*sigh*

ADULT CONTENT: About relationships and me pulling my hair out over the last couple of weeks.

So, what happens when you're in love with two people, but don't realise? One heck of a mess is what! I am still in the middle of this mess, but this is how things are at the moment.

At about this time last year I signed up to a website called Plenty Of Fish. It was shortly after Ian had decided he wanted a divorce, and I was feeling isolated, lonely, and panicked living where I do, so I was trying to find friends online. The only place I could actually find, that was not for sex hookups was that dating website, which has the option to seek friends. It's a horrible site. Despite spelling out in extreme detail that you only wish to find friends, you get a lot of guys coming on to you, or having a go at you for being on a dating website when you don't want to date, and I even had people have a go at me for being ill!!!!

Anyway, I made three friends on the site. T, C, and K. K is innocent in all of this, so we'll ignore him. I hated the site with a vengeance. C was the only person I was still talking to after a month or so, so when his profile vanished, I deleted my account. I was hurt. I thought we'd been getting on well and he'd just vanished without saying goodbye or anything. A couple of months down the line I had a message from him on a forum I belong to. I was shocked, delighted and confused all at the same time. He had my website, but he hadn't wanted to phone me to contact me, so using my website he'd found another way to contact me. So, we resumed a friendship on MSN.

Meanwhile, T and I became very good friends. We've talked pretty much every day for the last year. He's helped me with various things, including moving house. And I hope I've helped him with stuff too. He's been going through a nasty divorce, which has made me want to wrap him in cotton wool for months.

When G and I split up, my relationship with C became that of what people refer to as 'friends with benefits'. I don't like the term, and we didn't refer to it thus between ourselves. I was confused as to what he wanted, until he said to me that he didn't want a relationship. Having said that however, we then had an even more confusing conversation about babies. I didn't understand whether the entire conversation was a joke to him, or whether there was an element of seriousness to it. Various things he said and did thereafter lead me to believe that he most certainly was not interested in me in any kind of romantic way, so I retreated a little feeling hurt and rejected.

Meanwhile T and I were seeing more of each other. It was coincidence really. A lot of things happened in sequence that we had just happened to have planned to do together. We realised that we were enjoying each others company a huge amount. Things we'd have normally hated doing we were enjoying together. So, taking my heart in my hands I told him that I liked him a lot more than just friends. He reciprocated. There followed one of the most enjoyable weeks I can remember.

I thought it would be the adult and proper thing to do, to tell C that I was now with someone. In my mind I figured he'd be fine about it since he was not interested in a relationship with me. I was a little anxious however. So, since I have no internet access at home, I was sat at T's on my laptop, when I told C that I was seeing someone. And from that moment on, all hell broke loose.

From C's perspective: he had been giving me space. He wanted me to move in to my new place, see that I was capable of standing on my own two feet, and gain some confidence. He didn't know there was anyone else on the horizon, so didn't think he needed to rush any relationship. Meanwhile he was aware that I may well be pregnant with his sprog. So, when I told him that I was seeing someone he was shocked. His initial reaction was actually to say to me that if I tested positive to being pregnant, to please not go through with it (with a sad faced emoticon). Then he said that it'd be the end of our friendship. He said that my being with someone else would eliminate a huge dynamic of our friendship. He was referring to the flirty conversations and sex I presume.

T's reaction to C declaring his feelings was to say that if being with him was the wrong thing for me then he'd back away. I wanted to be with him though. C's reaction had completely taken me aback, so I was still in the comfort zone with T, but at the same time extremely shocked. I didn't know what to do. I wanted someone to come and sort out the horrible mess for me. I did not sleep at all Sunday night. 

I actually do not remember Monday, but know I did not sleep that night either. Tuesday was C's birthday. He'd wanted to take me out for dinner. T made the point that if I went out for dinner with C that I'd have a lovely wonderful evening with him, enjoying his company in a relaxed yummy environment, that would make my decision for me. C actually agrees with him. This kind of suggests to me that they both think I'm rather shallow. It also indicates how fast they were expecting me to make this decision. At that point I had no intention of making the decision within a short time frame. T and I had plans to visit a friend of mine at the weekend. I had been presuming that that would still happen, and would help me in my decision making process. 

As it happened I could not have gone anywhere with C on his birthday anyway. The stress from the two of them caused me a migraine, FM pain throughout my entire body, and I had the worst period pain I've had since I miscarried a few years ago. I was in so much pain that moving my fingers to text was agony, let alone the brightness of my phones screen ... yet there was no way I could not reply to them, as doing so would cause even further problems.

Wednesday morning T texted me asking if I would like him to take the afternoon off work. I had an appointment with my osteopath. Because I was in so much FM pain I was planning to ask him to give me acupuncture, which I then expected to leave me in a lot more pain before making all the pain miraculously vanish. I had explained this to C, as he'd asked me the day before, if I may go out that evening with him instead. So I explained it to T also. He said he wanted to be there for me in the good times and the bad times.

I was actually not in pain after the acupuncture, so I suggested to T that we go for a late lunch. And then I dragged him to Pets At Home because I considered it important to cuddle animals.

My new place is really weird. It has a hot air heating system. I have been sat for a month in my living room freezing my butt off whilst this thing expensively blows luke warm air at me. A little over a week ago I suddenly realised that for some reason all the warmth is being shot out of it backwards into my bedroom. So I started doing everything in there instead of the living room. So, when C or T came over, we would sit in my bedroom. This perhaps was not so wise in retrospect.

T and I were sat on my bed with the cat. I was stroking the cat affectionately, and said to T "I love my cat, can I keep her?". I then burst out crying. T of course was completely befuzzled by this. So I had to then start explaining that C had said to me the previous evening "Can I keep you?", and that saying such to the cat reminded me of C when I was not expecting it, catching me off guard, and thus causing a tear explosion.

As I was explaining this to T, a text arrived. T said it might be C. I said I knew it was and didn't need to check. Something I've not explained previously in my blog, because it has not previously been relevant, is that I am empathic. C also is empathic. Empathy generally means that you can understand what someone else is feeling. Being empathic means you can actually pick up on someone else's feelings in a kind of psychic manner. It causes me big problems to be honest. So, I didn't check the text because I knew it was from C without having to do so.

T became upset at this. He knew I was empathic, but he had not actually seen it like this. He was upset that C and I have such a link, that C could pick up on the fact I was crying and text me, and that I knew it was him without checking. He spiralled in distress telling me that I should be with C, as he and I would never have that kind of a connection. "It's C, Olana, it's always been C. It's so obvious that it's C!" They are quite possibly some of the most gut wrenching words I'll ever hear. 

For someone you love and care for to be in such distress in front of you, saying words that are very obviously pushing you in the direction of someone else whom you also love and care for ... . I cannot express the anguish inside of me. I have never ever been in the position where no matter what I do I will hurt someone, and there is absolutely nothing I can do to prevent it.

As far as my memory serves T then turned to me and said "I'm hot. Take my trousers off!". I'm still rather confused over this. I didn't know how to take it, or what to feel, etc, so I did take them off. I then had a panic attack at him, throughout which I really can't remember much at all. As I was regaining awareness my phone rang. It was C. I was relieved when I saw his name on my screen, but he was phoning to tell me that my behaviour had been utterly despicable that day, so he was making my decision for me, removing himself from the equation, leaving me with T.

I broke down again, sobbing on my bed. T told me to call C back and ask him to come back to the house. He had heard a car roar away outside. I didn't want to call him back. As far as I am concerned people do not say things that they do not mean; he told me he was gone, I assumed he was gone and that a call from me would either be ignored or greeted with abuse. A few minutes later however, C phoned me back himself. I can't remember what he actually said, but I asked him to come back to the house. I told T to get dressed and basically pushed him out of the frontdoor while I sought my own clothes out.

C phoned a few minutes later asking if T had gone. I said he had. He told me that T was sat in his car at the end of my road. He had driven past T rather than turn down my road as he did not want T to know who he was. I started walking up the road to see whether it was T sat at the end of my road. As I did so I saw his car drive over the bridge and across the top of the road. I sat on a bollard at the end of the road and waited. He came back up the road again, turned into a side road, sat and stared at me. I waved. He roared his engine and drove away.

I found it alarming, as did C. I could not fathom why T was sat on my road after he had gone. I figured it was because he wanted to see who C was. He has subsequently told me that he wanted to make sure C actually got there, because I had been in such a state when he left. I believe him. C, however does not.

The result of all this rather teenager-esque activity is that I now have a boyfriend in C, and have had to ask T for space. I need to distance myself from him so that I can stop having such extreme feelings towards him. It is absolutely heart breaking to have to force myself to eliminate someone I love from my life, even if only for a short period of time. C doesn't trust him at all, and is hoping he will disappear forever. This is not my hope. I am hoping we can rebuild the friendship. I have a rather long journey of building trust with both of them again ahead of me.

Quick apology

Just in case anyone is wondering why my blog is not being updated I thought I should explain that I have not got internet access at home at the moment.

I moved house on November 5th, fully expecting to have internet sorted out within a few days. Yes, I am about to badmouth some big companies. Sorry big companies. If you don't like being badmouthed, then sort your act out!!!!

I signed up to Sky shortly after moving in. They successfully moved the phone line over to me. I awaited my broadband modem, and paper work, but it didn't come. So after a couple of weeks I phoned them. I was told that I needed to provide them with a MAC code. A MAC code is needed if you are closing an account with BT, and want the line to be moved over to Sky; the code tags the BT tag off the line (or something like that). So I set my landlord about getting the MAC code, since it had previously been his line etc.

So, a MAC code is needed when you move YOUR line from one provider to the other ... NOT when your landlord is moving his account to another part of the country, and you are starting up an entirely new account. BT should have removed the tags from the line at the same time as moving my landlords account away from the property. Did they do that? Of course not!

I spelt out in extreme detail to both BT and Sky what being offline would mean to me. I told them I am disabled, and that I have to do my shopping online. Without internet access I do not have food. They nodded and smiled and promised me it'd be sorted out within a week. They lied.

As it stands, BT are telling Sky that I have an account with them, that it is in the name that Sky have for me on their books ... an interesting coincidence, given that Sky spelt my name wrong ... and that I have had the account with BT since November 2006. In order for BT to remove the tags from the line I have to phone them and close my account. However, when I phone them to close the account they will not communicate with me because I do not have the account number, the security details and do not even know the number for the line from which I am phoning them.

So, BT will not take the tag off the line. Sky therefore cannot start my line up for me. And now I have been there nearly two months. My contract is for six months. I've had so many problems with the place that there is no way I am going to stay there after my contract is over. So, unless I can find a service that will do me three or four months of internet I'm just not going to be online for the foreseeable future.

Dammit!!!

GPs to no longer sign people off sick

This is a long article (click title to view), and I have a lot to say about it, so I'll just give you a few snippets below. I like my snippets recently don't I!

People should be signed off for long-term sickness by an independent assessment service and not GPs, a government-backed review says.

The review also calls for a new government backed job-brokering service, to find work for people cannot stay in their current job because of their condition.

If the recommendations are accepted people who are signed off sick would also be put on to Job Seekers' Allowance, instead of Employment Support Allowance, for a period of three months.

"What the GPs say is they don't have time to do an in-depth functional assessment and nor have they had any training in occupational health so we think it's providing a new unique service that both employers and GPs need."

And welfare reform minister Lord Freud said: "We just don't get adequate help for people early enough when they need it and what we are creating in there is an incubator for lifelong idleness for far too many people."

He (Dr Richard Vautrey) said: "If what is being described is a proper health, occupational health assessment at an earlier stage in the patient's illness then that would be helpful.

"But if it turns out to be a punitive process just to try and save money without the best interests of the patient at the heart of the process then it will fail."

So, just to summarise for you, in case it is not clear from the above; the latest government proposal is to stop peoples personal doctors being able to sign them off long term sick from work, and to put the responsibility on a new body, which as yet does not exist. This body would consist of occupational therapists, who no doubt will give you a twenty minute assessment which does not give them any true insight into your condition at all, just like the Atos assessments. It would not in fact surprise me if they employed Atos to do it.

Why on earth are they making a fuss about 300,000 people being off work sick? That's a drop in the ocean compared to the unemployment figures. Perhaps if they focused on creating jobs, bringing markets back to this country, and preventing JSA fraud the country would be in a lot less dire straits; and they could stop picking on the sick and disabled!!

Seriously, the population of the United Kingdom is approximately 60 million. 300,000 being ill long term is less than 0.5%. I would say that was almost a miracle in itself.

Where do they think all of these jobs for the sick and disabled are going to come from? If they cannot employ the nearly 1.5 million who are claiming JSA, how do they think they will find jobs for people whose health is unreliable.

I may have been ill for ten years, but I've seen how all of this works; if you're ill at work, you get penalised. You lose out on bonus's and those with poor sickness records are the first to be made redundant. Why would employers take on someone who is uncertain when they'll be in work, or how much they can do, someone completely unpredictable, when there is a healthy person equally qualified that they can employ?

The most ridiculous thing about this is that our GPs know us the best. It did not say as such in this article, but the news item on the television last night apparently said that many GPs feel pressured to sign patients off long term sick when they should not. This, I can understand to a certain extent, as when you are familiar with someone it is human nature to not wish to do them any harm. There in lies the error though; if your GP cares about you they would not sign you off as long term sick, taking you out of the work place, and earning better money, if it were not necessary.

I know for a fact that my own GP feels a lot more pressure from the government to have me returned to work, than he does from myself to sign me off sick.

Well, as one of my friends says, this may simply be an exercise in keeping the public happy again. Show the public that the government is doing what they want, then actually do nothing about it. I hope he is right, as these measures would lead to even further suicides.

Diagnostic Blood Test for M.E.

I'm frequently disheartened by the lack of interest the scientific field has in M.E.. Sometimes though there is a glimmer of hope. There is progress. It is slow, and it is not well publicised, but it is happening. I was very excited at the Rituximab study a few weeks ago. Now there is this!

A bloody test that will potentially identify those who have M.E., and also possibly identify those who will respond to treatment with Ampligen.

"Four genes were identified by Multivariate Regression that separated CFS patients from the normal control group.


"Chronix and Hemispherx are currently planning to [...] identify how different persons with CFS can respond to Hemispherx’s experimental drug Ampligen®.


"Ampligen® is an experimental RNA nucleic acid being developed for globally important debilitating diseases and disorders of the immune system."

I've got M.E. I'm not a benefits cheat

It is with a little sadness that I share this article. It was written in August 2010, so well over a year ago now, and things have not changed at all. It's quite a long article, and it's well written, so I can't really nick bits of it to share with you. If you're interested in how people with M.E. (and similar illnesses) are treated, then I would indicate to you that you can click the title of this blog post to read an article that describes perfectly what myself, and various others, have been and are repeatedly going through.

It is a personal account, describing the process and the writer's personal experience. It is because the process is so badly flawed that many people with M.E. have to rely heavily on other conditions they suffer with in order to actually claim ESA. I'm now kind of wondering how I got through, since my assessor completely ignored my back problem all together.

National Union of Journalists Speaks Out

The National Union of Journalists today released a statement asking journalists to stop calling disabled people scroungers. You can click the title of my blog post to see the whole article, but there are also some snippets below.

I personally find it interesting that it states the rate of Incapacity Benefit fraud to be 0.3%, and the rate of Disability Living Allowance fraud is 0.5%. 0.3% being the lowest benefit fraud statistic. Given the demonisation I've personally felt from people I have met and people I know, it is evident that the press coverage of benefit fraud has indeed lead the public to believe otherwise.

"Over the last few months we have seen a continuous drip-feed of stories which have promoted a range of inaccurate and generalised accusations against disabled people with long term health conditions. As a result disabled people have faced greater hostility from the public, with many claiming that they have experienced hostility, discrimination and even physical attacks from strangers.

"The Work and Pensions Select Committee on Incapacity Benefit have themselves criticised the Government for the language it uses when it releases and comments on official statistics on the incapacity benefit reassessment programme resulting in some media using terms such as "scrounger" and "work shy". 

"Rather than offering constructive support to disabled people, certain stories and features have portrayed disabled people as unsustainable, unproductive and even not disabled at all, but profiting from fraudulent benefit claims"

I've not personally experienced violence, but hostility I have. In fact, one of the reasons I left a dating site earlier this year was the number of people who had a go at me when they discovered that I am incapacitated. The most hurtful incident was Easter Sunday (long time ago now). Having spent Easter very sadly alone I went to the Chinese take away to get something to eat. A new person working there asked me if I had just finished work. I said that I had not. He then asked me what I do. I explained that I do not work at present. I didn't even say I was ill or claiming benefits, but received a mouthful from him asking whether I just intend to live off benefits for the rest of my life. He then had to answer the phone, otherwise I'd have given him a mouthful back and asked for a refund. 

I agree with the NUJ. The media is deliberately stirring up hatred against the disabled and incapacitated. I cannot begin to imagine why. There is a lot of benefit fraud happening. People claim Job Seekers Allowance with no intention of actually working again. Everyone I know who claiming sickness or disability benefits, would much rather be healthy and working. 

One of my friends summed it up beautiful recently. He has Cystic Fibrosis. He is on high rate mobility, and therefore has help with costs towards a car. Someone expressed to him that they were envious. His response was that he would gladly exchange them the car for their healthy lungs.

Please understand that you don't understand

'Oh, I know what that's like; my friend used to have it!'

Just one of many phrases that tends to upset me. Particularly if followed by something along the lines of 'He used to go to all the protests!'. Of course I don't actually say anything on the occasions that people say something like that to me. I know that people are trying to relate, and trying to be nice, but they don't realise that they are actually being rather tactless. So, I'm asking you to understand that you just don't understand.

I know that probably sounds very arrogant, but it is not.

Among people who have CFS / M.E., those experienced at least, it is generally understood that even among one another we do not all have the same experiences, we do not all share the same symptoms, we are not all on the same medications; we basically cannot understand each other. But we respect that. When one of us says we are struggling with such and such, we make allowances for it.

I spent this afternoon with Trudie and Bev. The three of us have M.E.. We are all aware that we inevitably struggle with energy levels, and that spending time together will take a toll on our condition. We are aware that Trudie is the worst affected, and Bev the least. But the way in which we are affected varies significantly. When Bev is exhausted she spends hours asleep. When I'm exhausted my entire body starts to ache and tremble. We simply mutually accept that we have different problems, and that we'll express if we are struggling with anything or need help.

So, if you know someone who has M.E., or has had M.E., please understand that that does not automatically mean that you understand me. To be honest, it's highly unlikely that you understood your friend to start with either. Even among one another we struggle immensely to describe the symptoms we go through, and because it changes from hour to hour, day to day, what we described to you yesterday may well not stand today anyway. So I'm asking of you, please, instead of trying to relate to me, or someone you know who has M.E., just take us as you find us. You can't presume, and to some extent you can't prepare.

Please don't misunderstand me. It is not that we seek to be aloof and mysterious; we really honestly do want to be understood. It is horrible having to try and explain what we are going through over and over again, especially when we don't really understand it ourselves. A little patience please.