MS Sucks

You know what? Life with multiple sclerosis is really hard. Sometimes, I get depressed for no reason. This seems to happen to me a lot. It literally affects your brain and your spine, making it impact your life in different ways. The way that multiple sclerosis manifests for me, I have lesions on my spine that make it difficult to walk. My left leg literally has trouble lifting itself off of the ground for me to be able to walk.

Thankfully, I have no lesions on my brain. I’m an intellectual. That is very important. I remember seeing a specialist and him looking at my brain and saying, “Are you sure you have MS?” But then he saw my spine and realized I was a hot mess. Despite my best attempts at going to the gym regularly – I used to love spin class  – I started exhibiting symptoms in my highly stressful PhD program. I didn’t know it at the time, but my body was definitely telling me something when it was trembling in the middle of the night for no reason or when I was learning tango and my left foot started dragging a little bit.

What to do? I’ve tried diets. I’m on drugs. There is no cure, so nothing can reverse it. I have tried a number of different devices to help my foot lift itself off of the ground so I can walk better. None has been particularly impressive.

I am tired of keeping my head up and just charging forward as if it’s just us an impediment that is one of many that I have to overcome. Instead, these days, I wallow more. I’m more than life that I might have had. I mourn the friends and family who are inconvenienced by it but gaslight me into thinking I did something wrong. Life never turns out the way that you expect it, but until there’s a cure, all I can do is do my physical therapy exercises as best I can, eat as many fruits and vegetables as possible. (I strive for 9 a day because of the Wahl’s Protocol. I eat the good fats. I munch on fish of the SMASH variety. I avoid sugar-AKA The Devil. And I also avoid dairy and gluten since they make my symptoms worse.

I wish I was as lucky as my former colleague who could wear pants and a foot brace that was invisible and she got along fine. She didn’t wear dresses or skirts, so nobody would have known that she had a similar illness. I don’t have that luxury. I walk around town pushing my walker slow as I try to get from point A to point B, hoping not to fall and hoping that wherever I go, the builders thought about people like me.