It’s an ongoing lesson of this life with a progressive, debilitating neurological disease. The me of before — both physically and figuratively — has lost his grip. My inability to attain, hold, and manipulate objects to my intention is due to progressive demyelination of the nerves in my central nervous system. It’s also caused by the weakening of muscles that receive signals from those nerves over time. My fine motor skills make it difficult to get things, and my loss of strength makes it difficult hold onto and do anything useful with them. RELATED: 6 Hand Exercises for Multiple Sclerosis
When MS Strips Your Abilities, Does It Also Strip Your Identity?
How very metaphoric to think of these same factors and how they have made it difficult to reach and meet many lofty goals in life. Similar to the way my ability to hold and manage objects has changed in the physical sense because of my difficulties gripping, so too have my aspirations changed for my life as a whole. Unlike the fiddly little bits that are so difficult to grasp with my hands, it’s only the small things of the working world around me that seem to be within my grasp. In other words, while bigger objects are easier to grasp, it’s now only the relatively smaller tasks that can be completed in (again, relatively) acceptable time, to acceptable standard, and with acceptable energy expenditure for me to feel successful at them. Like many people — maybe many men in particular? — I spent a great deal of my life equating who I was with what I did. My career wasn’t just something I did for a living, it was something from which I drew a good quantity of my identity. It took me a long time to separate those two entities of my life after MS stripped away my ability to do what I did or be who I was before.
Processing One Loss Doesn’t Stop the Next One Coming
While I’m at peace with my exit from my career and my worth to the world in that sense, I find it difficult to relive the same stream of feelings and experiences in another aspect of my life. An example? I recently joined a choir to fill some time and reengage with my love of song. Cognitive difficulties keep me from committing words and parts to memory. Standing for an entire performance would just not be in the cards. And now and again, my breath control seems to slip from me as well. I’ll get around these difficulties. I have in the past, and I’ll figure it out again. It’s just worth saying that living through a set of difficulties with MS once and making our way around doesn’t mean that the same path will always be open, that the same work-arounds will be successful, or that the end result will be as near the final goal as previous attempts. It’s just part of learning to live successfully with MS. I suppose it’s part of learning to live successfully, full stop. Just that not as many lessons of living with MS can be used boilerplate-style like they could before. Wishing you and your family the best of health. Cheers, Trevis
