Christmas Eve

Not quite Christmas Eve, not quite Soho. 

I took this photo yesterday as I ventured out in the rain for some last minute Christmas shopping in Soho getting absolutely soaked in the process.

I've not suffered too badly at all doing the GET therapy but I also have to stress that my overall activity levels haven't really increased at all and symptom-wise I'm more or less the same. I've been to four of my six appointments, with the fifth appointment scheduled for early January.

Some of the rubbish that the GET woman reels off is quite patronising, as you might expect. At my last appointment she talked about 'setbacks'. You're not allowed to call them 'relapses', although I can certainly tell the difference between what I consider a 'setback' - a few bad days - and the more severe and longer term deterioration that I would call a 'relapse'. But… some people believe that you can solve a problem by tidying up the language and there's no arguing with them. So I just did the nodding dog as she recited the catechism.

Then there was the automated lecture on how to tell the difference between a 'setback' and a cold. Symptoms can overlap she said. Does she really think that I can't tell whether I've got a cold or not? Isn't the sniffing and sneezing a bit of a giveaway? And then there are the warnings of the deconditioning and the dire consequences of rest if we decide not to do our daily exercise just because we think we have a cold when really we don't, blah blah blah. If she was a Jehovah's witness I would have slammed the door on her.

Having said all that, I have been able to set my own pace and I've not been pretending to exercise when I haven't, or anything like that. Not that it's proper *exercise* in the generally accepted sense. I certainly don't think GET accelerates the recovery process and I would guess that most of us increase our physical stamina and activity levels over time if we are fortunate enough to improve anyway.

I enjoyed my walk through Soho yesterday, there's still a few dodgy characters and seedy looking premises but it's nowhere near as skanky as the good old days. Oh, and the shop I went to… it was an art supply shop.

PS I'm going to have to write about the 'guilt of recovery' after the festive season, because I think there's actually an unspoken taboo about PWME being dissed for having the outward appearance of 'recovery' (even if they haven't recovered).