Xanthia's MS Life

I rescued me. I feel as if I'm taking my first breath in two years. I have fixed some problems that I wasn't even sure were fixable. I have learned to be my own mother, father, wife, husband and friend (the only one of those I actually have in my life is friends). I run a household, fix and tackle home maintenance, take care of my car, go to my doctor appointments and make sure I take my meds, balance a budget, take myself out, buy myself coffee, read to myself and go to funerals where I comfort myself on my own shoulder.

The isolation that results from living with this disease coupled with the limitations imposed by freezing winters is the hardest thing to make peace with. I can't fight isolation any more than I can control my fatigue. But how to make peace and cope with loneliness and isolation? I don't know but just like every obstacle in my life, I'll figure out a way.

This post is for anyone with a chronic disease. Don't you hate it when you tell a new acquaintance about your illness and you get "the look"? You know the look - the one that says, "Oh, sucks to be you. Crap, now I feel uncomfortable...quick, change the subject...do not look at the elephant in the room...DO NOT LOOK AT THE DISEASED ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM." That look passes as a fleeting shadow across their faces but it conveys all that.

It is so refreshing when someone actually asks me about my MS instead of treating me as if I had just proudly announced I had syphilis. It doesn't bother me at all to talk about it so it was indeed pleasant to tell my new business associate that I had MS and got the proper response - thoughtful and intelligent. Sometimes it's the little things that make a world of difference.

Lately I've been feeling sorry for myself. I've been in this morbid funk for weeks. There are things I want to change and improve in my life but I'm having a really hard time finding a way to do it alone. I hate feeling like a victim but my MS takes away my sense of empowerment. The fatigue gets so bad that I cannot help myself and I'll be damned if I'm going to sit here holding my breath waiting for someone to come along and rescue me. Part of me (a very small part) needs rescuing but that's not the way my life goes. So what should I do? Give up? Sell the house, relinquish my pets, trade my life for something I equate with total failure? I may have to.