is installed as a bookmark button. When I click the button, the web page that I am reading is emailed to the Kindle ready for me to read in bed or on the sofa. (Install RekindleIT here. I have written more about putting documents and website on the Kindle at my business website.) I should also mention that the Kindle allows me to read large, heavy books that would otherwise hurt me to hold and read for very long.
Working
Having all these things wrong with me makes it hard to work for a living. With incapacity benefit and disability living allowance disappearing, I don’t have much choice. For the last year I have worked as hard as I can (even at the expense of any remaining health) to set up a computer repair and web development business along with my Dad and other family members and friends. I’m rapidly heading in to one of the worse parts of my illness though, and I expect to spend a few weeks, even months, in bed starting any day now. Mobile technology will allow me to keep working to some extent. I can answer technical support queries and direct my business through email and chat. I can setup websites for my customers using my laptop from my bed. It won’t be pleasant, but unlike the last time I was imprisoned in my own bed, this time I don’t have to go insane, and I might even still do some work.
In summary, then, technology allows me to:
- Keep communicating when I can’t speak
- Chat to people when I can’t get out
- Write long texts and fill in forms when I can’t write with a pen without pain
- Heat my own food instead of requiring someone to do it for me
- Remember to take medicine and rest at the correct times
- Keep notes and photo notes to help me remember information
- Remember words, concepts and tasks by searching the internet for related things
- Wake up in the morning
- Rest without getting too distracted
- Keep using my computer by adjusting it to prevent eyestrain
- Keep reading when I can’t physically use my computer
- Undertake paid work when I can’t even get out of bed
ME has tried its best to rob me of a decent life. Technology has given me a way to fight back. I don’t have to accept my quality of life being taken from me. Technology can help others to say the same.
Why I am no longer a Christian
December 24, 2010 By 26 Comments
This blog post is angry, shouty, incoherent and out of order. It is going to upset a lot of people. If you are one of them, I’m sorry. If you can’t handle my personal rant without hating me, please don’t read this.
The Catholic Church and abortion to save a life
December 22, 2010 By 7 Comments
This story in the Seattle Times (Now also in the Guardian) tells us about a Catholic hospital that has had its affiliation with the church withdrawn because they performed an abortion that was the only way to save the mothers life. The woman in question was suffering from pulmonary hypertension, which could only be resolved by ending her pregnancy. Doctors gave her a 100% chance of dying within hours.
The story has been picked and written about by a prominent atheist and denounced as proof that the church is evil. Although I left the Catholic church a couple of years ago in protest at several other teachings that I disagree with, I rushed to comment and defend the church. I wanted to say that this was a misreading of what the church teaches, that it was just this Bishop that was wrong. Except that I couldn’t.
I was always under the impression that the Catholic Church would allow an abortion if it would save the life of the mother and otherwise both mother and baby would die. However on reading the catechism and New Advent it seems that I am wrong. The catechism is absolutely clear that abortion is never allowed and it makes no mention of abortion as an accidental result of life-saving medical treatment. The only exception that I could find in New Advent says
However, if medical treatment or surgical operation, necessary to save a mother’s life, is applied to her organism (though the child’s death would, or at least might, follow as a regretted but unavoidable consequence), it should not be maintained that the fetal life is thereby directly attacked.
While this allows for providing life-saving medical treatment that might inadvertantly cause an abortion, it makes no exception for performing an abortion if ending the pregnancy itself is the only way to save the mothers life.
I cannot agree with this view. What sense does it make to condemn both mother and baby to death? There is no way that I can defend the punishment of those doctors that saved a mothers life, after convening their hospitals ethics committee too, I should add. The staff at this hospital do their utmost save lives and ease suffering and to abide by the ethical and moral code of the hospital and the church. To those atheists that say the churches decision is evil; I can’t argue that you are wrong.
