Living with MS

“Look calmly and confidently at the situation. Then step gratefully forward, and make something beautiful, valuable, and meaningful out of it all.” -Ralph Marston About 3 weeks ago, I got...

It’s finally happening: I’m losing weight. High time that pendulum starts favoring the other end of the fulcrum. I was beginning to think the math was failing me. Now, I’ve...

One night while sleeping, I rolled over, partially awake, but with my eyes closed. I noticed something strange: swirls and flashes of greenish light projecting across my eyelids. What could...

Born into a family with a mechanically inclined father, I learned early on about tools. They were necessary to fix what might be the malfunction of a vehicle, an appliance...

Poverty, some people argue, is relative. It very well might be. I can introduce you to several of my poor relatives, not to mention friends and colleagues. Based on that...

Not many people other than close family and friends knows that "Calie" is not my birth name. My true first name is "Calissa", but I’ve always gone by "Calie" for...

I was thrilled to attend the ACTRIMS 2018 conference in San Diego, in early February. Who wouldn’t welcome the chance to be in sunny weather while my home state of...

When it comes to living with Multiple Sclerosis (MS), this is definitely one of my top 5 things that angers me above all else; when someone tells me that I...

Patient ‘splaining. We all do it. Heck, it’s part of the job description of a chronically ill person. When the doctor asks how I’ve been doing, I always answer with...

Content note: The following article mentions details surrounding the author's experiences with self-harm. If you or a loved one are struggling, consider reading our mental health resources page or calling...

One day, while feeling especially reflective and pondering over the plethora of aspects that living with Multiple Sclerosis brings, I wondered how much of a challenge it’d be to ascertain...

The process of diagnosing someone with Multiple Sclerosis is not easy. There is no one test that guarantees you have MS. Instead, doctors rely on a series of tests and then...

I’m not sharing with you an essay dedicated to celebrating my MS Diagnosis Day anniversary, but let me get this out of the way: I was diagnosed on February 14...

In the first part of this series, I talked about those tough questions involved in deciding if we really want to date with our disease. In this chapter, I want...

I am young. I was born in 1990, but that means I am just “old enough” to remember when this “internet thing” started to really take off. Nothing like the...

Since I’ve been sharing my battle with MS, I’ve been fortunate to talk to many people about their own struggles (which is great, because I see everything I write as...

“This is not a great way to start the new year.” This text was the cold response received after advising my employer I’d be unable to return after the Christmas...

Try to imagine what disease looks like. Any disease. Diabetes, for example. When you hear the word, what do you envision? An amputee? A morbidly obese person? Or your own...

Confessions? Survivor? Oh puh-leeze. So melodramatic, Dave. I know, right? But when I was preparing to get an autologous hematopoietic stem cell transplant (HSCT) in 2010 for my aggressive multiple...

Sunday I had a very busy schedule. Something I don't normally do. Because of extreme fatigue, I limit myself in the amount of errands I perform in a day. It...