Emotional Stress of MS

My wife and I recently celebrated our 16th anniversary. Through those years, we have had some very tough struggles with MS and some joys that could only happen through the struggles. At this point, I know that my wife's MS has only made our relationship stronger because through the mess we have been forced to rely on each other and God. There have been moments when we have felt completely out of control, and other times we found specific treatments that helped us to feel like we had some control. The emotional roller coaster of this ride can be very draining, and there have been times when my wife and I have had to be intentional about taking a sabbath from Multiple Sclerosis.

For my wife, the emotional stress of MS can come out in days of being tearful, extreme headaches, mood swings, fatigue and a lot of other ways. There are times when she just has to sleep, no matter how busy we are or how behind we are in life. This can add to the stress, but we just see it as a necessary part of life with MS. There have been times when we put our whole life on hold because the stress on my wife's body has become too much. The stress can also come out in pain in her legs or other parts of her body, numbness in body parts, stiffness in body parts, sour stomach and general feelings of being ill.

Sometimes life can get so busy that we neglect the rest that my wife needs, and there are times that we pay dearly for it. The thing we have learned is to take action when we need to and not put it off, and try to be proactive and build in down time in our life. The problem is that we are both very driven people with a desire to do more than probably what we need to, so we get ourselves overwhelmed pretty often. I guess the morale of the story for our family is to be aware, be proactive, and know our limits. Emotional stress in life can be overwhelming, and MS just seems to add to the issue, so we try hard to limit stress and live life as fully as possible.