My mother was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis early into my sophomore year of college. She had trouble for a while with memory problems, tremors, and walking.
One test didn't diagnose MS for my mother.
It was long process of determining what exactly was wrong, and a longer process of coping with the fact that my mother had this practically invisible illness. My younger siblings are too young to process an illness like this so I'm the only one of my mother's children to know about it.
However, my mother seems to be coping with it gracefully. My grandmother will scold her for forgetting something, and she'll playfully joke, "Forgive me. I have MS." She didn't remember my last boyfriend, but called him "the ugly one" when I said we had broken up. I remember tearing up while driving her in the car. I had dated this guy for over a year, and it was under a year that we had been broken up. I'm trying to remember to take more pictures for her, because she always asks for pictures when remembering someone.
Looking back at my teenage relationship with my mom I couldn't be more embarrassed. I lived with my mother when my parents divorced, and we were always butting heads. It only got worse after my little brother and sister were born. I was a bratty little teenager that didn't want to spend her time babysitting so her mother could go back to school, but now I realize whatever I was trying to go do wasn't worth the fights I had with her. No screaming match was worth my mother's feelings.
Now I get in trouble in class texting her. I take her advice a lot closer to heart, and I tell her I love her so much more often. MS is not a necessarily fatal disease, but it can be a debilitating disease. Not everyone loses their ability to walk, and some don't lose memory.
If you'd like to know more about the symptoms, diagnosis, and treatment of MS then I encourage you to visit the National MS Society's website.
