My name's Michael Muirhead and I live on the Queen Charlotte Islands of British Columbia, Canada. I'm 43 years old, and I was diagnosed with MS only about 3 weeks after the first symptoms made themselves known in March of 1995. At first it was occasional double vision that would last an hour or less each morning, then there was a bout of dizziness that lasted a few days. Then all in the space of a few days, both the double vision AND fairly severe vertigo decided to persist, and my right leg began feeling kind of odd. I couldn't see straight or walk straight at all. Several more symptoms appeared during the nearly two weeks I was in hospital.

Anyway, I think you get the picture: MS hit me pretty hard and fast that first time, and it's taken a couple of good swipes at me since. I'm fortunate though, that no single attack so far has left much obvious deficit. I do have some residual diplopia and some weird but minor visual trouble, and I have some motor and sensory disturbances that can sometimes be very uncomfortable. Aside from a slight limp and a tendency to tire more easily than my friends do though, there isn't much on the outside to tip the casual observer. What's inside is another story, as many other people with MS can tell you.

The emotional impact both of the diagnosis and of my rapidly becoming unable to do my job left me severely depressed for a long while. The depression that both I and my wife endured, among other things, eventually destroyed our marriage. The last steroid treatment I had made me psychotic for a short time, and that finished off the marriage and alienated me from my kids - probably forever.

Then there are the "invisible" symptoms. Some aspects of my short-term memory, which used to be sharp as a tack, are pretty seriously impaired. I'm no longer able to endure - let alone enjoy - saunas, hot-tubbing, sunbathing, hard physical work, or anything else that raises my body temperature appreciably. Even the workout provided by really vigourous sex leaves me temporarily unable to see or walk straight, (though at least THAT has its humourous side, I guess). Full, firm erections are unusual these days, and what I do get (except for the odd time when I'm just plain impotent,) doesn't always last all the way to orgasm. Most of my right side, from the armpit to the toes, feels always as if it's been lightly rubbed with Heet liniment or Tiger Balm… these things and others don't show on the surface, but they're there, and they bug me. They REALLY bug me.

I'm not telling all this to bring anyone down however, or to whine and moan about how poorly Mother Nature has treated me recently. I just wanted it known that things aren't all roses in my body or my life, so the context of what follows is clear. Besides, there are LOTS of people out there with MS and other nasty conditions, whose lives and bodies have fared far worse than mine, and who've made their adjustments more easily, more sensibly, and more completely than I've made mine. To them especially, (to YOU, if you're one of them,) I don't want to sound like a whiner. No, I tip my hat and say, "Well done!" Even after the worst of that awful depression had lifted, less than two years ago, I still believed that many of my life's earlier goodies were over with for good, but I've come since to see just how wrong I was.

While it's true that I can no longer indulge much in some of the things I used to enjoy frequently, and there are a few things I simply can no longer do at all, over time I've adopted a new perspective on it all. I no longer work for a living. I was fortunate enough to have good disability insurance that has covered me reasonably well as far as money goes, but it dawned on my after a while that being "unemployed" is more than just a label... it's an attitude. Having nothing productive to do was contributing to my depression and robbing me of self-esteem. I decided that unemployed did not have to mean the same thing as "unoccupied", and I began finding things for myself to do.

Troubles with my short-term memory have often made it very difficult for me to remain on task in the various projects I've undertaken over the past year and change. Other things I've started for myself have been far enough beyond my abilities that I've been forced to abandon them temporarily, perhaps entirely. Very few of these endeavours have been completed, and no doubt not too many ever will be. Is that important to me? You bet it is. Does it upset me? Not on your life.

The important point of these activities, in starting them and in seeing them through as far as I can, is not that they place some sort of goal in front of me, not that they provide an outlet for frustrated hopes and dreams, but simply that they provide me with something to DO, that I enjoy for its own sake, and that will give me some lasting reminder that I'm NOT disabled. I hate that word. I am definitely handicapped in some ways, I may be "challenged", whatever that means, and to some folks I might even be a GIMP. But I am NOT "disabled" or an "invalid". Those two words, if taken to heart, can do more to destroy self-confidence and stifle initiative than any life-changing event -- even the diagnosis and progression of a disease like MS. Mostly, I see myself as a fellow with a bunch of problems, and I live as I can - not by pretending the problems aren't there or by ignoring them, but more by avoiding the inconvenience of battling them and struggling against them. I do the things that I do these days because they are things I CAN do, and I try not to be faced too often with failing at things that I CAN'T do. For the last few months, I haven't been able to walk very far, but I walk steadily and without my cane. If I feel like going out for a walk and I have the energy for it, I go out for a walk... I take my dog out with me, and play with him on the beach, I talk with friends, acquaintances and strangers in town to catch up on local happenings, but mostly I just go for a walk because I can.

I have a small motorboat and live only steps from the beach where I keep it, so on days when the weather suits, I take it to town to do my groceries, take my dog to a nearby island where he can run free, or just go exploring. It's seldom for more than a couple of hours, but I do it because that's what I can do, and because it feels good to do it.

I have some tools, and there are a number of building renovation activities going on here in town that provide me with plenty of used materials with which to make things. Over the last year, I've been I'm working on a deck and half-cabin for my boat, and soon I'll be able to go fishing without getting soaked in the rain. It's a small thing perhaps, but it does rain a great deal here on the edge of the rain forest, and although I don't mind getting wet, I no longer recognize how cold I am until hypothermia is about to set in, so cold, wet weather is a little risky.

I'm a born musician and my mind is sometimes alive with music. I've been playing one instrument or another almost all my life, but I never learned to read or write, and I don't play any of my instruments well enough to drag the music in my imagination out into the real world. My computer has gotten me around that problem nicely, thank you very much, and now I spend some of my time learning to create and record music.

For the most part, I lead a pretty simple life now, and I think that this has made a huge difference for me. I've been trying all through writing this to dig through my beliefs for evidence of some hope, some special approach, some article of faith to which I adhere that helps me on my way through life with the nuisance of MS... and the fact is that I have none. I entertain no hopes, I have no special approach to my condition, and I have no real faith in anything at all. What I have is time, and lots of it. I can spend my time and my energy struggling to find some way out of my predicament, formulating innovative ways to cope with what I cannot stop or cure, praying or otherwise handing what little power I have to a higher authority... or I can spend my time and energy simply doing things I enjoy while I still CAN.

If this is a novel, innovative or otherwise special approach to disease, I'd be surprised... but it IS an unusual way to live, I've found. There have been many people I've known over the years who've wished for the simplicity and quiet of the life I've led for the last couple of years, but who never really tried to find it for themselves. Had it not been for MS, I might never have gotten around to it myself. If there is one hope I could have for people who read this, it would be that they find a simple and stress-free way of life for themselves. I wouldn't wish this disease on the worst of my enemies, but even THEY deserve to live as healthy and uncomplicated a life as MS -- in its backhand way -- has motivated me to live.

So do you.

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