Ignorance is Bliss...

The title of this blog defines a way I wish I could feel about MS... just pretend it isn't there. Even the daily reminder of the shot can turn to routine and I can function as if there is nothing wrong. But then there are the small things that remind me of my disease. The Friday when I take the girls to Subway after preschool and I drop my paper cup at the soda fountain because I just couldn't grip it or the times when for just a second, my vision goes blurry and I wonder if this is another attack, will I end up blind? And then there is the running... for those of you that don't know, I am running and most definitely walking my way through the Walt Disney World Marathon in just a few short weeks. When I signed up for this marathon I was not diagnosed with MS and I had dreams of having another baby in about a year or so... After I started experiencing numbness when I ran, I wondered what was up, if this was the MS I had been told I didn't have... sure enough days after a 5K in August, MS showed up in full force numbing one side of my body and creeping over the the other side as the weeks went by before I saw the doctor. The running now is going well but every time I run, my toes goe numb on my right foot. It's the strangest thing, its as if they fell asleep as I pounded away at the pavement. The other thing that happens when I run is my vision loss. With MS, body temperature is critical - Have you ever thought about why you get a fever when you are sick? It is because your body is fighting an infection, your body being your immune system. With MS, your immune system defines infection as your central nervous system. Making itself the enemy. Body temperature is crucial to symptoms associated with MS. What I mean is that getting too warm (feverish) will cause your MS to flair. So with running, I tend to go blurry a bit during a run. Nothing I can't manage and honestly, I am used to it. I have always prided myself on good vision being 20/20 most of my life but surprisingly I have gotten used to the boughts of occasional blindness. What choice do I have? I can freak out and tell myself I can't do it but what good would come of that? I mean come on, it's just a little blindness I say.

So as I approach these final training weeks for my marathon, I wish I could be ignorant of my disease, ignorant of the pain of the daily shot but once again, what choice do I have? What kind of a parent would I be if I didn't stand up and try to fight this? To beat it? Even more so, what kind of a person would I be if I didn't even try? I can tell you, I'd be a hypocrite that's for sure. Someone who says one thing and does another... That's not who I am. I was raised better than that.

So here I am fighting away. Who knows if this drug is working to slow my disease to a tortoise pace? I have to believe in something, otherwise there would be no hope at all. I would just lay and wait for the enemy to take me... who wants to live like that? Not me and I am sure not you.


There's a saying in the MS world, yes that's right, I am in a different world now... The saying that people with MS hear is, "But you look so good." What they mean is how can you be sick if you don't look sick? I think sometimes those of us with MS should have a sign on our forehead so people would understand that even though on the outside things appear fine, chaos is the life of our immune system and central nervous system. I am always tired and sometimes depressed... thank God for my husband and daughters to give me reasons to smile because without them, I just don't know what kind of person I would be. They empower me, are my motivation and strength.

A lot of people thought I was crazy for getting married so young at 23, having babies at 24 and 26 but you see, even though at the time I thought it was my plan, it wasn't. I believe it was God's plan. I kept reworking "my" plan every time life threw a curve ball but those weren't curve balls, those things were part of the master plan, a plan written in my best interest. Imagine that, MS is in my best interest? How could one possibly believe that?

News flash people - we all want to believe in something so for me, this is what I choose to believe.