A Series of Adjustments

I guess it is natural to ask “why me” when you find out you have a serious illness. I don’t remember going through that stage. I had more of the “why not me” reaction. I did not feel sick. I could walk fine. It was scary, but it did not immediately change my life drastically.

Since being diagnosed sixteen years ago, I have seen multiple sclerosis as a series of adjustments. A few weeks before finding out I had MS, I was walking with my husband a mile a day, and now I did not have the stamina. Now I knew why I was so exhausted at the end of each school day that I headed for the nearest gas station for a Coke—which I immediately drank just for the sugar and caffeine lift.

I began to adjust. I adjusted to tripping a lot. Then I adjusted to falling once in a while. I kept driving until I could not lift my right leg fast enough for a braking emergency. At that point I got hand controls and drove many more years.

When I could no longer walk through a big grocery store, I adjusted to a smaller one. I adjusted to a cane, then a walker, and then a wheelchair. To keep teaching, I eventually bought a second-hand power wheelchair, which I only used at school.

My house was a split-level with a sunken living room. I adjusted to a stairlift to get upstairs, and gradually adjusted to sitting—first downstairs and then upstairs. Eventually I spent most of my time in my bedroom upstairs. I even had my own little refrigerator and microwave.

The main adjustment I made was the frame around my life being much smaller. I still had a picture inside, but the frame was smaller.

Immediate changes for the better that MS brought to my life:

External things fell out of focus. Suddenly I did not care so much about the peripheries of life. I turned my eyes on God in a way I never had before. He was the only answer to the uncertainties I faced. I decided to finally read my Bible straight through. All my earlier efforts had fizzled out in the minor prophets.

This time I set no time limit, read some Genesis, some Matthew, and a Psalm each day. I used a newer version, and it took a year and a half. Immediately I started over in another version, and finished in a year. By now I was teaching half a day, and even with grading had a lot of time, I chose another version and read it in sixth months.

One day I was telling someone how much I loved the Holman translation when I suddenly realized that I had fallen in love with the Bible, God’s Word, no matter what the translation. It took MS to narrow my focus to what was really important.

The other change for the better was that I finally had time to write—at least after I began working part-time. It was what I had wanted to do since high school, it was what I studied in school, it was my dream. I had made an effort to write when my kids were young; however, the need to help out financially sent me back to school for a second degree—this one in teaching.

Teaching English should take three or four hours a day of homework—I mean for the teacher. You can’t teach writing unless you are willing to spend the time marking papers. That is what it takes to help students improve their writing. This took all my after school hours before I went part-time, and a lot of time after.

But now I had a little time for me—thanks to MS. No matter what this disease has taken from me, it has given me focus on what is really important.