I’ve had to unlearn and relearn the lessons of my life with multiple sclerosis (MS) so many times it makes my head spin.
From staying on top of an ever-increasing list of disease-modifying and symptom-management drugs coming onto the market, to learning when to pay attention to the disease versus when to look away and pretend that everything is fine, living with multiple sclerosis is the hardest degree we’ll earn but for which we’ll never receive a diploma.
Some of the lessons seem like they should be relatively easy: If you’re having a hard time doing something, pay more attention while doing it. If the payback for an action is no longer in our favor, stop doing it.
Those things should be easy to learn, but they’re something over which I still have not acquired mastery.
Then there are the lessons that I’ve had to learn and then unlearn. Those have, perhaps, been the most difficult new tricks for this aging dog.
Once, All Symptoms Pointed to MS
It used to be, as a younger man experiencing the strange and unusual physical symptoms that were well outside “normal” for my age, that MS was an easy culprit upon which to pin the crime. If there was something physical or cognitive that I began to experience in either rapid or even creeping circumstance, it was probably my disease.
Walking well enough one day and stumbling the next: MS. Gave an hour-long lecture yesterday and today can’t get a full sentence out before someone has to help: MS again. Thirty-something and can’t do the things a fifty-something does without too much effort … you get the picture.
Now, Other Options Such as Age Must Be Considered
Now, however, I’ve had to learn to question the old paradigm. I know that we shouldn’t always blame MS for one symptom or another straight off. I know that, but in the past it was so often MS that “it’s MS again” became the default answer.
Looking back at a number of health issues I’ve experienced over the past two or three years, I have to rethink this default position.
As my body has aged from that of a 35-year-old with the disease to a 56-year-old, I have to accept that MS isn’t the only malady this aging chassis of mine will experience.
Ignoring Symptoms Comes at Our Own Risk
I explained away my early symptoms of the disease for at least 15 years before diagnosis as a young man might with just about anything. But to simply make excuses for things that an older body develops could have rather grave consequences.
I thought a bowel thing I’d been experiencing for a year or so was due to MS. It fitted in not only with the textbook stuff, but also friends with MS had recounted similar symptoms. Come to find out, it wasn’t MS, and it ended up requiring an eight-hour surgery, 12 days in hospital, and nearly a year to fully recover.
Not MS!
As we age — and let us not forget what a privilege that is — our bodies change, they don’t recover quickly (or sometimes fully), and they deteriorate. Those deteriorations can mimic MS symptoms, and aging can look a lot like MS to those who have become accustomed to getting on despite the disease.
Age Is a Gift That Comes With New Lessons
It wasn’t easy to learn the lessons of accepting what MS was doing to our bodies and minds. As we age, however, we have to unlearn some of those lessons and remember that it’s not always MS. It’s not always something that we’ll get used to with time. It’s not always something that we’ll just live with — because some of the things that MS can mimic are things that unlike MS, which we “live with,” are things that people die from.
So, my aging population of friends with MS, it’s time to start learning lessons about living with this disease. It’s not really learning new lessons. Rather it’s like learning the same lessons from a different perspective.
Wishing you and your family the best of health.
Cheers,
Trevis
