How MS changed my childhood

When I was about the age that my children are now, I remember life inside our home changing. My father had had a back surgery, we’d moved again and then my mother began working and going to school full time. At one point during this change, our teenage uncle came to live with us (for reasons separate from my father's illness). Granted it all didn’t happen in that order, but those are the things that stick out most for a child who was at the age of 8. The reason for the change was kept quieter from us younger kids, not really talked to much about. I remember the words Multiple Sclerosis being said a few times, but only when other adults were around and the subject of my fathers illness became topic of conversation.

For those who knew my father prior to MS, you could see the changes he was going through. When he was in HS, he was in every sport. As kids, we would go camping, hiking, fishing, hunting and swimming. His jobs consisted of being an insurance agent that traveled the states, to a construction worker building power plants in Cheyenne. He did all the work on our cars, built a lot of the furniture we had in our home and the like. Unfortunately, MS didn't just alter the things my father could do. We stopped doing major camping trips, my sisters were no longer enrolled in anything outside of school functions and other smaller things. The things my mom used to do were to 565tcreate homework folders for us over the summer, she signed us up for almost all the local sports, her seven course Italian dinner is one I can remember til this day, she grew a vegetable garden, put up drywall and finished a basement in one of our houses and each of us kids have a handmade photo album. She was a kickass SAHM and I can't even imagine how she did all that, with 5 kids and no pinterest. I remember the road trip busy thing she made and hung off the back of the front row seat of the car. Somewhere in there, she also had a few jobs. My parents were the perfect team when it came to making our childhood include lots of adventures....

And then MS came along.

Again, this is how I remember those years. If you ask my siblings, their recollections could be vastly different. My oldest sister is usually the one I go to when I need one of my many memories interpreted. Something came to mind, I have blips of a memory and she usually fills in the gaps. The other three will chime in with their perceptions of that time period and the memory is then fully brought back to life. This is probably one of the more wonderful things about having 4 other siblings, you have four different perspectives about a moment in time when they were all there and apart of it. It definitely helped me develop empathy at an early age.

As time went on (a few years), the changes started to slow down and things began to settle. Arizona was our new home, my mom was working full time and my dad began working again. It was then that I began learning more about MS. Being older now, I think the family thought it was finally okay to talk more openly about what had caused the sudden shift from having a stay at home mom, to hardly ever seeing her. Or maybe because I was older, I finally understood what was being said. This is also when I learned the differences in MS and why one day my father is in bed unable to do things and then next day it was as if he didn't have MS. Why did he wear those weird sunglasses? Why did he visit the chiropractor? Why was he taking so many pills? Why did mom stop giving him those shots? What was the deal with the weather changes and his symptoms? Why is he no longer taking meds? Life started to feel like it was falling back into place and we were moving on from MS controlling our lives.