Regress-not progress

I'm glad to see the back of November. It hasn't been the greatest of times for me. I wanted to chart my progress this week-but instead I am charting regress. I turned around this morning and fell over. Just like that - no warning, just no balance, and over I went. I was surprised, to put it mildly! If I'd done this in the living room, I could have crashed into my glass coffee table. That means-I will have to move the table, just to be safe. I thought those days were behind me. Obviously not.

I seem to go through stages: two steps forward, five steps back! I went to my GP on Thursday-because I check in with her every month to let her know how I am progressing-but this week I have been feeling awful: my balance has been very poor, my eyesight has been really bad, and those are clues to the presence of a chest infection. And-when it rains (which is much of the time), and when the weather changes, I find the same difficulty with both balance and vision. On Thursday, my doc took my temperature, and, sure enough, I've got a fever. At least that explains the sudden drop in the gains I've made in two years.

I keep telling myself that this is only a temporary setback, nothing more-but it's really hard for me to believe that. I've always been hopelessly cynical-and I seem to be growing moreso with age!! Sometimes that is a good thing-and sometimes it isn't. Oh, well!!

I've had discussions (some could say arguments) with the people at the Royal London about this infection. One registrar actually rang me back on Friday and advised me to take the antibiotics that were prescribed by my GP. Am I taking them? Well-no, I'm not. I'm supposed to see the immunologist on Wednesday, and I am going to see if I can hold out until then; it seems rather stupid to take this stuff until we actually know what is causing the infection. To me, that is simple logic. To them-well, they have made it very obvious that they would love for me to change hospitals. What the hell-Sofia Grigoriadou is still at the London, so the crippling goes on. And the NHS is closing the medical records department as of January 1st (so the secretaries told me)-so 30+ people will be out of work.

The government is bitching (and so is the media) about companies like Google and Starbucks, who pay minimum company taxes in this country-but nobody moans about the NHS fat cats making all the money while the NHS is falling apart. Huh-one benefit (if you can call it a benefit!) of living in this country for a very long time is that I can be more objective about what is going on than people who just come over for a short while and don't notice anything. You need to live here to see the rot; it's just like anywhere else, really.

So many times I just want to quit: quit the medication, quit the exercises, just basically quit. But I fought so hard to get this far, I force myself to step back, to remember that I didn't get this far to give up now. I can still live a good life-it will just take more effort for me than for others. So what? I'm not dead yet!!

And it will soon be 2013-so I can say goodbye to another rather less than happy year, and work harder to make the next one better. I'm like the Energizer bunny: as long as my batteries hold out, I just keep going!