Sep
1
Multiple sclerosis: the eloquent rage of a party girl cut down – Telegraph
Filed Under Personal Stories
There’s an itch on Collette Waller’s face that she badly wants to scratch. She raises a pale, uncertain hand, wafting it about until it finds the right spot. Once, twice, it misses. She persists. Any of us sitting with her would help, but that’s not what she wants. She won’t even ask. Her power of movement is getting more limited by the day, but she’ll be damned if she’ll surrender the last vestiges of independence.
Not so long ago, she could still drink tea from a mug by herself – if she concentrated very hard. She wrote a poem about it: the ludicrous effort of co-ordinating brain and hands when your nerves have gone, the precision placing of the handle, the monkey lips pursed to reach the rim of the mug without spilling, the fury of knowing that “a poxy child’s beaker” with a lid would make things easier.
Collette is 36 and has a particularly aggressive form of multiple sclerosis. She was a tireless party girl, a brilliant county netball player, a traveller, someone who knitted her family together. Now she is sitting in a wheelchair while a carer brushes her eyelids mauve and applies mascara. On the table beside her is the thing she refused for so long: a mug of tea with a straw that someone has to lift every time she wants to drink. There is also her book of poems – angry, fast and full of strong language, shouting truths about disability that most people would rather not hear.
Read the rest: Multiple sclerosis: the eloquent rage of a party girl cut down – Telegraph
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