Full Circle

by Pauline Pearce ISBN 13: 978 1 84747 014 0 Published: 2006 Pages: 115 Description Full Circle is a remarkable tale about a woman with dystonia. About the Author Pauline Pearce is a leading campaigner in raising awareness of people who live with dystonia. Full Circle is a very open and heart rendering account. Book Extract Why do I feel so sad? I have so much to be thankful for - a good husband; a beautiful, yet temperamental, teenage daughter; a "nice" home, in a "nice" rural Cheshire village and (plus I do stress this) I am sitting in the hot sunshine on a veranda overlooking the Amalfi coastline, one of the most scenic views in, not only Italy but in the entire world. Then - why sad? Why are tears just a nano-second away? Why if I could just doze off in the heat, in the beauty of the surrounding never to re-awaken, why might that feel so good? I'm tired - not tired of life in general - that has potential, new experience, new adventure ahead. No, I'm tired of my life and the constant fight I feel everyday is becoming. I'm 45, yet sometimes I feel doubly this, as I strive not wanting to give in to the illness and pain, both physical & psychologically, that constantly exhausts me. Now would be a good time for an ending - in the warm sunshine, in these beautiful surroundings before life becomes more burdensome and my capabilities become more limited. Before my life shrinks any more. I've never quite understood why so often, on war memorials, mention is made to the sadness of young men cut off in their prime, yet - as a positive - their bodies never ageing. They'll be remembered at the age they met their maker - for the beauty of their youth; for the life potential they had, yet didn't fulfill; for the perfection of their fit, young bodies. I'm scared of death (even though a Christian) - the uncertainties, the finality but, perhaps more, the mode and shape of its advent. I've seen too many friends, near my own age, die recently. I've watched their gradual deterioration, their loss of dignity as illness stripped them of mobility and independence - bed pans, bed baths, loss of control of bowels and bladder; returning both in body and mind to infancy. That scares me. Yet, what of my future? Do I want to cling on to life by the tips of my fingernails, knowing I may endure this? Is this deterioration happening, as I pen this paper? I feel so. Life is different now. Little by little quality is ebbing away, no matter how hard I try to maintain normality as it once was. I'm living a fools paradise. I push myself, often beyond my limits, trying to prove this quality is still there. It's the uncertainty of my illness and, maybe, its progression that scares me. How far will it deteriorate?