Does it ever make you feel old?

As dad has been round for the past few days looking after both me and Niamh after Chris had to go back to work we have spent a lot of time watching Niamh since she felt a bit better and has been back to her normal self. The other day she was getting up off the floor and did it the same way as me, dad pointedly said, "that's how I get up". Great, I thought, me too. He then went on about how it was because he was "getting old" which of course made me think, "joy, I'm getting old about 40ish years before my time" (when you factor in the age difference and how long I've had M.E and fibro).

Since I've been ill with these I've often thought of myself as old before my time. When I was 21 and began using a walking stick, then crutches, then a wheelchair and even hired motor scooters on multiple occasions, it was kind of like being 21 going on 90 something. When I started loosing my memory, forgetting words and who people were I felt like I had dementia. When my light sensitivity started I felt like an elderly person at the old peoples home I used to work at, shut up in a stuffy room day in and day out. When my hearing started going a bit weird and my mind began taking far too long to work out what people said that I missed the next parts of the conversation (kind of like when you are in school learning French and someone says something, you have to translate it in your head before you understand it) and I was having to constantly say "pardon" I felt even older.

I'm 27 and in my head I don't feel old, in fact in my own head I feel like I haven't aged since I was a teenager, all be it I am more responsible but I still think of myself as otherwise the same way. It is only my body that makes me think I am old before my time. The joint and muscle pain, the inability to walk far, the way I have to move, the way I cannot get up or down off anything without help or a series of well rehearsed moves (or occasionally a sling shot) doesn't help. The aids I have around the house, a bath lift, a kettle tipper, a bed guard, my sofa raised and a perch (to name but a few) in my head as a child/teenager, these were things that old people had. O and medication, that's another thing. Dad was saying how he felt went he was told he would need to be on medication for the rest of his life due to high blood pressure, something that never occurred to me. I can't really remember what it is like not to be as have had asthma since age 6 so have always had to do something everyday, but I am now on handfuls of tablets and injections. I have needles, syringes, a sharps bin and a collection of tablets so big they have to be stored in a filing cabinet (seriously). Once again, in my child brain, this amount of medication was something re-severed for old age (it never occurred to me as a child, that sick and disabled people need this amount too).  Does this illness make anyone else feel as old as it makes me?

Anyway, on a lighter note, here are mine and Niamh's 366 photos for today, me:

And Niamh, after putting a silly bow on her head (I of course had to adjust it a little bit)

Night folks!