As the nights close in earlier and inhabitants of the Northern Hemisphere begin to see winter holiday lights in the dark streets, I’m reminded of a piece I wrote about 10 years ago in which I bemoaned the absence of office Christmas parties in my life due to multiple sclerosis (MS).
A decade on and I still miss them, along with the jobs I held but had to leave due to the disease.
How We Disappear From View
The loss of full-time employment is only one of the ways in which those of us with MS seem to disappear from society’s radar. We live in a “what you do is who you are” society. If we don’t “do” any longer, then we are often seen as not existing at all, or at least not in a productive way.
And for some of us, the fact that we mightn’t be able to answer every call that friends and family have of us can mean that they just stop calling.
It can be a slow fading from view, or it can be like the world just turns to the next page — a page upon which we aren’t written about.
A Chance to Talk About It
This doesn’t happen to every one of us, and even for those it does, it’s not all of the time or in every facet of our lives. But it does happen, and it’s seldom talked about.
For that reason, I’m hosting a new Unspeakable Bits webcast for MS Ireland titled “Becoming Invisible Because of MS” on November 20 (7 p.m. Irish time, 2 p.m. Eastern, and 11 a.m. Pacific).
I’ll be joined by a social worker who is part of the MS unit at St James’s Hospital in Dublin, a community worker from MS Ireland, and a local physician to talk about accessing services through primary care providers.
As always, we’ll take your questions live as well as incorporate questions emailed in advance to comms@ms-society.ie into the evening’s program.
You can register to attend the program now. These webcasts are also available to watch on the Unspeakable Bits YouTube channel.
A Burden Shared …
These aren’t just “poor me” sessions. We do talk about the difficult stuff, but in talking about them, they become less difficult. We also talk about ways out of the muck and ways to avoid getting stuck in it in the first place. We help each other, and we help ourselves.
This will be the final webcast of our 2025 series, and we do hope to have another series in 2026. If you have any ideas for topics you’d like covered next year, don’t hesitate to drop a line to that email address above.
“A burden shared may either be halved or doubled, depending on the heart that receives it,” goes the saying. We aim to be the heart that halves the burden on Unspeakable Bits. I hope you’ll join us.
Wishing you and your family the best of health.
Cheers,
Trevis
