Central Nervous System
© 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.
Reality check!
I just saw this picture on a dedicated MS Facebook page. It says “YOU WILL NEVER KNOW WHAT PAIN IS UNLESS YOU HAVE MS!!” Well excusez–moi, please, but that is just OTT. Life is NOT A CONTEST of who has more pain than the other, it’s not a game of showing people how sick we can be. So forgive me for sticking up for others who are otherwise seriously ill, because statements like this only give people the wrong idea of what having MS is really like.
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.
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…
World MS Day 2012
Tomorrow is World MS Day, highlighting the need for more research, better medication and spreading awareness of what MS is and what it does to people who have it. I often think that MS is a “lonely” illness. Because a lot of symptoms are misunderstood and/or not taken seriously by people who don’t have multiple sclerosis, MSers have to educate people in their environment about it. That doesn’t always go easily, and it often takes months if not years before some people finally realize that MS is a serious condition… “Lonely” because very often people around you simply do not know what it feels like to have maddening eye pains, or extreme fatigue. This is not because those people are not ranked high on the IQ ladder, but because some…
World MS Day 2012
Tomorrow is World MS Day, highlighting the need for more research, better medication and spreading awareness of what MS is and what it does to people who have it. I often think that MS is a “lonely” illness. Because a lot of symptoms are misunderstood and/or not taken seriously by people who don’t have multiple sclerosis, MSers have to educate people in their environment about it. That doesn’t always go easily, and it often takes months if not years before some people finally realize that MS is a serious condition… “Lonely” because very often people around you simply do not know what it feels like to have maddening eye pains, or extreme fatigue. This is not because those people are not ranked high on the IQ ladder, but because some…