Cure Or Curse, Part II

Let me explain.

Yesterday I wrote of the built-in caveat afforded by MS to the MS sufferer, which goes something like this:

I would really like to rake up those leaves in the yard, but the MS fatigue has just totally wiped me out today. Perhaps I’ll feel better tomorrow (or maybe it will rain and render the idea moot anyway).

I would really love to work overtime for the next five days, but my body simply will not cooperate. As a matter of fact, I need some time off (and, btw, you’re required by law to give it to me). Damn MS!

Honey, I absolutely intended to take your car to the DMV and to stop by the bank and to pick up those things you wanted at the craft shop, but I just simply forgot. It all just fell through a hole in my brain.

You see?

Now have I ever used my disease in such an insincere and dishonorable manner? Of course not. God forbid. I’m just saying.

The thing is, there is really no need for dishonesty, for the conditions referred to above—fatigue, exhaustion, confusion, limitation—are baseline with MS, always present. These are the things we struggle daily and hourly against. We may sometimes feel a bit better (in fits and starts, anyway), and we may sometimes feel a bit worse. Sometimes we feel a lot worse.

We may be slow, lazy, and stupid, but at least we have a good excuse for it.

But, of course, people don’t like excuses (when they are, that is, the excuses of other people), nor do we who have MS like excuses, even our own. We make choices on a daily basis whether to give in to our illness, and thus end up feeling guilty and worthless, or whether to press on against the increasing solidity of the wall thrown up in our path by the symptoms which define our disease.

We have, to begin with, our own expectations. As healthy, non-diseased people, we were used to coming at least somewhere near to satisfying our own expectations. Now, with MS, what we expect from ourselves has not changed, but the ability, or anything like it, to live up our expectations has deteriorated quite significantly (kind of like the present economic situation in the US). It would be nice if our investments could reach anticipated goals, as they used to do, but the fact is that the bank is broke, the market has crashed, and our resources are sadly diminished.

The first rule of having to disappoint others is that this comes only after disappointing ourselves.

This is the key most often overlooked by those who do not have our disease. Often I find myself wishing that people would think this through a little more completely.

What, are we happy with being lazy, happy with being weak, happy with being exhausted, happy with being stupid?

Think again, right?

Please try to remember me as I was before. If I seem different now from what I was then, please ask yourself what happened in between. And believe me when I tell you that I'm trying, and that I am trying much harder now than I would have then.