Life was quite good around then. I was employed as a class1 delivery driver at Stan Robinsons to start with but the manager soon decided I was quite good at helping to route and load the smaller delivery vehicles.

I ended up spending more and more time helping in the office as a traffic operator and not going out driving very much. I didn’t mind as I had found a job I quite enjoyed doing, and a bunch of workmates I got on with really well. Several of who I still keep in contact with after more than 10 years!

My MS seemed fairly under control and I don’t think many people realised I had it as I worked just as hard as anyone else. Obviously I had quickly learnt to hide how I was feeling even when I had times when I didn’t feel 100%.

We had our own house which opened up the doors to credit cards and loans etc. That was my downfall as I was useless with money and whenever I was offered a credit card or loan I just said yes. I didn’t realise it at the time but my debts just spiralled more and more out of control.

I was happy with how my MS was going and a lot of the time I could almost forget I had it. But it was slowly getting worse and my legs in particular gradually got more achy. Of course I just totally ignored it and got on with life as normal as possible!

I had made friends with Emil via an online game we both played and we became really good friends straight away. He mentioned one day that he worked as a scuba diving instructor in Cyprus, so I told him it was something I fancied doing. So I booked myself on a course in the UK to do all the classroom and pool work for the PADI Open Water course.

I had already arranged with Emil that once I completed that part of the course I would go to Cyprus for him to complete the course for me. I finished doing the part of the course in the UK then booked a weeks holiday in Cyprus to complete the rest. As soon as I physically met Emil for the first time I knew I had found a friend for life. I completed the OW course and did another couple of courses in the week I was in Cyprus.

I had fallen in love with Cyprus while there and told Hales all about it when I got back home. We decided to have a holiday together there, and that is when Hales fell in love with the island too.

We talked about moving out there but it seemed a bit of a pipe dream to start with. My MS was slowly getting worse so we decided that the climate in Cyprus would help my MS. Our finances had gotten worse due to my stupidity with money and
we realised that the only way forward was to sell the house to try to pay off some of our debts.

We then realised we could either stay in the UK and rent or just up sticks and try Cyprus instead. Not a hard choice to make, so we sold as much stuff as we could, put the house for sale and luckily quickly found a buyer. We packed everything up and 10 days before the completion date on the sale we flew out to Cyprus.

Tried to condense it a bit to stop waffling on too much! I will continue with the start of our Cyprus journey in the next blog.

Rob

The first year being diagnosed was a slightly difficult one. I had to accept that my life was completely changed now and I had no idea what direction I would go. Hales was constant support to me and without her there is no way I would have got through it.

We had only been married just over a year when it all started, learning some of the things that were likely to happen to me was difficult. I’ve never really known how Hales coped with it all and how she felt knowing what was likely to happen.

I must admit that when I was at a low point once I did debate leaving her to spare her having to go through it with me! I quickly realised it was not up to me to decide her life, she had obviously decided to stay with me despite the future and that only made me love her more than I already did.

The MS had kind of settled down after the first 2 relapses and the next few years were fairly normal. I had lost a slight bit of vision in my left eye, but I wore glasses anyway so it made little difference. My legs were weaker than they had been, but I wasn’t planning on running any marathons so that had little impact.

I carried on working full, doing long distance trucking. I had check ups every 6 months and every time I was told I was working too much and should be doing a job 40 hours a week! I did tell them that if they found me a job earning the money I did that only required 40 hours a week I would gladly change! Obviously that didn’t happen!

I had another relapse, this time in my left arm. I was quickly admitted to hospital and a course of steroids quickly sorted it out.

That was the last relapse I remember and life just carried on as normal as possible from there. I did start having other symptoms, but they came on slowly not like a relapse. I started having Urgency when I needed to go to the loo and had to find a toilet fairly quickly when I needed to go. Luckily there were no accidents them days and I learnt to find somewhere to go as soon as it started.

The other symptom I started getting was erectile dysfunction. I’m not embarrassed to talk about it as there is nothing I can do about it so why dismiss it! It was very frustrating (both ways) and is still the symptom I hate more than anything else.

We had finally managed to get ourselves a mortgage and bought a lovely little 3 bed semi in Ipswich. I decided that being away from home all week was not what I wanted any more so I found myself a job doing local deliveries so I could be home with Hales more.

Enough for today, more to follow.

Rob :o)

Thought I would just explain why I chose Burtified as my domain name.

The Burty part was my army nickname. I presume because of Ro-bert and Burt-on, so Burty. 

It really stems from when I’m cooking. I am allergic to onions, I know it’s a weird thing to be allergic to. And it is a really awkward thing as well, it is really surprising how many things have onions, onion extracts or onion powder in! 

It doesn’t make me really ill, just varying levels of being or feeling sick depending on what type and amount are in. Varies from projectile down to a bit of stomach ache and the taste repeating on me.

A lot of the food I particularly enjoy normally contains some form of onion. Spag bol, lasagne, chilli, curry, pies, etc. So a long time ago I started making my own versions of them.

I don’t particularly follow a recipe, I will browse it and then adapt it to how I think it will be OK without onions in. Most of the time it will be fine, I have obviously had some disasters though but not too many.

So basically when I was cooking my own recipe instead of saying that I was adapting it I would say that I was Burtyfying it.

It’s not just cooking that I use it with now though, anything that I adapt to make things easier for me is now classed as being Burtified.

So there you go, that’s why my website is called Burtyfied!

Rob

Somebody said to me ages ago that I should document my life so I thought I would try doing a Blog. Not too sure what I am going to write yet so bear with me for now.

I am 43 years old, very happily married and I have MS.

The first symptoms of my MS appeared in December 1995. At first I thought I had been spending too much time watching telly or playing on my SNES!

I started getting an ache and a bit of blurry vision in my left eye. As a typical man would I chose to ignore it at first, but after it started getting worse after a few days I decided I had better get it checked. So off I went to the GP and after telling him the problem and a quick check off my eye he decided it was probably a virus. I was told if it had not improved in 4 or 5 days I would be best going to the A&E department to get it checked out.

The pain and blurriness gradually got worse the next few days so I took myself to the hospital. I was referred to an eye specialist by the A&E department and then started loads of prodding and pocking and numerous tests! I think they must have given me something for the pain as I don’t recall it getting too bad.

The blurriness was another matter, it steadily got worse so in the end my vision was totally black in my left eye. It was Christmas time by then and we were due to travel from Ipswich to Hull to spend it with my family. I knew I shouldn’t really be driving but decided to do the journey anyway.

The night we decided to travel to Hull just happened to be a night with thick fog and freezing temperatures. I remember being a bit apprehensive at driving in the fog with the use of only 1 eye but we did the trip anyway. I can’t remember how long we stayed in Hull but I remember that when we got back to Ipswich I had more tests and spent a few days in hospital while they gave me steroid treatment to try to speed up the healing process in my eye.

After several more tests including a lumbar puncture which was very painful, I was told by the neurologist I has been seeing that I had Relapsing Remitting MS. Obviously it was a shock to myself and Hales and we had quite a scary time reading about MS as all the information and leaflets we had seemed to show people wheelchair bound and not doing very good.

We did more research on the condition and realised it was not all doom and gloom and it would probably be a few years before I got too bad. In the meantime I had had another relapse which affected my legs quite badly so the neurologist decided to put me on a drug trial that would hopefully limit the number of relapses I had.

Well that’s quite a bit to take in for my first blog so I will stop here for now and continue with the story sometime soon

Rob

I started doing a blog several years ago but I somehow lost interest in it and gave up.  I now want to get back to doing it regularly so I’ve decided to give it another go.

You will have to bear with me in the early stages as I try to get used to it and develop it as much as I can.

I’m not the sort of person to restrict what I want to say so I warn people now that some of my language/thoughts may well be quite controversial. So basically if you are easily offended and something I write upsets you tough! This is my blog and I will say what I want when I want!!

To start with I will republish my original blogs and try to add new content when I can.

Any questions or things you would like to know please ask, I only bite when asked extra nicely!!

Apart from that I hope people find some of it interesting or helpful, even if just to understand my life a little better

Rob