In other words, when you get a diagnosis of multiple sclerosis that you weren’t expecting late-ish in life and let those words sink in, you understand viscerally that this is definitely not a good development. Things are about to change from top to bottom and every where in between. You pretty much get that from the very beginning (for me, early December 2015). You have to tell people who love you, first. Those are dark days indeed.

As you read and do some early research and find some voices you rely on for reliable information you feel yourself wanting to be hopeful, wanting all of those voices to be true. The voices of the Societies and Foundations and all the rest. This whole MS thing will be bad for a good long while, but it WILL get better. You will find your legs (bad choice of words or the perfect set of words. Depends on how you look at it). Just believe it. Hang in there. MS doesn’t have you!

The lazy writer in me wants to use the eye roll emoji in this post at this particular juncture. You get on that “MS doesn’t have me bus” and you listen to friends tell you stories about their friends (or friends of friends sister’s aunt twice removed) and she runs marathons with MS. Surely you can do that too! Chin up, buttercup. Better days are on the way.

And I do know there are better days on the way. Currently, better days are in speedy delivery mode as I choked down the most bitter giant 10 chalky tablets of prednisone ever made this evening after a command performance today with The Great Scott.

When TGS calls you and says be here at 1:40PM well…you put on your best black yoga pants/tank top combination. You have 75 identical versions of each so it’s a complex decision making process. You run your lint roller over your freshly laundered daily uniform because with four felines running around, and over, every surface of every item in my home that I’ve not left all that much in the last 6 or so weeks, you can’t be too careful. You don’t want TGS thinking you’re that cat lady (even though you are much much worse than that cat lady…he doesn’t need to know that). You pop an antivert and you get your growing behind off the couch to see the wizard.

And that is exactly what I did.

The Great One himself had two new students, Kyle and another Samir but not the same Samir from the last time. This Samir had some shiny and very voluminous black hair styled in a casual, not-over-done hipster doctor pompadour. It was really something. I’m a hair girl! I can’t help it. Kyle didn’t have a chance. I was covetous of Samir’s hair. Samir’s hair should have an Instagram account because MS’ers all over would follow him.

When Samir was doing my visual fields test and I had to stare at his fingertip and at his nose over and over again, I kept finding myself staring at his hair and he would say, “Down here, Maribeth” and I definitely blushed.

But I digress. After we went through the whole visual field song and dance again, twice, with each student, TGS talks to all of us as if we’re buddies. I think I’m officially one of them, now, based purely on the volume of times I’ve had to be in there in the last 6 months. He asked Kyle what we learn from the visual field test (the whole follow my finger, look at my nose routine). It was almost like TGS knew I was about to blurt out the answer and he look at me and silently shook his head ever so subtly, “Don’t.” (So I didn’t.)

Poor Kyle whiffed on both of his quiz questions. The other one was, “Can you tell me what other drugs beyond meclazine we sometimes use to manage vertigo caused by brain lesions Kyle?” I knew! I’ve been a vertigo researching fool these past 6 weeks or so. I KNOW THIS ONE TOO…I got the look again. I kept my mouth shut, again.

TGS is not pleased that his students appear to be dullards on this subject. Kyle actually stuttered. Poor Kyle.

“Sometimes we use benzos for this reason and we’re going to try that here to help Maribeth out. Also, Maribeth, this drug may kill two birds with one stone because I’m putting you on another course of high dose steroids starting today,” deadpanned The Most Great of all Scotts.

NOOOOOOoooooooooooooooOOOOOOOoooooooo!

“Ugh.” I actually said this. “Isn’t there any other option? I mean MORE steroids? I’m kind of tired of the steroid effect TGS. I just am. I know that makes me a shallow asshole but there has to be another option.”

“Well, there’s plasma replacement blah-blahtity-blah but that is an in-patient experience, is not likely to work and is really a terrible idea so we can probably agree not to go there, can’t we? You have an aggressive disease. A lot more aggressive than we thought. You like being aggressive in treatment, right? We need to give you a chance. This should help you over this hump until your next Ocrevus infusion in early November. I’m still hopeful this drug is going to be right for you, Maribeth. But you do have me re-thinking the two month flush for patients like you. I may be changing my mind on the necessity of things getting this bad before they get better.”

He has a point. I’m nothing if not aggressive.

I do the walking tests. He continues to be concerned that I am back to pre-Tysabri levels of impairment (old symptoms have come back with a vengeance). Couple that with the vertigo that just won’t quit and he’s pretty sure I can cancel my appointment with the Hearing & Balance Center. (I’m kind of bummed. I was planning to go in costume since it’s kind of close to Halloween. I was going to dress up as a crazy old woman with a broken brain who’s lost her damn mind.) So, no Halloween fun for BethyBright. Boo.

I look down. I know I am beaten. He’s not called The Great Scott for nothing. I’ll take the fucking steroids.

Here’s the thing. I know some of you get this because you have been there. Hell. You might be there right now. You know what I mean. It’s a period of time so bad that weird shit starts to happen to you inside of your broken brain. You have thoughts that people like you just don’t usually have. You think to yourself, as you consider these random scary thoughts, “Huh. I don’t normally think things like this.” That’s another concerning relapse-associated “symptom” that the docs don’t talk much about.

You find yourself mildly afraid to leave the house. The outside world starts to represent potential injury and/or embarrassment or both, so you find yourself not wanting to go out there. At all. Ever. But staying in here? That’s another story entirely.

Staying in here is where it’s relatively safe (at least you can puke in private?). But staying in here sends a girl down some dark rabbit holes…

• What did I do to deserve this? What am I being punished for? (I have some ideas, but I thought I was over all of that. Guess I’m not.)
• Why do I live in this house that means I need help to do the most basic stuff? Why do I deserve to live in this happy place with so much freaking STUFF? I should give away all of this cursed stuff. We’re all under the same evil eye, my stuff and me. It should go, too. It’s cursed. I am cursed. We should all GO.
• Why do I have so many damn cats? Why do they need so so much? I should never have been optimistic enough to get all of these needy, bitchy creatures. I should have known it would all go to shit! It usually does. Literally. Then I’ll need even MORE help to carry that shit out of the damn cursed house.
• Why would anyone want to talk to me now? This utter nightmare is the ONLY thing I ever think about, let alone talk about. When I talk about it to my visitors, those kind enough to come to me for human contact, I find myself on my own damn nerves. There just isn’t a way to sugar coat any of this. I know if the tables were turned I’d leave your house feeling sadder than sad because we used to have so many other, more pleasant things to talk about. Now I have this. Only. This.
• I’m alone. I rely on the graciousness of others. This is my reality. I am blessed (#blessed – few things irritate me more than #blessed I’m not entirely sure why but every time I see it, it sounds ironic to me). I have so many friends, family and buddies who help me in so many ways because they love me. Hell. They even help me by just giving me tiny little happy surprises! Like the card last week that I needed at just the right moment. But really how long can any of this last? People WILL get sick of me not getting better. It’s just inevitable. I’m so needy that there isn’t any realistic number of humans on the planet to fulfill all of my damn needs. It’s just not physically possible. I mean I am with me all of the time and I’m sick of me not getting better. What happens when I get worse? Or when I get MUCH worse…I can’t really think about that for very long or I go to darker places still.
• Are there darker places than this? Oh I know there are. I have a feeling I might visit them before this is all over

I may have seriously entertained not taking the damn steroids. I definitely considered it, I may have come close to skipping my stop at the pharmacy. I’m so tired of all of the stupid side effects of fucking steroids! Why do I have to have a disease that makes me LOOK bad too. Why couldn’t I get a disease that makes you look scarily thin? Trust me. I know. These are idiotic, stupid pointedly indulgent obnoxious thoughts. I thought these idiotic thoughts the whole way home from seeing TGS.

Then I thought about how I had a virtual anxiety attack over leaving my house today. I have never had a true anxiety problem in my life. Other problems, sure, but not anxiety. And how doing basic chores has me so exhausted that I think my entire life is going to feel this way. For all time. Forever and ever until I just give up and stop, stop doing all the things let it all go to shit and just sleep. Because I am alone I am and will always be…This, my therapy loving friends is what my precious Cheryl would call “catastrophic thinking.”

Then it hit me. Out of the blue in full-on pedal to the medal on my way to Catastrophy USA, I finally got my head straight. Like BOOM.

The disease is talking right now. Not me. The disease is talking stupid because it wants to win. Its only reason to exist is to ruin me. It wants me to be depressed, full of newfound anxiety, falling apart at the seams. It wants me to hate on this body it wants to feed on because it makes the whole process so much easier, more easily digestible. Like tenderizing meat before you cook it. Those are NOT my thoughts.

When I feel better, my thoughts will be my thoughts again.

I took the damn first dose of bitter pills. They won’t be my last. I need to accept this and I have. I’ll eat sensibly and try not to go on an ice cream binge (prednisone needs no assistance in achieving maximum bloat) but I will have a couple of spoonfuls every now and then if it will give me some much needed joy.

It gets really dark in this world. Scary thoughts can kick you right in the gut and have you questioning your sanity. Your fundamental worth. Then you get to that point where you start to realize that maybe a nice gentle marinade would be ever so much more appealing on the meat than all of that beating it with a spiky metal mallet has been.

(I know at least one of my blog followers read that last paragraph and giggled thinking, “She said beat the meat! Hee Hee.” You know who you are!)

I’m going to marinade in some prednisone and some calming benzos and let this thing ride. Cliches are a thing because most of a time, they have more than a little nugget of truth inside.

And you know when they say it’s always the darkest.