Two years ago I received a moleskine notebook as a gift from a family friend overseas. The cover reads, in French, "Each person has a story."
I used the notebook to write down recipes, grocery lists, quotations, new French phrases I picked up, a eulogy for my grandfather. But never a story. I never really felt like I had one to tell, save for several silly vignettes about my sweet life in Philadelphia when I was in college, or that awesome time when 8 people and a bottle of rum evaded the police.
Fast forward two years and I am newly diagnosed with MS. Ol' Wikipedia has lots of fun things to say about it, including :
-broad spectrum of signs and symptoms
-the cause remains unknown
-often progresses to physical and cognitive disability.
-permanent neurological problems often occur
-There is no known cure
-MS medications can have adverse effects or be poorly tolerated
-Life expectancy of patients is 5 to 10 years lower than that of the unaffected population.
And that's just in the first paragraph. So naturally, upon reading that, I'm freaking out, thinking I'm going to become crazy and crippled, and die 5-10 years earlier than I'm supposed to (My lifestyle already makes my chances of living to be 100 incredibly slim). It was bucket list time, and I decided to start this blog.
I still don't know the direction this is going to go. I want to connect with other people going through the same thing, or help the people that aren't understand it just a little bit better. I don't even just want to talk about MS, because my life is still awesome albeit changed forever by this super inconvenient diagnosis. We'll see what happens.
I used the notebook to write down recipes, grocery lists, quotations, new French phrases I picked up, a eulogy for my grandfather. But never a story. I never really felt like I had one to tell, save for several silly vignettes about my sweet life in Philadelphia when I was in college, or that awesome time when 8 people and a bottle of rum evaded the police.
Fast forward two years and I am newly diagnosed with MS. Ol' Wikipedia has lots of fun things to say about it, including :
-broad spectrum of signs and symptoms
-the cause remains unknown
-often progresses to physical and cognitive disability.
-permanent neurological problems often occur
-There is no known cure
-MS medications can have adverse effects or be poorly tolerated
-Life expectancy of patients is 5 to 10 years lower than that of the unaffected population.
And that's just in the first paragraph. So naturally, upon reading that, I'm freaking out, thinking I'm going to become crazy and crippled, and die 5-10 years earlier than I'm supposed to (My lifestyle already makes my chances of living to be 100 incredibly slim). It was bucket list time, and I decided to start this blog.
I still don't know the direction this is going to go. I want to connect with other people going through the same thing, or help the people that aren't understand it just a little bit better. I don't even just want to talk about MS, because my life is still awesome albeit changed forever by this super inconvenient diagnosis. We'll see what happens.
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