Jan West
"GRATITUDE FOR WHAT WE HAVE - !In June of last year, I was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis. In fact, I spent a couple of hours of my 30th birthday in an MRI machine! (not exactly how I thought my 30th would go!)
I was alarmed when I awoke one morning to find my left hand and arm felt as if they were asleep. I thought to myself, this will go away, but by the end of the day it hadn't and by the end of the week it had spread to my chest and back. I figured it was probably a pinched nerve or something and I started to do some exercises, stretching and having my 3 year old son walk on my back. Nothing seemed to help. Then a few days later, I began to notice other parts of my body with similar strange sensations including my legs and feet and had some trouble walking. At this point, I became very scared. Doctors had a suspicion of what this might be, but had to rule everything else out before they could conclude that this was indeed Multiple Sclerosis. I held out hope that this would pass, and would be just a one time occurrence. They did an MRI and found 2 lesions in my cervical spine and 1 in the brain stem, since my diagnosis I have had 1 more lesion pop up in my cervical spine. I hope that I will follow a benign course with this, but I know that it is very uncertain for me at this point. I didn't know much about MS then, but now I do and I hope that I can do all that I can to help them find a cure.
My recent experience of being diagnosed with MS has given me a deeper understanding of gratitude. Some of you may think that how can she be grateful she just got this terrible diagnosis, I am not. I am grateful because it wasn’t something worse and believe it or not it is helping me to be a better person… Overall, it has been hard to get accustomed to new normals, losses, new sensations or loss of sensations. Emotionally it has been very draining. I have never felt a deeper sadness, hopelessness and despair but yet then again like I have said I have not felt more grateful that this wasn’t something worse, I am also more grateful for those days that I don’t feel that sadness that I experienced, I am more grateful for touch, grateful for every day that I can walk and take care of my children. I am grateful for how this experience is helping me to be a better person, I think that I have become more spiritual, maybe more caring and understanding of others. We are all in this together, and it is nice to know that I am not alone! "