So now I had finished the steroids but didn't have a clue as to what would come next. The effects of the steroids went away immediately and when I look back, it seems like looking back on your holiday, feeling fit and non-drowsy with the brain at 100% [OK so my brain had never been 100% but was at the same percentage as pre MS].
Some more visitors to help me, therapists, a physiotherapist and an occupational therapist called one afternoon with even more information. Apparently the pelvic muscles are the main ones affected and they would get in touch with a speech therapist who would help me with my swallowing and coughing as well as my slurred tired speech. The physiotherapist would order me a frame to be able to lift myself up to sitting position in a morning and then to stand, and she would be back in a week with a shorter walking stick as she believed mine was too high for me, and also show me the exercises I would need to do, Exercises? Exercises?! I hadn't got any energy to do anything especially not exercises, thoughts of keep-fit classes with super-fit forceful teachers come to mind.
The frame arrived a couple of days later and the fun I had that night trying to read around it! Eventually I chose the frame holding the book open position which seems to work to date. The day or so after the frame the physiotherapist came with my new sized stick and information about the dreaded exercises. Yet another leaflet came with her, I was amassing quite a pile in my folder, pity the eyes aren't working properly, at one point I discovered the joy of the magnifying glass, I now have them scattered around the house, the kitchen for reading the oven temperature on frozen food cartons, obviously the living room for just about anything, and in the bedroom to help [well try to] with the beauty process.
The exercises were quite easy, apart from the balance ones that is, now it was a case of remembering to do them on a daily basis, my memory has never been that good at the best of times but the MS seems to have taken it away altogether.
Then the appointments started arriving, and are still continuing, so more next time
