World MS Day 2013
World MS Day 2013 today. While my diagnosis gave me a lot to think about, it gave back so many things to cherish and love: friends that care, family that supports and a medical team that is ready to tackle my every need. While there might not be a cure yet, I feel blessed to have received a second chance on life to do right by others, to lobby and to open the eyes of many. Thank you everyone for walking along my path of MS. You are the best!
World MS Day 2013: stay positive
World MS Day 2013: be informed
What is MS?
WMSD 2013: cure ignorance
You never know how strong you are…
One of the most emotional journeys you could go on, is meeting yourself along the road of a diagnosis you never wanted to happen. It will make you, shape you and perhaps take you somewhere you don’t want to go, but for now, you have to. You lose a parent, a brother or sister, or someone else you dearly loved, and yet time goes on. Time has to go on. For your family, for yourself. Years later you realize you went through that loss maybe a bit better than you ever thought you would. Because being strong was the only option you had. Being diagnosed with an illness that can’t be cured is a little bit similar. Or is it? The day I received my multiple sclerosis diagnosis is a…
UNCRPD – The Right on Participation in Political and Public Life
It has been a great, uplifting two weeks. Busy, yes, but it was also about self-analysis and giving back. If I remember well – as you know my memories have a short lifespan – it was all about life with MS. I finally received meds for trigeminal neuralgia, aka the ‘suicide disease’ last week. As trigeminal goes, it is one of the most painful conditions according to medical staff. Over the past three to four months, many a thought went into on finding ways of eradicating the pain. It went as far as referring to it as ‘trigeminal blah blah blah’ because I started hating the word and all it stood for. Not often do I lose hope when I am in a lot of pain, and with a pain…
An Irish General… and me
The places that we pass through day after day, or even once in a lifetime, leave in their small way, echoes and traces of themselves upon us. But so often when taking self-portraits or pictures of friends, the places themselves become a softly blurred mush of indistinct semi-nothingness, the limelight stolen by our smiling faces. Take a picture of yourself or someone else as a shadow, a reflection, or a lesser part of a scene, making the background, or — as in the example above — the foreground, the centre of attention. © Willeke Van Eeckhoutte and Ireland, Multiple Sclerosis & Me, 2011-2013. 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…