One of the issues that I have been grappling with lately is how this disease has changed the way I view myself.  I would like to sit here and say that I am the very same person as I was before being diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis.  But I would be lying to myself to say this.  I am different.  My body and brain do not function in the same manner as they used to.  Each day I must learn to navigate the world in ways I never imagined. 

Several years ago I didn't even know what Multiple Sclerosis was.  I had heard of it certainly.  But it was in the context of some distant and alien planet I never intended upon visiting.  I can recall one person I knew who had it.  In graduate school I had a professor who had MS.  I remember her as a slight woman with eyes too big for her face.  Her body seemed perpetually bent or slumped.  Some days she walked with a cane and always had students carry her books.  I didn't pay much attention to my professor's plight as I didn't understand it.  She had us read books about the mind body connection and the healing powers of alternative therapies.   I was surprised by her textbook choices then but now I have a different view entirely.

I believe a disease such as MS can push one to the outer limits of possibility.  When traditional medicine does not seem adequate to explain or treat this mysterious disease you begin to look for other ways to make sense of things.   What was just another class to me back then was really a revelation of this woman's life.  I was oblivious to her vulnerability and her attempts to find hope.    I all too well understand her mindset now. 

My MS has humbled me.  My confidence in a black and white world of science and facts has been replaced by human frailty.   There are some things which will never make sense despite all the statistics and figures you throw at it.  There are many things the mind can conceptualize in logic but which the heart and soul will never understand.

Sometimes I think about my various roles and I attach the label of MS patient to them all.

Who am I? 

I am a mom.  "Not anymore," I remind myself.  Now I am a mom who has MS.

I am a friend.  I am a friend who has MS.

I am a writer.  I am a writer who has MS.

I am a wife.  I am a wife who has MS.

It is a silly exercise indeed.  But it gets me to thinking that I will always have this "MS" attachment which lingers after me. 

Am I MS?  Am I this disease?  I can hear most of you crying out, "NO!" and that we will never be our disease.  We are people first. 

I think about my son who has autism.  Some people might call him autistic.  This is not politically correct nowadays.  You are supposed to put the person first and then the disability.  Then there are those who are opposed to labels of "disability."  There are euphemisms of "differently abled" or such and such challenged.  I once heard a reference for persons who are obese as "horizontally challenged."  I suppose short people could be described as "vertically challenged."  Do the words make a difference?