Living is the Hard Part

I'm ever un-impressed by people's mis-assessments of WHAT is hard about having Multiple Sclerosis. Yes, I LOOK OK (not meant to be self-complementary, just a commonly overlooked fact about having this odd form of multi-limbed paralysis). But appearance can be a really deceptive measure of a person's health.

The other misconception is that neural damage necessarily means mental retardation...I can still out-think MOST people without even trying.

The "neural damage" M.S. incurs is evidenced (cognitively) only by a minor decrease in thinking SPEED (a result of demyelinating neurons "short-circuiting" in the fluids [CSF] they pass through)...which is hardly noticable since I've been an avid student and speaker/writer for most of my life.

As Stephen Hawking's ALS has shown little effect on his thinking, so my MS has left my cognition relatively unaffected.

Yet as some of my more astute associates have observed...MANY people have a tendency to see ANY physical disabilty as evidence of diminished intelligence...I tend to think it's some latent function of the untrained mind that helped to protect people from predator-species in early human history...but that's just MY hypothesis from observation of how people treat ME.

Anyway, my point is that I DON'T have any glaring defects that might signal others that I'm really seriously disabled (that I am only able to type with one hand is something regularly overlooked by my readers...who somehow imagine 2 hands doing all this typing).

Anyway, functioning in a world where all these strange misconceptions are so prevalent IS the "hard part".

I'll never forget my mother explaining to someone that I had M.S., and the person's initial reaction was: "Is he dangerous?", which as anyone who's known me for years can tell you is a supposition that's laughable to the extreme.

Boldly expressive, maybe...but dangerous, NO.

I get these sort of naive misconceptions hurled my way all the time...

...Because I have trouble moving fluidly. Clearly, I hold no grudges against people for these reactions, but after three years of sustaining such ill-thought epithets, they DO grow tiresome.

It's hard enough dealing with paralyzed limbs...but to endure such inane thinking, too...

As I said: living is the hard part.