MS is many things. It's a disease, a puzzle, an enemy, an industry. But for those of us who suffer from it, and for those who love and care about us, I think that most of all, MS is a thief. It's a cold hearted son of a bitch, insatiable in its appetite for banditry, unquenchable in its thirst to pilfer. It is indiscriminate in its pickings, taking the physical as well as the emotional, amassing a hoard of plunder from the illusion that its victims once called everyday life.
Some of what is stolen is easy to spot, especially in those afflicted with more progressed disease. Many physical deficits are glaringly apparent; a wheelchair substituting for pilfered legs, a stiff and atrophied arm the sad stand-in for the lost ability to write, or shake hands, or tie a shoe lace. Cognitive losses might be harder to spot, but their impact can be just as grievous as physical disability. MS gluttonously grabs vocabulary and memory, the ability to string together thoughts and to properly express them. The crushing fatigue almost universally experienced by MS patients can cripple the will to fight back. Waking up more tired than when you went to bed is no way to ready for battle.
