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17 February 2011

Posted by DMC on 17 February 2011 in Diary |

As I mentioned yesterday, and I admit you do not have to be a rocket scientist to have predicted it, but there has been more trouble in the Middle East following the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt. We are now seeing trouble in Libya and Bahrain. In both cases being put down, with no quarter given, by the police or armed forces. Already a number of people have been killed. I think the entire region will be in tumult for the next few weeks or months or two and we probably have not seen the last of the dictators toppled…

I am really beginning to get value out of my Skype now have I sorted out the sound problem. Two calls to Australia, one to  South Africa and three in the UK. I get an amazing picture and it is so much more personal than a straight telephone call.

One piece of intelligence I would like to share with other MND patients which may give some of you some hope is this. One of my reader MND patients, who for obvious reasons will remain anonymous, was telling me that he was diagnosed with MND around seven years ago. One of his arms and hand became useless quickly, then for a number of years nothing much happened until the second arm started weakening a couple of years ago and now that hand and arm only just work. A year or so ago he noticed that his legs were also weakening but tells me that he can still walk half a mile on the beach so the weakening cannot be very serious. The only other problem he has is a slight breathing one which requires him to wear a respirator at night-as indeed I do myself. This demonstrates very clearly how every MND patient is different and you could say that this particular patient is extremely lucky. At the rate he is going he will certainly be one of those who could go for 10 years or more compared with the 50% who died within 14 months of diagnosis and the other 50% who go within 2 to 5 years.

One of my readers complained yesterday, in the nicest possible way, that the reason they were not entirely up-to-date on my blog was that it was far too long, i.e there was too much to read. I do apologise because I realise yesterday’s  entry was probably unnecessarily lengthy — I did bang on a bit. My reasons for going off on these sidetrack discussions is to take the reader’s mind off their own problems for a short period and think about something else. However, if this it is a university held view that the blog is too long I would like to hear from other readers is so as to temper my loquaciousness in future.

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