My MS Riddle

Simply stated, riddles are just not my thing. On the other hand jokes, yeah I’m good with because they make me laugh--a good one that is. But riddles have never been okay with me because of the frustration factor. You see, it seems for me there are never enough clues, or my perceptions of the clues are wrong. I’ve never been good at solving them and for me Multiple Sclerosis is like a riddle. A really, really hard one.

My mind and my heart tell me that to figure this MS thing out, need I more. More concrete yet still unfound evidence that will bring certainty, and I need it like NOW! After all, I'm feeling that time is of the essence of what can be a hurriedly paced progressing monster of a disease.

Truth be told, day to day, for me the ticking time provides unwanted opportunities to wonder and contemplate the unnerving and downright scary possibilities of my next exacerbation. For goodness sakes, I have a whole long list of mind boggling questions that can annoyingly preoccupy me! Like wondering what and where on my body symptoms will appear? Or, why does it happen at the most inconvenient of times? Then inevitably, when will my treatment kick in and how long will this crap last? Oh and let's not forget, why didn’t I see it coming? Next, finally asking myself with trepidation, “Does this episode mean a permanent decline in my abilities--can or will I improve?”

Without a doubt, a big problem with MS is that you just never know, and likely will not know for sure what triggered an exacerbation. My experience is that there are no definitive answers or solutions to the “riddle” except, that there are no definitive answers. So not surprisingly, there are no absolutes or guarantee, except that is, the absolute unpredictability of Multiple Sclerosis.

I realize that these MS riddle clues have been both created and discovered by some very well studied, educated, well intentioned and zealous scholars and pharmaceutical researchers. They in their earnest quest for a cure seem just as perplexed as we laymen do. After all, there are infinite explanations given, which to a layman like me, can appear elaborate and complicated, coming across like mumbo-jumbo.

Like a deer in headlights, even when ultimately receiving the diagnosis, there remain so many uncertainties of the final destination MS will take us. Not even your own doctor can predict it with any assurance. This undetermined future status is quite an overwhelming thing to wrap one’s mind around. The numerous conjectured potential outcomes, frankly at times may appear mysterious at best and misleading at worst, to both a novice and a well-seasoned patient. Because of all of that, I am never clear of where and how to find the answer to my personal MS riddle; it just never comes to me.

Journeying through life with MS has been downright maddening at times. The okay today, laid out in bed tomorrow stuff and worse yet, the potential outcome of becoming totally incapacitated and what that can lead to, ever lingering in the mind. It has left me to ask myself, “Is there not a single part of this MS puzzle that I can solve?”

So quite possibly, more like probably, a time will come that I will have to admit I’ve been out-witted by this perplexing maze of an illness. But until then, as I live and breathe, there will be no complacency in seeking an answer to solve this nagging riddle; my soul believing that the ultimate and telling clue really is within my grasp.

That, I guarantee.