the W's

I posted about my MS on my Mastodon recently, telling of how I described how I was that day when Mrs B messaged me from work in her lunch break.

"I have been for my longer walk, still suffering the weak and wobblies."

Generally, Mrs B and I communicate how I am that day with a shorter W word slang for my various MS symptoms, rather than the proper medical ones. Mainly because I can't say half of them. So, I can have the weak, wobblies, whoopsies, weary, wees, and weepies, in different combinations.

I go with these easier words to describe what sort of mix of MS symptoms I'm having that day, if they're worth mentioning. I have some symptoms every day, but they're sort of at 'normal' background level when, to borrow a Pratchett term, the embuggerance is being relatively quiet. It's kind of like your fridge humming away virtually unnoticed in the kitchen; always on and working, but you only know it's on if you concentrate on listening to it gently whirring.

I can live relatively normally at this base level, and in fact it may be hard to tell that there is anything not right at all, apart from my use of a walking stick all the time. To be honest, I sometimes feel like I don't need the stick at all. In fact some days I question whether the MS diagnosis was wrong I feel so strong and healthy.

Those days tend to only occur in ones and twos - I'm brought back to what is my normality quite quickly, and the walking stick is often a genuine requirement again, often halfway through a walk that started off with me feeling like I didn't need it.

On a day when any of the symptoms becomes more active and is amplified - on very rare occasions is it all of them at once - they get the honour of being mentioned specifically, but with the appropriate W word. Who has time to type out an explanation about my fine motor control, proprioceptive and vestibular systems being scrambled to describe the fact that walking is harder and I keep dropping things, when I can just use our shorthand?
"Yeah, I've got the wobblies and whoopsies today."

So it's weak for muscle strength issues, weary for the crushing fatigue episodes, wees for urinary stuff creating difficulties (you do not want details), and weepies for the out of nowhere depressive emotional reactions to things that would elicit nothing in particular from me at any other time.

I've been using them so long now that I had to go off to the MS Society website, to refresh my memory about how the issues were properly described again. I'm sure I should probably learn a few of them, just in case I have to explain, in proper language a doctor can understand, exactly what I mean by "Yes, I'm getting an increase in the weak and wobblies."

I do have two more symptoms to describe, but nothing W springs to mind to describe the speech slowing to a drawl, and the refusal of cognitive systems to work as normal. Witless? Seems a bit cruel to be honest. 

Generally a blank and confused look and uttering no words at all in response to the question "Would you like a cup of tea?" is all the signal Mrs B needs for that.