I want to start this post off by giving a shout out to my wife, Lauren, for being open and honest in her post earlier this month. I talk a lot about my journey with MS and the symptoms I have, the thoughts that run through my head, and the things that I have learned along the way. But I think what gets lost in all of this is that I am not the only one that is effected by this. My wife, and to a lesser extent, my kids are all effected by this as well. The way they are effected looks differently than how I am effected but to say their life hasn't changed since my diagnosis is just plane wrong. I believe in the power open and honest communication has on both the person doing the talking and the ones doing the listening. Therefore I hope my wife can be a regular on this blog going forward.
I felt it was good for her to write a blog post around the 1 year anniversary to hear her story and to give the readers a new voice. Hopefully that was well received! But I still want to give an update on me and my journey after a year. At the end of March I once again hoped onto the cold, hard, and completely uninviting table of the MRI machine for my MRIs. I once again had MRIs on my brain, neck, and spine which total, I believe, an hour and a half of loud noises and someone telling me to stay still or I will mess up the images. Despite the stiff neck after it all I did leave with a confidence. I had felt really well for the last year and honestly probably felt/feel the best I have felt in over a year. After a few weeks I received a call from the doctors office that offered great news! There was no sign of disease progression in any of my MRIs! Praise God!
As I thought about those words and have spoken to a few others recently I realized how incredible those words are. I can go all the way back to 2014 and can account for a new symptom of some sort every single year from 2014 to 2018. Some of those years had a couple attacks so to say my disease was active when I was originally diagnosed last year is an understatement. The doctors wanted to get me on a treatment that was one of the strongest in the business and hopefully get my disease under control. They hoped I wouldn't have any attacks or new symptoms in the first year but really approached it as "hopefully we can get it under control". To think I have gone a year with no new disease progression is incredible and I am incredibly thankful for the combination of God and modern medicine that has combined to allow me to completely get the disease under control in the first year!
Despite all the great news there have been some challenging days in the past year and it is still an adjustment for me to understand and accept my new normal. An example is something I faced over Easter weekend. We were with Lauren's family and we decided to do an adult easter egg hunt where we had a few eggs that has some cash in it hidden outside. It was every man for themselves and I am incredibly competitive so it was game on! The eggs were obviously hidden in locations that were hard for everyone to find, which is expected, but what is hard to find for my wife is going to be even harder to find for me. It is really hard to explain what happens to my vision when I start exercising but all colors become one grayish color and I start to see outlines of people and objects and can't see their finer details. An example is when I played in the alumni game a few weeks back. We had a red team and a black team playing against each other. As I started to play it became hard to tell the difference between my red Jersey teammates and the opposing black jersey players. As you can guess I wasn't able to find any of the eggs which was a little disappointing and hard to accept. Not because I didn't find any eggs and Lauren's sister and Husband killed it, but because I wasn't on the same playing field. We did a super fun family activity and I didn't feel like I could truly participate fully and that was tough.
I try do live my life in a way that doesn't allow MS to dictate the things that I am able to do. Unfortunately, there are times where I allow MS and that negative talk to creep into my head. That was one of those days. I allowed negative talk to creep in and try and tell me that MS is impacting my life more than I give it credit. This negative talk doesn't happen very often luckily. My wife told me the other day when having a discussion about emotions, "You just don't feel anything." It was a little harsh :) but there is truth to that comment. One thing that has helped me have a great year where I am pushing myself and truly attacking this disease is because I don't allow negative self talk into my head. It is harder said than done and I don't have any great resources on how to do that but I do know it is incredibly important. I have said time and time again that the brain absolutely amazes me because of how powerful it is.
I know I am not the only one who allows some negative self talk into their heads every now and again so I want to challenge those that can sometimes struggle with this. When that negative thought comes into your head I want you to remember two things:
You are enough.
You are loved
Remember that you are fearfully and wonderfully made. You were made and no matter what you or anyone else thinks, you are enough and that you are loved. Loved by others and most importantly by God.
Take Heart - John 16:33