let’s go back to the beginning… sometime in Oct 2014 I had a banging headache, you know like your sinuses are bad kind of pressure headache? Anyway, sling some decongestants down my neck and carry on, right? As you do.
3 weeks later “sinus” headache still lingering, I wake up completely blind in my right eye. Bollocks, now I actually have to do something about it. Off I pop go my local opticians who promptly issue me with a yellow piece of paper to head off to Eye Casualty where I am to be seen as an emergency. FFS, I got shit to do, no time for hospital visits and the like. So I drive (yes, I drove, not sensible with one eye lol) home, walk the dog and then, and this is still to this day, the WORST part of this story for me, I got on a bus to the hospital 😖 yes, I was a “bus wanker” as if my day weren’t bad enough already!! Hate buses, they stink of piss, the windows are always fogged up, the seats feel questionable and we had to go past the local mental health facility where inevitably a friendly loon would get on and sit next to me for a chat. FML.
My mum met me at the casualty dept and I was called straight through… interesting, there were plenty of ppl already there waiting 🤔 taken into a room as big as most peoples downstairs loo where I was joined by an ophthalmologist and about 6 trainees (obviously, I mean why not?). So we’re all packed into this tiny room where the woman covers my “good” eye and asks me to tell her what number I can see in a book. You may have seen this book, it has coloured dots in a circle within which is a number made up of dots of a different colour. To test colour vision. Kindly advised her I couldn’t see anything (seriously, it was like someone had actually taken my my fucking eye OUT) this carried on for another two pages until I lost patience “listen, I don’t think you understand. I cannot see ANYTHING out of that eye! Nothing at all! I can’t even see the bloody book!!” At which point I think the penny dropped – thank god.
Long story short(ish) they said they thought it was either MS or Lyme disease. Well I knew I hadn’t ever been bitten by no nasty tick so figured it must be MS. Mum was devastated, naturally, but I needed her to go and let my puppy out so phone the husband so he could come to get me when he finished work (the husband who’d only been a husband for just under 6 weeks, poor fucker). So I had a couple hours to myself, nice I’ll grab a coffee and go out for a fag 😁 still not upset or feeling any real type of way about it all tbh. Always tackle life with an “it is what it is” attitude. Finally got home about 8pm after a VERY long lay down in an MRI scanner, a diagnosis of Optic Neuritis AND MS, lucky bitch that I am 🤣 and absolutely starving. At least the dog was happy to see me! And that is how this all began.