(Actually, I’m cheating a bit… this is also in the ABOUT section… but just in case you don’t go there…)
My name is Andrea.
I’ve been where you are. I’ve been diagnosed. So hang with me a bit. Because what you’re about to read might help you not feel quite so scared. Trust me on this.
Wow. Those first days are the worst. Multiple Sclerosis. How do you even wrap your mind around that?
Just hearing the words for the first time — being recently diagnosed with those words — were horrifying. All I could think about was how I would soon be in a wheelchair… my worst nightmare. My friend told me that there were support groups. So I dutifully went. But that was the wrong thing to do. Even she said that was the wrong thing to do. Why? Because most everyone I met was in a wheelchair. I listened to the speaker — about how the ABC drugs were successful in this many cases, yet they didn’t really know why. Then I went outside and burst into tears. That’s when a man came up and told me, “Honey, it ain’t all that bad. We make do with what we have. In fact, my wife and me were riding down the road the other day and she couldn’t pee — she had to pee real bad — but we didn’t have a catheter, so I just pulled over to the side of the road and whipped out a bic ball point pen and that did the trick. It’s really not a bad disease once you get the hang of it.”
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