The 48 hours when I didn't think self-management worked...

I had about 48 hours mid-2016 when I honestly thought self-management didn’t work. Everything that I had based the last 5 or so years of my life (personally and professionally) was a lie. Those 48 hours painfully passed, and left me with a reaffirmed understanding of self-management and belief in the process.

That invisible way stress accumulates, that way you start to be aware of it and think that you can cling on until X or Y and then you can rest and sort it all out… and then very suddenly, you can’t and it all crashes down around you. I had what I can only describe as a the worst panic attack, but it was nothing to do with panic and more a depression attack, but with all the standard panic attack symptoms. Typical for me, with my history of major medical events, this happened whilst I was out sailing. Whisked away by my (utterly brilliant and unconditionally supportive) parents to my grandmothers house, a real safe haven for me, I was in shock and quite numb. Everything had just got a bit too much, and I had burnt out. 

The novelty of a short term health condition - from the perspective of someone with long term health conditions

A few weeks ago I had an inner ear infection, labyrinthitis. The worse of the symptoms were only for four or five days, but it lasted about 3 weeks in total. It was a short-term health condition. This meant that many aspects of those few weeks were in stark contrast to my day in day out experiences of long-term health conditions.

Dear Relapse: a love letter

This post has been the culmination of a few little seeds sown over the last few weeks...
A tweet at the end of May from the extraordinary Dr Kate Granger (@GrangerKate) made me start to think about what is positive about our health situations:
"This week has been properly amazing. And it was all made possible by having cancer. There is definitely a #silverlining to all this..."

This post is also inspired by a few letters I have read recently, from a doctor to a chronically ill patient, from a chronically ill patient to a doctor, and by far the most powerful, a video produced by the wonderfully talented and creative people from Flack in Cambridge, the audio of which we used in our Quality and Recover workshop recently.
It's not often you have to write a letter to something that is so close to you, but I feel that it is a great chance to explore the relationship I have with my relapses.
For references, my relapses are triggered by travelling and sudden neck movements, and consist of loosing movement in my legs (and left arm). It is frequently accompanied by headaches, blurry vision and crippling fatigue for four or five days.