The inconsistency of disability and/or chronic illness is such that one minute, you can be ambling around the shops, nary a care, and the next, you’re on your back – and not in a good way. (There’ll be none of that, thank you very much!) You are on week 40 of the Organ Extraction waiting list, although you had been promised said snippage by week 27. The NHS app tells you that most people are treated within 18 weeks, and eight out of ten such organ-havers are treated within 32. Well, that’s nice. You’re two in ten. Humph.

You make an absolute arse of yourself, nagging the GP and the consultant.

“I could lose my job,” you tell ’em, “as I’m in constant agony and there are days I can’t even walk.”

Sometimes, you cry down the phone, or face-to-face at the doc’s. Occasionally, someone listens: you’ve reached the point where the GP is—finally!—writing to the consultant to ask them to fuckingwell get their fucking finger out (actual wording may vary).

Perimenopause is the Devil, and has given you a Mephistophelimp. Said limp varies from day to day: at the start of the week, your knee decides to fuck you over; Wednesday brings pelvic pain that makes you want to rip your insides out; by Friday, your hips and arse-cheeks have died a death. An excruciating one. You manage—somehow—to walk* with delicate placement: treading a specific tread with your left foot and balancing precariously on the ball of your right, and you’ve taken to using a stick as a replacement for the shoddier of your legs.

*hobble

Hovering on one pin, you discover, feels niiiice. Going all Flamingo takes the weight off and the pain away. You visit your even more poorly mother (bless her) in hospital, and because of the lousy set-up, the distinct absence of visitors’ chairs, ya rest yer manky knee on yer ma’s bed. SO NICE. SUCH A RELIEF! This discovery leads you to the interwebz, where you order a pair of crutches so you can travel by elbow in future, the crap leg swinging freely.

At The Big Tesco (because it’s never just Tesco, is it? And don’t get me started on The Asda), you hop** onto the mobility scooter thingie. Luckily, the shelves and their contents survive, because you happen to manoeuvre that thing like a frickin’ ledge. (You have skills, girl, and don’t you forget it—no matter what your crumbling carcass has you believe.) This is what it’s come to.

**stumble

By the time evening rolls around, you’re in such a state that you are, not to put too fine a point on it, utterly fucking done. Would that you had a saw. Off with the leg! Sever it at the hip! No – slice higher!

But no, you persevere. You get out. You stay in. You take all manner of painkillers, massage in the Ibu-gel, and try the exercise bike. And d’ya know what? It works—sort of. It’s the one pain-free activity you can do. Must be something about the muscle groups you’re using; there’ll be a scientific explanation for why you can do this but not that. This leads to thinky thoughtstuff: your busy little brain gets all a-wonderin’. Maybe I should get my skates on. See what those muscles can do. Maybe I should go for a run—

—then you breathe the wrong way or blink too hard, and the pain, back with a vengeance, kicks you right in the cojones (whether you have a pair or not). There is to be no skating. No running. A bit more moping, maybe. Writing, definitely; a lot more complaining, fo’ sho’.

Perception is everything: how you see yourself can have a gigantic impact on your health. How others see you comes into the mix, too: when you have a disability, a chronic illness, or even a health-niggle, your ailments often wear an invisibility cloak. If your symptoms vary from day to day—or hour to hour—the cloak might slip, and it can seem to others that you are taking the piss. You must be lying.

“She was fine the other day.”

“She was limping last week; how can she be darting around today?”

“She’s fine; I saw her at the market, laughing at the superfluous apostrophes.” (Okay, that last one’s weird. But so am I.)

But you know the truth. You know your truth.

And I know mine. Mine involves variety. No two days are the same, no two limps are alike. Drugs can work, drugs can fail. I’m brim-full with positivity, or I’m bed-bound, sleeping so I don’t have to be awake. I can get proactive, chasing up appointments and making plans, or I can wither away into a crumpled heap, consoling myself with tea (ALL the tea) and biscuits. One constant remains, though: writing. No matter my mood, the words are there. They want to come out, and I must let them.

These are my words, this is my life, this is my truth, and I shall continue to live it.