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#Post#: 4754--------------------------------------------------
The choices we make
By: agate Date: March 26, 2025, 1:15 pm
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One thing we can still do with MS is make some choices in our
lives, set up our priorities. Each day which things are most
important for us to do? If we're lucky, we're still the ones who
make those decisions. The trick seems to be to make sure that
the choices we make are the ones that work best for us and not
just ones that other people expect us to make.
Some time ago I was helping a neighbor who was in her 90s and
doing pretty well but sometimes she needed help with grocery
orders because she wasn't knowledgeable about computers. So
sometimes I placed her orders for her--and for years and years
she was ordering only a few mushier frozen dinners, lots of
eggs, potatoes, cottage cheese, apple sauce, milk--only soft
food. She explained that she needed to get her denture fixed and
that one of these days maybe she'd go to a dentist.
She never did. I don't know if it was the expense or the
nuisance of having to go to the appointments, or whether she
just hated dental work, but she made the choice not to do that
and got along on that soft diet for many years instead.
But when it came to her hair, she was getting herself to hair
salon appointments (for coloring and perms) up until the time
when she died. After she had to give up her car, she took taxis
to that hairdresser. Her hair always looked perfectly beautiful,
and that was important to her.
Contrast that with me. Over 30 years ago I pretty much gave up
on hair salon appointments as way too much trouble even though I
had gone for perms and haircuts routinely up to then. Since
then I have gone somewhere for haircuts only about 4 times--and
no more perms. They take hours and are uncomfortable (and
pricey). For a while there was a woman who came to this building
periodically to do haircuts, and I used her though her haircuts
weren't very adept. The rest of the time I've tended to my own
hair. It probably looks terrible by some standards but I've
noticed that people are presenting themselves to the world with
all kinds of hairdos these days.
On the other hand, I am so attached to eating nuts and crackers
and toast--chewy food--that I've been hustling myself to dental
appointments to make sure I end up with teeth I can chew with.
I've had molds and a temporary crown that fell out after a
couple of days (as they always do, don't they?). I've been on a
soft diet for a couple of weeks now while I wait for this
restorative work to be done--all because I broke a tooth that
made all of this (crown, denture repair) necessary. As I try to
appreciate my scrambled eggs, overcooked veggies, yogurt, and
soggy cereal, I try not to think about the pizza, nuts, and
other foods I can't eat--and then I remember that neighbor and
how she put up with that soft diet for so many years.
But her hair looked marvelous. Mine doesn't.
She made her choices. I made mine.
Some people choose to make their bed every day, no matter what.
Others never make their beds. I'm one who makes the bed. But
it's a choice I make every day whether I'm aware of it or not. I
could always just let it go. The only time I've ever done that
was when I was too unwell to do it.
Every little thing we do each day involves a choice. We don't
have to do it. We could let it go. So many things can wait until
another day--when we're feeling better, when there's more time.
As long as there's no one obliging you to do things, you can
still make choices.
And even if you're in a situation where much is expected of
you--living with family members who expect you to cook for them,
for instance, how insistent can they really be? If they're
abusive about their demands, you have a disastrous problem but
otherwise you can usually find a way to say No even if you need
to think up tactful or roundabout ways of saying it.
People with MS do have control over the way each day's
activities unfold, and that is something to focus on. MS takes
control of our bodies away but there are still these everyday
options, choices to be made about how we fasten our shoes, pick
things up off the floor, navigate around our living space, get
dressed or undressed, clean up, do our hair, eat our food.
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