MS & Me

Community blog shortlisted for Blog Awards Ireland

These days life as a young person is not without its difficulties. With the economic times we are in, life is hard. Careers are more difficult to embark upon, housing is harder to secure, education isn't as accessible as young people would like. These are issues that can affect people on every level, add a chronic illness on top of that and many people would think life is impossible. Well not the young MSers of today, I hope. While it can be difficult to live with a condition like MS, it doesn't stop anyone from achieving the same things as others, you might just have to go about it a different way. I have spoken to people with MS who have told me that once they received their diagnosis they decided to forget about certain things that they had hoped to achieve in life. The thing is, you can still reach the goals you had set for yourself, and you may just have to rethink how to get to that end point. Sometimes it is the journey you were not expecting to have to make, ends up being the most beneficial, the most memorable.  

Recently I've had a few young people who have been recently diagnosed with MS get in touch. I'm always happy to hear from people, because on of the most common themes I see emerge when these young people start to open up is the isolation they feel post-diagnosis. It's hard to be the only one in your family, your friends, and your peer group that has MS. It sometimes feels like nobody understands.  

I don’t remember too much from the day I got diagnosed in the Lourdes Hospital but I do recall the doctor telling me that I would have to learn to manage my MS. Back then, I didn’t even know what a sclerosis was but I suppose that over the years, I have learned to get along with my lesions- always conscious of the fact that I am at their mercy. I try to get the best out of a bad situation and keep on top of current treatments, research and therapies.

Sometimes we don’t see things as clearly, some things we see more sharply.  One thing that is for certain, MS has changed the way I see things… 

“Oh, it’s getting there. Slowly but surely, and right now just a tad slower than usual…”

Happy Brain Awareness Week!

Counting the cost

One of my favourite quotes by Lewis Carroll is “I can’t go back to yesterday because I was a different person then.”

Something I haven’t thought about in a while is the importance of accurate reporting to my healthcare team. I'm not saying that I tell blatant lies or misleading information but I often find that when trying to remember six or eight months of information, I get it all mixed up. The average clinic visit is about 12 minutes- that is a short amount of time to fit in all the information you need to share with the team! How long do your clinic visits usually last? How long do you wait between clinic visits?