As an engineer in the offshore industry, a course you have to do is called the TBOSIET, basically an offshore survival skills course. This is needed before you are allowed to fly onto a platform or rig. It’s pretty physical, there’s climbing into helicopters, being inverted and having to escape while underwater. There’s escaping from a smoke filled room while blindfolded. There’s using fire extinguishers to put out real fires, albeit very small and controlled. There’s hauling yourself into a life raft from the pool.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

I completed this two day course today. I’ve done it a few times previously, but since MS, had slowly seen my offshore trips diminish then disappear. This inability to see, and touch, and hear, the physicality of my work, had been a dull ache for the last few years. Before I went to Moscow, there were days I couldn’t walk from the bus station to my office, a few hundreds of metres.

The AHSCT, September 2018, then seemingly endless physio and rest and gentle exercise, culminated today in a huge step towards regaining that part of my career I thought I’d never manage again. Now, I can go back offshore again.

• Uncategorized