My First Post!

Hello? ...tap tap tap... Is this thing on?

So this is my very first blog. I was totally peer pressured into it by friends on Facebook. If it stinks, it's their fault...not mine!

Not quite sure where to start, so I'll choose to go with the day I learned I had MS. MS = Multiple Sclerosis. You know, holes in the head. I remember saying as a kid, "I need such-and-such like a hole in the head"! But I've discovered that holes are for cool people. I was always the cool kid, right? Just because I'm old now doesn't mean I lose coolness. In fact, I'm SO cool, I have them in my cervical and thoracic spine as well! Prince sings a song about holes in the head. And no one is cooler than Prince!

It was late August of 2003. My son and I were sitting in my dear friend/chiropractor's exam room as my husband was being treated. Earlier that day, I had gone for a brain scan. My mother, having such confidence in said dear friend/chiropractor's abilities as a diagnostician, insisted on taking the films to her that day for review. I still remember how she wouldn't make much eye contact with me, and was uncharacteristically quiet. Hmm, that told me that she knew what was causing my insane symptoms, and it was gonna hurt to hear it. As we were all walking out of the exam room, I turned to ask her if she had a chance to look at those films. She said yes, and that there were "areas of demyelination". Ouch! I rushed husband and son out of the room, because I was coming apart at the seams in 3...2...1. Didn't want them to see me ugly cry. Ya know, crying so hard you can't breathe and stuff comes out of your nose? Praise God for you, CST, I'm sure it was a hideous sight! But she hung in there and encouraged me with everything she had. She told me many things that MS wouldn't change in my life...perhaps the most memorable was that it wouldn't change the mother I was to my kids. My kids are my entire being. She must've known that my immediate thought upon hearing that dx was, "how will I raise them?".

Next came the hard part. The drive down to my parents to tell them. I walked in and asked to see them out back, away from my grandmom. Mom and Dad sat together on the swing and I said, "um, it looks like I have MS". Seemed like 10 minutes of silence went by before Dad got up and walked away, not saying a word. I remember the single tear falling down his face, though. Mom held me tight and cried. I realized that the message was definitely harder on the person relaying it.

So all this probably sounds pretty depressing, right? I agree, let's move on.

Four years earlier, I had come to know God. When your son is born with a rare GI disease and you spend several days in a scary hospital with even scarier initials to represent it, you have a way of finding your Savior.

My journey thusfar in my health, 10 years post initial symptoms, has been quite intense. I've had to leave everything I thought I knew of myself at the door, as well as every familiar self-measuring tool. When I was younger, my worth was validated according to how many newspaper headlines my athletic achievements could score. Or what that person thought of me...or that person, or that one. I spent a lot of wasted time and energy with that thought process! I have God now. With each curve MS threw, I gained more strength in Christ. Let's face it, I'm not out there rippin' up the field, court, etc. anymore as a headliner! There are days I lose feeling in my feet and legs just walking out to the mailbox! And judging my worth by what others think of me? Let's just say I learned quickly that my worth is rooted in who I am in Christ. I'm much happier knowing that:-)

My motto on MS is, "why NOT me?", as opposed to "why me". And my mantra is, "I have MS, but it doesn't have me". You will not hear me call it "my MS", because mine it ain't! It just is. Heck, I don't even like capitalizing its initials, so I usually don't! I try to find something humorous in it no matter the symptom. It wouldn't have always been that way, and I thank our Lord for that outlook!

Well, that's all for now. I promise this will be the most lengthy post of all, because it's the background for my random thoughts that FB friends seem to enjoy!