Things are looking up!

Well it seems so long since my last post and so much has happened! I was hoping to post something over Christmas but I had to really pace myself to get through it so it had to wait.

I had my medication changed before Christmas and I have improved so so much. I've basically gone from not being able to get out of bed to now walking around the house with no sticks. It's all been very gradual, something new every day, but I'm getting there very slowly. It seems a bit miraculous really! I am very impatient though and now I'm a bit better I'm finding it really hard to not do too much. With ME you have to be so careful because you can feel like you've got a lot more energy than you actually have. If you over-do it even slightly you get the payback and that's when things start to go downhill. So I want to do a lot and feel like I'm able to, but it's quite frustrating not being able to do it.

Of course feeling better meant that Christmas was all the nicer. Having the use of my legs back was the BEST Christmas present I could ever have asked for! I keep feeling like I've got something that I just want to keep using now; I keep walking round downstairs just because I can. It feels really odd not holding on to anything. I took my first unaided steps on Boxing Day and on Christmas Day I was able to give Rob a hug- the first one in months! So that was really lovely. I got some amazing presents too. My parents gave me a Kodak wireless digital photo frame; it can connect to and download photos from Facebook as well as connecting wirelessly to your computer. There's also an iPhone app that you can get to display photos on it, and the frame even has its own email address; if you email pictures it puts them directly onto the frame. It's really clever!

I paced Christmas out a lot and started by opening a few presents downstairs. I worked up then to having a little trip out in the car to see the lights in Taunton and then building on that the day after. By Christmas Day I was able to have my Christmas dinner with everyone else and even watch the Queen! It was lovely to be somewhere that wasn't stuck in bed, just feeling normal really. I really treasured that feeling because it had been such a long time that I'd felt normal! Luckily though I seem to be getting a little bit stronger every day.

The other really exciting news is that Rob and I are moving in together in the New Year! He starts his new job in Banbury in either the second or third week of January and obviously will be moving up there. We would cope being apart, we did it for four years through university, but the fact is that we don't want to 'cope'. We've kind of moved on from being apart and so much has happened since then. So I'm going with him! We've narrowed down a couple of flats (to be honest there wasn't a lot going!) and are going to Banbury to look at it on Friday. Obviously that's going to be such a big step for me and one that may cause me a lot of payback. But emotionally I really need to go- it's incredibly important to me not only to see where I'm going to be living but also to do something that's normal. It means the world to be able to get out, much more than I can describe.

I'm still severely ill and I think I still need to remember that I'm not invincible! But as they say a journey of a thousand miles starts with the very first step. It's going to take a really long time and I know there'll be ups and downs, I've come to realise that's what ME is. But gaining a little bit of my life back means so much and long may it continue!