Inter Milan

For no other good reason than the fact that it will frustrate the hell out of my good friend Sandro Campobassi. Above is the immediate aftermath of Torres banging in a great goal against Inter Milan last night and effectively ending the game in Liverpool's favour.

Well done El Nino, this guy has been the find of the decade for Liverpool and no amount of money is too much to keep him in a red shirt.

As for the European Cup....I fancy our chances, we have a different mentality in Europe and no one relishes the task of facing Liverpool.

On a final note, Mr Campobassi may be a bitter and twisted soul but respect is due to the Inter Milan faithful who applauded the performance of Liverpool near the end of the game. Roughly translate, you came, you played and you beat us......well done!!!!

Black Tie Ball

Don't they make a lovely couple then!!!

Just a couple of shots snatched from a photographers website that were taken at a charity ball Kerris and I went to last weekend.

It was great fun and raised a lot of money for charity and had an Oscars theme all night.

On the way into Formby Hall Golf Club (the venue), they had a red carpet, photographers and interviewers greeting everyone. A young girl asked me "What inspired your last film then?" and I replied "It was inspired by a home movie". She blushed, laughed and we went in!!!

The times they are a' changin!!!

I think I owe an explanation to anyone who cares to listen about why the last few months have been so quiet on the blog. Well, as anyone can see, I started a new job with Onyx Security and almost immediately blog entries stopped.

So perhaps it was work related? What can I tell you except that yesterday I informed Onyx Security that as of 1st April, I will no longer be in their employment.

Its far too long and much too boring to go into the minutia of the matter, its really been a case of me not being happy with the relationship that Onyx has with one of its suppliers and that this particular supplier has a vested interest in me and its been a very stressful and trying relationship where they have tried with all their might to dominate me. All in all, I thought for a long time that I would be sacked for not living up to expectations and the stress that this caused had a huge effect on my physical and mental well being and I came to the point where my best option was to put an end to it and find a new job.

I think that over the next few weeks I will go into more details about the experiences that I have been through in the last 6 months, I surprise myself when I look back.

Looking back is old news though and I am now looking forward to the future. I have accepted a job with another company in the security industry and again, I will go into more detail about this in due course. I don't want to announce the name just yet as for the moment, I have promised Onyx to keep it quiet, this is mainly due to "that" supplier not knowing my news just yet and my Boss, Richard, wants them to hear from him at some point next week rather than from the rumour mill.

There you go then, the blog is back.....I think I will tell you all about acupuncture later!!!

Happy New Year!!!

For the love of God, a new year has moved in since my last blog entry.

I think its time I got back to sharing my life with you.

There is lots to tell about family life, health, work, football, music and acupuncture but for now lets just enjoy the last few moments of this "eye of the storm" calm passing.

I think later this week, the storm might just be waiting to kick back to full force and rain down its almighty wrath upon the blog again.

Stay tuned.......

Resolutions.....

In 1992, the Queen coined the term "Annus Horribilis" to describe a miserable year of her life.

I think that 2007 has been mine......

One of the original reasons for having the blog was the ability to look back at past times and take stock of where I was and ultimately, where I am going.

I have just spent an wondrous hour reliving the year through my entries and I can see the frustration of getting annoying symptoms, the caution shown as words like "MS" came out of the Consultants mouth, the horror of discovering that it might be a reality, the depression of recovery and the ray of hope that after a few clear months, things might not be as bad as they seem.

For 2008, I want things to be different. Like all people, I have a rook of promises and issues that I intend to sort out in the form of resolutions but overwhelmingly I want to enjoy life once more.

2007 saw my insane optimism turn to complete pessimism and after such a dive I now know that it is my eternal optimism that drives me.

To enjoy life, you need to be content at all levels of emotion, these include self love (oi), respect, honesty, enthusiasm, compassion, cheerfulness, confidence, joy and pleasure. I know that I don't have contentment in a few of those and I know exactly the areas of myself and my life that I need to change to achieve it.

Like I say, 2008 will be different and this is the place where i can sit back in 12 months from now and see if I made it that way.

Hopefully 2008 will be happy for all, I wish you peace and goodwill for the coming year.

MRI Results.....finally, some better news!!!

I actually had a consultation on Monday of this week to discover the results of my recent MRI scan. I have been a bit lazy recently on the blog and for that reason I did not give the update as soon as I had the news, also, its taken me a few days to let the results sink in, be processed in my head and turned into coherent reasoning that can be viewed here.

The results were....

Basically, the most recent scan shows no or little change of consequence in my inflamed area of the neck and no new white spots of note on my brain.

This is obviously fantastic news for me but at the same time, a little overwhelming as I need you to understand that since we first found inflammation and spots in my earlier MRI, I have woken each day with the thought that there is a silent disease spreading through my neck and brain and I am in no control of it. It really is that simple, for the last 9 months or so, I have worried myself silly and waited for the day where we could compare scans taken a distance apart to see if this condition grows silently or lies dormant.

So a huge weight is lifted. It is now pretty safe to assume that while I don't have the symptoms that took me down earlier this year and while I can wake each day without getting out of bed and falling over or having an attack of various levels, then its safe to assume that the condition is not developing or spreading in my neck or brain. On the other hand, if I do have another bout of symptoms then its a different story.

On reflection, I should be gloriously happy but I don't allow myself to be that way and I don't really know why. Is it just the case that Myelitis won the first round and I took the second? Or, is it a case that I still wake every day thinking that something is going to happen to me. I know for a fact that if anything does happen then the thoughts of inflammation and brain spots will run rife in me. The question is, will another attack ever happen? And if so, when? I don't have the answers to these.

As usual, and once Christmas is out of the way, its time to take steps to be healthier on the whole. I did some good work earlier this year and I have let it go by the wayside so I am definitely one of those diet types for 2008.

I genuinely wish I could sit here and be more hopeful about the future, rest assured, a part of me is. A larger part of me believes that there are still a few rocky times ahead and as I was a scout, remember what Baden Powell said......"Come and see some puppies young man", I mean "BE PREPARED!!!".

Its a big day for me!!!

I always know when its going to be a big day, basically because I cant sleep.

Here I am, approaching Midnight, bright eyed and bushy tailed on tenterhooks because I know something is going to happen.

And what is it that is going to happen then? Well today, Wednesday, is the day I have an MRI scan at Lourdes Hospital in Liverpool.

So why is this scan so important? Well, its the first time that I have had a proper scan since my first bout of troubles earlier this year. It is the first time that those results of over 6 months ago will be compared to a fresh set of results. In this way, we shall see if there is any progression in my condition.

What are we looking for then? My Myelitis came about due to inflammation in my spine around the neck area. There were 2 slightly dark areas in the last scan so obviously we want to see if other dark areas have appeared or if the existing areas have grown in size.

The second thing we are looking for is spots on my brain (sounds horrible). In my previous scan, I had several white spots on my grey matter but the consultant called these "BSUO's" which is consultant talk for Big Shiny Unidentified Objects. We all get spots on our noggins over time but in the case of tracking the progress of something like MS, these lesions (another horrible word) grow in size. So in my case, we will be looking to see if the spots that were there last time have stayed, gone or grown.

As you can see, a lot can be told from an MRI scan but to ultimately be diagnosed with the MS word, there are a few more boxes that need to be ticked.

I found an interesting article on the Internet about MS a while ago. It basically said that there are more wrong diagnosi of the condition than there are legitimate ones. To combat this, the criteria for diagnosing the condition was re-evaluated and there are lots of small symptoms that have to occur over a period of time subsequent from each other before a diagnosis can be made.

In my case, every day that passes without the symptoms I had earlier this year is a scalable bonus. 2 symptom attacks have to happen within 12 months of each other to tick one of the boxes. So even though each day I wake up with some ache or pain that I feel is going to trigger something, it doesn't, and with that in mind I get one step closer to March 2008 which is where I pass the 12 month mark. I think you can see my thinking here.

Anyway, back to the MRI. I can only hope for the best, and the best is no progression. I have been through a lot in the last few months but on reflection, my condition is no worse than it was following my recovery earlier on in the year.

Unfortunately, I don't get to see my consultant to discuss the scan until a week on Monday. I would have been able to see him this coming Monday but I am in Germany as part of my product training in the new job and I could not drop tools on this.

As usual, I will keep anyone who cares updated, wish me luck.......