![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Scary Stuff
Sep. 17th, 2008 05:54 pmI visited a friend yesterday who was recently diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis. It's been less than a year since she woke up with pins and needles in her feet. Since then, the condition has progressed rapidly, leaving her legs numb, so that she can't safely walk on her own, but also affecting her sight, so that she has only a narrow, off-center field of doubled vision. She was a reader who enjoyed science fiction and fantasy; now, she cannot read her favorite authors. She has a few audio books, including Neil Gaiman's Fragile Things. She loves listening to it, especially since Neil Gaiman is the reader, but she misses seeing the written page. I expect to be visiting the library in the next few days, so I'll do my best to find out what's available through the library.
This illness is still very new for her, so she hasn't yet gotten fully hooked into the support systems (I hope we have them in our community) for people with MS and blindness. Her husband is struggling to care for her and and all the other things that go with having a family, while still working to make a living; he's self-employed, so if he doesn't work, he doesn't earn. They have no insurance and many of the treatments are incredibly expensive. He earns enough that they aren't eligible for the full range of Medicaid, but the expenses are so high in comparison to their income that they are getting at least a little bit of help, which is good.
Now, on top of her illness, their oldest son just announced that he has joined the marines. My friend and her husband are not as liberal as I am and I'm not certain of their position on the war, but she is terrified of losing her son, is very unhappy with his decision, and doesn't even know how to talk to him about this.
It was a difficult visit for me. I spent most of it just listening, and some of it reading a few of the many pamphlets the MS society has sent, and all of it feeling terribly lucky and terribly inadequate to help in any real way.
This illness is still very new for her, so she hasn't yet gotten fully hooked into the support systems (I hope we have them in our community) for people with MS and blindness. Her husband is struggling to care for her and and all the other things that go with having a family, while still working to make a living; he's self-employed, so if he doesn't work, he doesn't earn. They have no insurance and many of the treatments are incredibly expensive. He earns enough that they aren't eligible for the full range of Medicaid, but the expenses are so high in comparison to their income that they are getting at least a little bit of help, which is good.
Now, on top of her illness, their oldest son just announced that he has joined the marines. My friend and her husband are not as liberal as I am and I'm not certain of their position on the war, but she is terrified of losing her son, is very unhappy with his decision, and doesn't even know how to talk to him about this.
It was a difficult visit for me. I spent most of it just listening, and some of it reading a few of the many pamphlets the MS society has sent, and all of it feeling terribly lucky and terribly inadequate to help in any real way.
