Am I Selfish?
I often find myself feeling guilty for not wanting to do
anything other than rest. Rest, doesn’t have to be sleep for a person, specifically
a pregnant mother living with Multiple Sclerosis. Rest usually consists of me
sitting on the couch or laying in the bed and surfing the internet. After a
very long drive to work and 8 hours on the job, when I get home the only thing
I want to do is prop my legs up and relax my mind. My mornings generally start
off with exhaustion. I wake up feeling like I just can’t pull my muscles to
doing what I am asking them to do, which simply is to, “Wake the heck up”. My
brain is awake, but my body needs another two hours to get up the strength to be
lifted from its resting place. Despite my body’s delayed reaction to join the
rest of the world, I must keep moving. I have a child sleeping in the other
room that needs to get dressed and fed, I have a miniature man doing flips in
my tummy waiting on breakfast, and I have a job that needs my presence for the
rest of the day. Having MS does not define who you are, but it does affect your
life, and I am reminded of that on a daily basis. I think with my pregnancy,
although my other symptoms are taking a break, exhaustion and muscle fatigue
are still at the fore forth.
I am currently in my second trimester, and I remember the
anticipation of finally not feeling so nauseous or tired, which a seemly vague
promise was made by all the articles I’d read turned out to be a lie. Well week
17 finally hit and yes I was no longer nauseous to the smell and/or sight of everything
and everyone, what joy! Then week 18 rolled around and I felt a sudden burst of
recharged energy. “Oh yeah this is about to get good”, I thought. Silly, naïve,
and wishful thinking me, week 21 hit me like a ton of bricks. Suddenly I‘m
exhausted again and boy does my body ache.
The answer for being tired is sleep, correct? Wrong, not with
MS see let me explain. Fatigue is not the same as tiredness; everyone will
suffer from tiredness at some point. Usually a good night’s sleep or fewer activities
will beat the feeling of being tired. Fatigue is a daily lack of energy or
excessive complete-body tiredness that is not relieved by sleep. In a chronic
illness, like multiple sclerosis, fatigue may never go away and can disrupt
your lifestyle. For me I suffer from chronic fatigue and pain. The problem with
this is that is not a visible symptom, so to most people I just seem lazy or
withdrawn. Sleeping helps, but unlike being tired, even after sleep, fatigue is
still there. Besides, no one at my age wants to spend their days sleeping it
away, so I fight. I fight to blend in, I fight to participate, I fight
sometimes just to stay awake, but my efforts are never enough. No matter how
hard I work on the job, I’ll never receive credit. No matter how hard I work at
home, there will always be more to do or that goes undone. No matter how hard I
work at maintaining healthy relationships, someone will go unnoticed.
In order to combat fatigue, I have to decide what my
priorities are in this stage of my life. I can’t drive far places anymore
without wanting to fall asleep behind the wheel, I can’t stay for after school
meetings at my child’s school, and I definitely can’t work excessively long
hours or through my lunch anymore. Most weeks laundry will go undone and meals
will be take-out. It’s unfortunate, but truthfully slacking in these areas seem
minimal to me, when I envision my life not being mobile. There is often a sense
of uncertainty accompanied by anyone diagnosed with MS. So to survive you
have to take control of the things in your life that you can, not cooking a few
days a week won’t actually destroy any lives, and asking others to take the
wheel may just save me from a physical body breakdown. So tonight I plan to
kick my feet with a movie, clear my mind mentally and rest. So I ask, am I
selfish for not wanting to do anything except rest?
