When another MS’r DOES good out in the world it deserves to be acknowledged. And that’s exactly what Adra from MS tripping on air has done with her new book Fallosophy. This is a lovely piece of writing which tells a story about a journey from normal to anything but as a young woman experiences her journey with multiple sclerosis.

When I first started writing this blog Adra was like finding my tribe.
Her writing on her blog spoke to me in a way no other writer has spoken to me since I was diagnosed in 2015. Her no-bullshit attitude was what really spoke to me. As one of the reviewers of her book put it Ardra is like the most sardonic, witty, bartender in a dark smoky bar who tells it like it is with a wry smile. I needed this voice in my life as an early MS’er.

Ardra and I corresponded directly from the very beginning. Though our voices have many similarities, we are very different writers with two very different stories – my story of a middle-aged woman was so very different from Ardra’s story as she’d been diagnose so much younger than I.

Our stories were also very different from the perspective of the type of MS we both had. Audra had relapsing remitting multiple sclerosis from the time she was a young woman whereas I had primary progressive multiple sclerosis diagnosed at 48 years old. But we shared a certain perspective and attitude about not letting this disease win.

After all one of the first things I learned about having multiple sclerosis as an early diagnosed woman was what a thief this disease is. How it threatens to take everything that you believe makes you you and throw it out the window. Having a strong attitude of fight was one of the only ways I had to cope in the very beginning in Adra seemed to get this.

Ardra was also a strong supporter of my writing. I appreciated her support in the early days when I questioned my voice and whether or not it needed to be heard. She was always of the opinion that every voice in the Ms. community was important and that my story needed to be told. It was her support in the early days that kept this blog going.

Ardra’s book is a tight closely word-smithed piece of prose that is choiceful with every word on the page. Her writing is gorgeous in that way and her story comes out in tight paragraphs that make one writer jealous of another. I tend to ramble sharing every word that comes in my head and I tend to be generous with the words on the page.

I don’t know what it is about writers that makes us compare ourselves to other writers but we do. And I think because I have ambitions to write my own story having Ardra’s story come out when it did was really helpful to me. I needed every one of those typed words on that page every well chosen word meant something to me.

Ardra’s stories of her early days with MS really bring out the surprise and sometimes complete audacity of this disease. MS doesn’t give everybody a break it hits us all like a ton of bricks and toys with our emotions. Ardra’s dedication not to let the disease steal everything she loved from her life was inspirational to me and there’s that word that we all try to avoid. Inspiration.

Nobody wants to be accused of writing inspiration porn but that’s not what this book is. It’s an insightful look into what it means to have your life being turned upside down right in front of your very eyes but still finding a way to hold the pieces together into a life that is eventually run that’s worth living. Ardra finds her way in the world of MS By being dedicated to not letting the disease win. Reading those stories it’s so relatable to my early days with the disease and frankly to my disease as it continues to evolve.

Some things never change and MS Is a taker and it continues to take from me so yeah. Inspiration. Sometimes we all need a little bit of it and that’s what I got out of this book.

Ardra writes story of resilience against an opponent that doesn’t play by the rules. And she does it with a fresh attitude, direct and to the point. Her story of her relationship with the banker, who started out as the bartender, is a sweet story of love that everyone with MS needs to read because the banker is a stalwart example of a supporter in the life of somebody with an evolving illness that continues to take when the young couple was in the process of building a relationship together and building a life.

Her stories of interactions with friends feel like the interactions of every 20 something you’ve ever spoken to which says a lot when you’re talking about is a disease that makes you feel othered. It’s refreshing perspective on what it means to be dulled as shitty shitty hand but to keep coming back time and time again with more fight and more, more vigor, more power at a time when you feel nothing but powerful only weak. The level of detail in these stories it brings you into her life in a way that’s inviting and accessible.

She refers to keeping diaries as the basis for her writing as she chronicled her own story in the early days of her own diagnosis. Another example of the importance of our own stories in this journey of multiple sclerosis. How many books are out there that are not yet written that would help somebody feel seen and accepted but they don’t get written because people question the validity of their own experience? This book begs the question why don’t more of us tell these stories and have a way to get them out into the world? The world of publishing can feel like a mountain that needs to be climbed to get from our brains into the world. It can feel like an insurmountable mountain. Once again our heroine has found a way in the most beautiful narrative of the ugliness inherent in this disease.

Ardra’s story isn’t all sunshine and roses yet it’s a story that proves that sunshine and roses aren’t always realistic but that doesn’t mean your life ends with a devastating diagnosis. Your life evolves because you have no other choice. There’s beauty in that as much as there are gut punches that come out of the blue and take your breath away.

Spoiler alert, I’m going to share my experience of getting a gut punch from ardra’s book when one of her very good friends chooses a medically assisted end of life plan which is actually a thing in Canada. In Canada, medically assisted dying (MAID) is legal under specific circumstances, allowing eligible individuals to request and receive assistance from a medical practitioner to end their life. MAID became legal in June 2016 after the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that the Criminal Code provisions criminalizing assistance in another’s suicide violated the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

The reasons this friend chooses MAID revolve around certain symptoms and required medical assistance for living day-to-day life. Specifically having a Baclofen pump and suprapubic catheter. I have both. I also require the assistance of another individual called a caregiver to live my day-to-day existence because I’m no longer able to stand up on my own. This means I’m unable to do the most basic tasks for myself including dressing myself, going to the restroom, putting myself in a chair, becoming a user of a motorized wheelchair.

These realities are sometimes too much for people to take and make life seem unlivable. I may have seen it that way myself before it actually happened to me.

Somehow my life has evolved to accommodate these realities even though I thought it would never be possible. Things that seemed impossible in the past are now part of my regular day-to-day existence. Much like Ardra’s friend, I have lived a big, interesting life for 58 years now.  It begs the question how many years is enough? Especially when your reality is something you could never conceive of before. How many years is enough? For Ardra’s friend the answer was a lot fewer years than I have under my belt.

I just didn’t see it coming. When it did come in the story of Fallosophy it hit me like a ton of bricks that somebody could look at a life like I have and deem it unlivable. I guess the best stories hit you like a ton of bricks. I give Ardra all the credit for telling a story without mincing words to make it more acceptable to more people that being dedicated to telling the truth sharing her friend’s story honestly.
I love this book even though it made me think things that I didn’t want to think but maybe that’s what the best writing does. It makes you think differently forcing you to analyze the choices that you’ve made even when you might not want to.

We all have a different story to tell and for me the story isn’t over yet just like it’s not over yet for so many of us with MS that are in circumstances like I’m in. I don’t know how it’s going to end or when but I know it’s not ending now. I continue to evolve somehow allowing my mind to accept circumstances that I never thought would be acceptable to me in the past. It turns out that for now 58 years isn’t enough. Yet.

I recommend reading this book to gain an insight into this bastard of a disease but beyond that to get insight on having a life worth living. This is what I work on in my therapy day-to-day. For me having a psychologist that gets the importance of creating a life worth living guides me through it even when the work is hard and I don’t want to do it. That’s what I do. Even though sometimes I question why.

Good on you, Ardra. Thank you for this book and for finding a way to put it out into the world.