(un)happy anniversary to me

That is right, it’s my anniversary, my anniversary with MS that is. About this time one year ago my symptoms started took right off, by the next day I was unofficially diagnosed with MS in the ER and the officially diagnosed two days later in my hospital room. I remember thinking to myself that my life would never be the same. It is not like MS would simply go away, there is no magic pill, and there is no chance to go back to life without it.

It would be impossible for me to say that I am one hundred percent happy with how things are now, but like I have said so many times, I can still remember what it was like not to think about MS. At some point though you just have to suck it up and accept the fact that things have changed and they will forever remain changed. No matter how hard I try, I will always wake up with MS.

There have been many noticeable differences in the past year for me. Some of those differences have come and gone, some have remained and some have just started appearing. I am very grateful that the ones that have gone are gone; I will never take for granted the ability to speak, to smile, to laugh. I am grateful that the crippling spasms that I had for a month and a half have subsided. I am grateful that I was able to go back to school and push forward and recover to a functioning level.

As always with the positives always comes the negative. The extreme fatigue that I have been dealing with in the more recent weeks, the difficulty regulating my body temperature (steaming, hot, showers- oh how I miss thee), the constant speech mix ups, the problems controlling movements, these are just some of the things I hate and will always hate about this disease.

The funny thing about all that I have been through is in the end it’s made me insanely strong and determined. I refuse to sit on the sidelines, no matter how tired I am and how gross I feel, I always choose to step up to the plate and challenge myself. I don’t want people’s sympathy and it’s hard when people apologize to me for this disease – like they are the ones who gave it to me. When I told my co-operating teacher all about what was going on because I felt it was important to explain the things that could possible affect me, she kept apologizing. Trust me, if there was a person who was waving some magic wand giving people this disease I would be first in line to deck them, but there isn’t so apologies won’t help.

People’s apologies are not what make me stronger. My co-operating teacher kept commenting on how strong I must be and all I could say to her was that you have to be strong. Sure, I have and will always have days where getting out of bed seems pointless, but it is on those days that your true strength comes out and you push through everything. Those bad days have made me so much stronger, those bad days have added so much to my character, and those bad days are what push me to succeed. My friends that have stuck by my side this past year push me so much; they have no idea what they really mean to me.

As I wrap up this part of the post I would like to also say thank you to my readers. The fact that I have “followers” is mind blowing to me. The online MS community is amazing and supportive and it’s always great to know you are not alone. Lisa Emrich has done an amazing job gathering all the MS blogs in one place at the Carnival of MS Bloggers . When I started my blog I thought the idea of having people read it was terrifying and I was very tempted to block it from public access. I am so glad that I choose otherwise. The idea of letting my roommates or my friends read this blog is terrifying. To date, I have only sent the link to one of my friends and even that was a hard task to accomplish. Maybe eventually I will be able to give them the link…maybe in a few years...

Once again thank you all so much for reading, commenting and for writing such amazing blogs.

P.S- I had my MRI Friday, I have my appointment tomorrow at 3:30 with my neurologist and his nurse practitioner…I have to remember to write out my questions and concerns because I know I will not remember them by tomorrow afternoon. Oh also, my dinner last Wednesday night with the 20’s and 30’s something MS group went well, dinner was really tasty and the guest speaker was an Aromatherapist. I will say that having a aromatherapist at dinner is not top of my list just because she kept passing around different essential oils all throughout dinner and had us smell them. It kind of killed my appetite, good thing for doggy bags though. I promise to write more about the aromatherapist sometime this week, it was very interesting to say the least.