A Blessing in Disguise

Editor’s note: This is Mona Sen’s final blog post for Everyday Health. She died on October 2, 2025.

I’m writing this blog for my wonderful editor, Ingrid Strauch, who has given me freedom of expression and allowed me to write about certain topics that I thought were pertinent to my audience and her beat.

She allowed me to write my own column about multiple sclerosis (MS), which allowed me to express myself as well as use my writing therapeutically for myself. In doing so since 2015, she provided me the opportunity to enrich myself with knowledge about MS and ways to convey it. For this I am forever grateful, because not only were the blows from my journey softened, but my curiosity also abounded.

Now I am in a different phase of life, where I am surrounded by negativity with my diagnosis of mesothelioma. Besides this, I have 45 years of MS, now in the progressive stage, under my belt.

Having fought the good fight, I am now leaving myself to the universe and the ether. Since I have no options to continue my usual course, I will be letting things take their natural course with mesothelioma. That means staring death in the face. So, my journey is well defined.

Friends are pouring in with well wishes for my journey. I have decided that since I have college friends who come every fall to work on projects and cheer me up, this will be an annual event once I am gone. My friend Heather is going to light up the birch trees in my backyard that hold a sacred space. I look at them often from my window. This would act as a memorial every time one views it.

The trees are special to me because my father’s ashes are next to them. Birch trees are also significant because an oil painting of birch trees done by my great-grandmother hangs on the wall above my bed. I have also asked Heather to put her signature pottery fairy house that she made for me near the trees as a memorial. The fairy house lights up at night. I think all of this is a poignant synopsis of our experiences together.

Why is this a blessing in disguise? The cancer, as onerous as it is, will be my savior and will take me and the progressive MS away, leaving me unbounded and not trapped anymore. On this note, I say goodbye.