How should I prepare myself for the emotional challenges of MS?

The neurologist is the mainstay in handling all your medical symptoms, but only you can tackle the day-to-day obstacles the world places in your way. With multiple sclerosis (MS) an entirely new level of challenges appears amid the challenges already accepted as facts of life. Aside from balancing career, family, social, financial, and the ordinary problems of everyday life, you must now cope with the difficulties of MS.

Some people ultimately accept life's challenges more gracefully than others. But, from the first symptoms through the diagnosis and the series of attacks and remissions, few people have any preparation for MS. For most people with MS, the greatest challenges are not the medical ones but the emotional ones.

Fear, not MS, can be the greatest crippler of young adults.In reality, no one can fully prepare you for the emotional duel with MS. Learning about some of the more common psychological factors involved may help you win the battle. Sharpening your own emotional skills will help you win the war.

The emotional stages after diagnosis of a chronic disease such as MS are very similar to those gone through by the terminally ill, as described by Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross in her book On Death and Dying. First there is shock, followed by denial, bargaining, anger, depression, and, ultimately, acceptance. For the terminally ill, death follows acceptance.

For the chronically ill, acceptance must last a lifetime. With MS this can be thirty or forty years or more. Acceptance can come more easily when there is a remission - a long period of stability, a return to normal, and full readjustment.

Then, when MS appears again with a new attack or worsening of an old symptom, the emotional cycle can start all over again. Although it can be an emotional roller coaster, you can put yourself in charge of the ride. This doesn't mean following terrible cliches like, "Plan for the worst and hope for the best."

When a doctor told that to Shirley MacLaine in Terms of Endearment, she replied, "And people let you get away with that?" We feel the same way about such haggard advice. Preparing yourself emotionally means learning about your feelings and dealing with them.

It means turning up the volume and listening to your innermost thoughts. It means saving up your emotional strength and drawing on it when you most need it. But it also means taking MS out of your life when you're feeling fine.

I cant really gove you an answer,but what I can give you is a way to a solution, that is you have to find the anglde that you relate to or peaks your interest. A good paper is one that people get drawn into because it reaches them ln some way.As for me WW11 to me, I think of the holocaust and the effect it had on the survivors, their families and those who stood by and did nothing until it was too late.