An Open Letter To Those Without MS
I’ve known about this letter for a while now, and sometimes I feel the need to read it again, as if by reading it once more, people around me will understand what having an incurable illness feels like even when they’re not the ones reading it. However, at the end of the day, I cannot step in those people’s shoes and make them accept what is going on inside me. I am the first person that needs to educate my family, friends, ex-colleagues etc. I am the first one that has to tell them the same things over and over, and I will be the only one to know the truth about my own MS. I am my expert-patient and I will be the only one that will have to…
Vertigo: not just a U2 song
“How do I find my way back to my desk?!” With that, vertigo had entered my life in 2005 while I was at work. The hallway seemed to be spinning. Or was it me? Had I finally lost my mind altogether? A tilting floor wanted to meet my knees instead of my feet. “Ground control to Major Tom? Can anyone save me?” Afraid of moving any further because I felt like I would fall on the ground nose first. “Well hello there,” answered Major Tom, “I’m Vertigo, your newest symptom!” Vertigo as in U2’s Vertigo had absolutely no business with MS-vertigo. Please don’t confuse it with the Hollywood-version of acrophobia, either, the latter being an extreme fear of heights.
The stalker called MS
In my job I often had to do “root cause analysis” assessments on what went wrong with a certain account and how we could “cure” it again. I miss the term “root cause analysis” and I thought I’d do a one on myself, or my life. What the heck, it’s not like I have anything better to do on another dreary summer’s day in Ireland! I suspect that my illness, the incredibly annoying stalker called Multiple Sclerosis, entered my system through a back door in the 1990s. I have to go back when I worked in a library and I was having the time of my life, so it couldn’t have come at a worse time. I had a period of extreme fatigue and it turned out to be glandular fever…
Gilenya in Ireland: Yes!
People in Ireland who have multiple sclerosis will finally be able to receive Gilenya from their neurologists! The HSE’s temporary agreement from June 19th 2012 between the Department of Health and the Irish Pharmaceutical Healthcare Association also revealed €20 million savings will be reached by the association. For more, please read http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2012/0619/1224318195781.html This is absolutely fantastic news! The ongoing media campaign set up by the MS Society of Ireland surely made an impact!
Gilenya in Ireland: Yes!
People in Ireland who have multiple sclerosis will finally be able to receive Gilenya from their neurologists! The HSE’s temporary agreement from June 19th 2012 between the Department of Health and the Irish Pharmaceutical Healthcare Association also revealed €20 million savings will be reached by the association. For more, please continue reading here. This is absolutely fantastic news! The ongoing media campaign set up by the MS Society of Ireland surely made an impact!
That daily fight
Sometimes it seems that the hardest battles you will ever have to fight will be the battles with yourself. You strive to get through hours of hard grinding for upcoming exams, or you want to get fit after Christmas and New Year’s parties. We’ve all been there, and the older you get and the harder you seem to try, the more difficult it gets. I’m no stranger to being my own worst enemy when it boils down to fighting health issues. As years go by, and the wiser I should become, I simply cannot turn it into a ‘Remember when I finally learned my lesson?’ After my MS diagnosis in 2005, I told my ex-employer and ex-colleagues countless times, ‘This time I know what to do and next time I…
Learning to be sick
The secret of learning to be sick is this: Illness doesn’t make you less of what you were. You are still you. (Tony Snow) © Willeke Van Eeckhoutte and Ireland, Multiple Sclerosis & Me, 2011-2012. Unauthorised use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Willeke Van Eeckhoutte and Ireland, Multiple Sclerosis & Me with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.