Medication

Before MS, I rarely saw a doctor or took medication of any kind. In fact, it was telling about how bad I was feeling if I took so much as an Advil for a headache. Now, however, I've taken more medication in one year than I think I've taken my entire life.

That is one of the hardest things about having a chronic condition, the medication. You take it because you know that it's supposed to help, even if you can't see or feel the benefits; but at the same time its a constant reminder that you're sick even when you're not feeling bad.

Every time I reorder my Copaxone, which is the disease modifying drug, I'm asked if I ever stop taking it if I feel better. I always answer the same way, "No", but honestly the better I start to feel the harder it becomes to want to take the medication.

For one thing, it's an injection, there is absolutely nothing pleasant about having to stick a needle into yourself every day.

Secondly, the fricken shots hurt! I can give myself the injection fine, but the site reactions that occur right after the shot is administered can be downright painful. Not only that, if I don't do it just right I'm left with all kinds of bruises that last weeks at a time.

So yes, I do struggle to take my medication when I feel better, but I challenge anyone to fine someone who doesn't.

Try as I might to push MS to the back of my mind, and more often than not I'm successful, but every time I open a bottle of pills or prep myself for an injection, the reasons why make themselves known front and center in my mind.

Last year I said "screw it" and stopped taking everything, a few months later I was in the hospital. Was it because I stopped taking my meds? Or was it because I was over stressed, run down, and still reeling from the diagnosis?

The world may never know.

Apart of me, once again, wants to say "screw it what am I really gaining from all of this anyway?" I just want to lead a normal life that doesn't include having to shoot up every day or take enough medication to stock a pharmacy. The only thing that stops me from quitting the drugs is the memory of ending up in the hospital while they pushed this medication that made me feel like shit but was supposed to boost the good parts of my immune system that wasn't attacking my nerves.

I just can't see how it's possible to completely push the fact that I have MS to the back of my mind when I have a daily reminder that it's there.

Of all the aspects of this condition I've come to accept, the medication piece is still the hardest for me to completely come to terms with.