I’m Quite Fond Of Challenges …

Sometimes, if you have a Chronic Illness, and are ahem, ‘getting older’, sometimes just getting up and doing what you have to do in the morning can be a challenge …

The Chronic Illness I have is this one: Multiple Sclerosis (MS). I was diagnosed in 2010, when I was much worse off physically (and mentally) than I am now.

The issues that made me realise something had gone very wrong for me, right sided muscle weakness being the main one, well they meant I visited my GP, then he sent me to a neurologist, and an MRI scan revealed the truth. Medication helped up until it was discovered to actually be harming me, rather than helping. I’ve had a new med now, and things are going extremely well!

They’re going so well in fact that I’ve been doing a lot of walking, either by myself, with our dog, with my husband, or with my support worker and possibly the dog as well. This dog, Lenny, is a retired racing Greyhound, and after showing and breeding purebred dogs, I thought I knew all I needed to know about dogs. Lenny has taught me I was wrong.

This dog Lenny is like the Pharaoh Hounds we’d had just before getting him, but quite different in so many other ways. He’s certainly been a challenge, but I’ve gone from regretting even thinking of getting such a crazy beast, to enjoying him and his challenging ‘oddities’!