Letters to MS

Came across this letter today on Letters to MS
It really wrapped up alot of emotions I have about MS.

Here is the full letter. Aside from some minor differences this hits the nail on the head.

A.L., NJ, dx’ed 2005

September 29, 2010 

To M.S.,
You blew into my life nearly six years ago, wholly uninvited, and you stole the last half of my senior year of college.

When I should have been finishing my last term and saying my goodbyes, I was instead waiting for my double vision to cease, getting MRI after MRI, buzzing with corticosteroids, trying to make peace with injecting myself every day for the rest of my life. Oh, yes, and crying…. there was lots and lots of crying.

When those doctors crowded around me that January day and told me what was wrong with me, the air went out of my lungs. You snuffed out whatever feelings of invincibility had survived past my teens. You reduced a happy and otherwise healthy 21-year-old to a fearful child. You made me anxious of my body’s every twinge. You drowned me in panic with thoughts of a life spent in a wheelchair.

You made me afraid. And for that, I will always hate you.

I hate you because no matter how fast I go, I can’t outrun you. You’re always just a step or two behind, breathing down my neck to make sure I don’t get too comfortable.  You’re a tireless enemy who only feigns surrender.

Of all the things for which I hate you, however, I hate you most for the look on my mother’s face when I told her what I had. When I said “multiple sclerosis,” her heart cracked. All she could say was “no,” and I watched her literally sway with the pain of it. If only for that single memory, for the look on her face that I will never forget, I fucking hate you. And for every moment you’ve taken away from her since because she’s spent it worrying about me, I hate you more.

I hate you for isolating me from my peers, who can live lives with just conventional worries.

I hate you for the hours I’ve spent in MRI machines trying to lie perfectly still, worrying what the results will say.

I hate you for giving me secrets to keep — from new friends, new employers, new love interests. I hate you because anyone I date seriously ultimately has to learn that I that I am much more flawed than normal, that I’m out-of-the-box defective. I hate you for making me, at times, feel less worthy of another’s love because I don’t ever want to become a burden.

I hate you for making me hesitate to ever plan anything too far in advance.

I hate you for making me fear becoming a mother — for the fear of the guilt that would swallow me if my child couldn’t skip out on these bad genes…. knowing I could have prevented him or her from ever having to stare down the barrel of a life with you in the sidecar.

I hate you for so many more things, but I’ll stop now to tell you that, to your chagrin, you have not wrecked me in these six years.

You’ve certainly changed me, worn me emotionally — and being the merciless, caustic thing you are, I’m sure you’re not quite done with me — but I’m still here, still kicking, and I‘m pretty tireless too.

I just wanted to make sure you knew that you will never define me.