Disbelief

Another supremely discouraging daily occurrence in an MS-addled life is disbelief; your friends and family's casual shrugging off of your symptoms. You try to vent your frustration at experiencing a symptom, but because you "look fine" and function, people don't take your descriptions seriously.

Here are some excerpts from actual conversations I've had lately:

Me: My eyes are blurry. They've been like that all day. I'm a little worried.
XXX: Well, you haven't drank coffee today, have you? You're probably just tired.

(No, no I am not just under-caffeinated. True, fatigue exacerbates MS symptoms, but when my eyes cannot focus and I can't see clearly for extended periods of time, despite sitting or laying down, changing the light in the room, etc... it's more than just lack of caffeine.)

Me: I used to be able to take notes on what my professor is saying, as I evaluate and interpret their lecture. Now it's like my brain can't squeeze out more than one level of thinking at once. I feel like Flowers for Algernon over here!
XXX: Honestly, dude, I think it's just age. Not to be mean.

(No, no it is not just age. I know what thinking feels like on a normal day. I know that, for the past few weeks, in class as I sit, listening and poised with pen, I feel like I have weights on my arms, like my brain can't tell my fingers to move, like by the time I've succeeded in getting the pen to cross the page, the class has moved on, the noteworthy moment forgotten).

In these moments, where people I love try to console me by suggesting that maybe it's not my disease causing these symptoms, that maybe it's just a normal thing happening to me. And there's that word - normal. I understand why they tell me these things. They see the pain my illness is causing me, and they want me to push it to the back of my mind. To not put my disease at the forefront of my life. To get the chance to be normal.

Their intentions are pure, I have no doubt - but the dismissal of my symptoms as "I'm sure its nothing" makes me feel terrible. It discourages me from talking about my disease and my symptoms altogether - it gives me the feeling that my non-normality is abhorrent, that it should be pushed to the back of my mind, like if I bring it up I'm causing an issue that the other person has to resolve for me before we can move on.

Yet another reason why I hate talking about MS...another reason why the disease is so self-perpetuatingly invisible.