| Living With Multiple Sclerosis |
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| One reason this website was created was to share my story of having Multiple Sclerosis with others. If the new/student teacher component does not prove to be helpful to others, perhaps some will find this section interesting. |
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Multiple Sclerosis is the reason I have the time at the age of 36 to be sitting on my backside creating this website. You see, life is grand as long as I don't do much of anything that involves a significant amount of energy. I retired from teaching at the age of 33. Woohoo! Most would be jealous, but don't be. |
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So one of my challenges that I am trying to learn how to embrace is living with the unpredictability of dealing with MS symptoms. Actually, as time goes on, I can kind of anticipate when I'm going to get an exacerbation. An exacerbation is when the process of making scar tissue in my brain or spinal cord becomes excessive and I can actually feel symptoms from it. In time, I will be linking to pictures of my brain from here. If nothing else, the teachers who visit this site may be able to use the photos to show their students what a brain looks like, and what one with scar tissue in it looks like. It is absolutely fascinating. |
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When I was first diagnosed, at the age of 28, I kept knowledge that I had a disease from as many people as I could. I had been raised to not be proud of having a disease. Since my father died when I was little, from cancer, my family had gotten over the "C" word, but other diseases just were not accepted. After all, at 28 years old, I'm supposed to be creating my career, meeting my future partner, having fun, making friends...not having MRIs, blood tests, and blind spots in my vision. Sadly I was fortunate to have a student who had to go on Methyltrexate (is that the right spelling???) for her juvenile arthritis. Because of her strength I found strength to push myself to keep teaching. Ultimately her inspriation was not enough to keep me being able to work full time. Eventually I could not even work part-time if that involved working daily. |
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I have the wrong personality to have a chronic disease. I don't know anyone who has the right personality, but I know I don't. One "flaw" of my personality is wanting to help people. One reason I quit graduate school was because I did not feel like I was helping anyone. Fortunately when I started teaching, I "found" where I am supposed to be. I'm supposed to torture students, make them think, give them opportunities to make a mess, and encourage them to believe in themselves. But the way our society is set up, I'd have to work every day. Imagine that! And when I do something every day, outside of my home that requires thought or concentrated energy, my body gets bitchy and something goes bezerk. When all it was was my leg that started to drag, I was fine. So I learned how to deal with life looking young and using a cane. But last spring, my body did not choose to "punish" me by tightening up my leg like it had been doing for the last few years. NOOOO, that was too easy. I could still drive. I could still teach. I could still work or at least do something every day when all that happened was my leg dragging. Nope, this time the scar tissue targed my vision. Now when I do too much, I can't track. When I can't track, I can't drive. When I can't drive, working is more difficult, buying groceries is an adventure, and even maintaining my sanity is a challenge. |
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Most recently I started working part-time with student teachers. The aspiring new teachers I work with are wonderful, optimistic, and intelligent people. I enjoy pursuing questions about how to teach this or that, or how to work with a student that does this or that. Unfortunately, however, my idiotic body does not like me working even this much, part-time. Oh, I work maybe a few hours a day 3 or 4 days a week. But apparently that is still too many hours not spent sleeping. So how did it let me know that I'm doing too much? Well, I now have the joy of using a plastic tube to remove urine from my bladder. Yep, I have to catheterize myself so I can pee. Otherwise I'll do damage to my kidneys, and can't let that happen, now can I? One good thing to note is that the self-catheterization is a temporary solution as long as I have accupuncture. I can usually pee without assistance within 5 days of having had accupuncture. Because this is too narrow of a window for me, I will be quitting my current part-time job. I want to go back to how things were during the summer where peeing was not necessarily a cognitive experience. |
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Links to MS related pages at this site |
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Links to other MS websites
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Link to my business, Online School Surveys
Something I can do from bed to earn some income. Check it out and have your school hire me :-) |
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