Blessed

I was diagnosed in 2010, but can see back through my entire life-the unsteadiness, memory issues, stumbling, and the muscle weakness that I thought was just my imagination or clumsiness.

I was diagnosed in November 2010 with primary progressive MS. I went through all the anger, sadness, how unfair for me to be diagnosed with MS!! But after I went through all the different emotional adjustments I had to make, I realized how blessed I really am.

I will be 60 years old this year. I have lived all of my life to the fullest and there is nothing-NOTHING- I can complain about. I believe I have had MS my whole life, but it just became very active in 2008. So yes I do feel so blessed because I know there are a lot of people that have to deal with the pain, numbness, poor vision, muscle weakness, etc. for most of their lives. I have the muscle weakness issues, the inability to concentrate on anything longer than 30 seconds, the headaches, the muscle spasms, but I can and will continue to deal with it all. I am so blessed-no doubt about it!!

The biggest MS management tip I could give would be for everyone to keep a positive attitude, and never take your caretakers for granted. The one thing that does terrify me are the memory blackout issues. I like to be able to at least know where I am and what I'm doing. But when the people that I love tell me about the things I said or did that I have no memory of doing-that is scary. I no longer drive because of this. But it happens and I just have to roll with it.

Every day is different, there are no definite ways to predict how I'll be tomorrow. Today I might have walked halfway decent. Tomorrow I might wake up and can hardly lift my bad leg off of the floor. So just roll with the punches, and remember this - I might have MS, but MS does NOT have me!!!!