MS: It’s All About Adapting and Adjusting

We’ve had a project going on in the house for a couple of weeks that has had the oven and dishwasher both unavailable for normal use. As I haven’t had a microwave oven since about 2001, don’t have storage space for many cookery gadgets, and still desired to feed my family though the minor inconvenience, we figured out a plan to get us there in the end.

Washing up is something I used to pay people to do when I was a chef, so — perhaps a bit perversely — I enjoy my stint at the sink, either washing or drying, now and again. That a local dairy farmer has put his heifers into the field behind the house makes for a bucolic tableau out the kitchen window, as well.

Neither of these examples of finding workarounds in the kitchen has anything to do with multiple sclerosis (MS), but they do bring to mind some of the ways we have all found alternatives to get to where we hope to be, or at least partway.

How People With MS Adapt and Find New Ways

We’ve all had to make adjustments around the difficulties that multiple sclerosis has dropped in our intended lives, from seeking financial assistance, to learning to use adaptive technology, to planning (or reacting) when MS progresses.

Perhaps because we’ve had to adapt our approach, rethink our goals, and reinvent our intentions, we’ve just become more adept at coping with changes (and potential changes) in our lives beyond those that MS causes.

Researchers and healthcare professionals refer to this as resilience.

However, in a study on the impact of resilience on healthy aging with multiple sclerosis, only 1 in 5 participants reported having high resilience — and 1 in 3 reported low resilience.

I’d have to think that if we took a deep dive into their lives, you’d probably find people doing much better than they think they are.

Giving Ourselves Credit for What We’ve Accomplished

That’s part of the problem with diseases like multiple sclerosis. We tend to be hyperaware of where we used to be and what we used to accomplish, and we still measure our successes by our “before MS” matrix.

If we were to put on our bifocal lenses of grace and compassion and look at ourselves as we might look at someone else in a similar circumstance, I think we’d see ourselves higher on the Multiple Sclerosis Resiliency Scale, a tool developed by psychologists to identify “individuals in need of additional assistance or support.”

With all that has been going on in my life — MS and otherwise — it would have been easy to find myself overwhelmed by the unavailability of some fairly basic kitchen appliances this past fortnight. But I wasn’t.

Even though this minor trial wasn’t MS related, it must be said that all the unplanned changes to so many aspects of my life since MS came into it seem to have left me better able to cope and far less invested in the “before” than I am in the “next.”

Wishing you and your family the best of health.

Cheers,

Trevis