How Do You Determine Quality of Life?

The title of my article today is really a good question.  Have you figured out your quality of life yet?  I have done a lot of soul searching in the past 10 years.  Some people might say the quality of my life is not so good anymore.  I beg to differ.  I have friends, family, my son and my wife which make me happy!  Sure, I'm not out partying and going to ball games like I used to but there is always a silver lining.  Not doing those things saves me money and what's left of the rest of my health.

Those two little letters (MS) always catch my eye even when they're not related to Multiple Sclerosis.  I've had some fun times in the past 10 years but not a lot that I can recall right off the top of my head.  I realize that there's always someone worse off than you.  I have a friend in town that became blind from diabetes in the past 3 years.  He's 63 and not married.  He can't go anywhere unless someone picks him up and takes him where he has to go.  His 83 year old mother drives 40 miles one way every week to make my friend Jim some sandwiches.  She also takes him to his favorite bar so he cans BS with his friends.  Because of his diabetes Jim can't walk very well, either.  In my opinion Jim is worse off than me because of his blindness/diabetes.  
   
I've always said that I’ll lose the use any body part to MS but I never want to lose my eyesight.  An exacerbation is a worsening of my MS symptoms.  I've had a couple of exacerbations where one of my eyes was so blurry that I couldn't see anything out of it.  Luckily, when it’s happened it's only been in one eye so I still could see with the other one but it can be very scary.  I also have a tendency to get headaches when my eyes are blurry.  The crazy thing about MS is that you don’t know what is going to happen next.  This uncertainty has led me to a decade of anxiety and panic attacks which I’ll talk about in another article and which I still suffer from.

Now for the first time in 10 years I can truly say that I accept my disease.  I feel like all the bad stuff has already happened to me and if I can stay at this level I'll be just fine.  Life is still GOOD!  It sure beats being dead but I've never been dead so I don't know.  lol  I feel there are no surprises left for me.  My eyes have been blurry to the extent of blindness, I can't walk anymore, I've lost control of my bladder and bowels, my cognitive thinking is a little screwed up, I hate heat, I don't sleep well at night and my MS fatigue is as bad as ever.

The good news is that I still have a good attitude.  I think I’m more humble and I think I'm nicer to people.  Not that I was ever mean to people but I'm more polite, kind, sympathetic, etc.  I’ve always had a burning desire to become wealthy but since I became sicker I now think that differently, too.  I just want to earn some money.  I'm learning to live life as a disabled man.  I've always had a great sense of humor but I always thought it was my beer drinking that made me funny.  I don't drink anymore and I realize that I'm still pretty funny!  To sum it up I'd have to say the quality of my life is still pretty good!

Scooterjon