Originally Posted by Blessings2You

Just yesterday my daughter used that word, random, when we were talking about MS--my symptoms and progression compared to my dad's, etc.

She said, "I don't know how you can explain MS, it's just so random." I told her, "I think you just did."

My dad was diagnosed in 1957, when he was 39. He voluntarily gave up driving a few years later following an absence seizure (blackout, he called it) and because of issues with his right leg--he was afraid he wouldn't be able to apply the brake quickly enough in an emergency. He never had a second seizure, and if he'd had hand controls for the car, he probably could have kept driving.

He walked the mile each way to work until he retired at 62 (he was a boiler fireman). He mowed the lawn, worked in his wood shop, shoveled snow, invented gadgets. If you didn't know he had MS, you wouldn't have guessed. He had invisible symptoms. He died of COPD just shy of his 80th birthday, and was still going up and down stairs under his own steam three days before he died, though he did use a cane the last couple of years.

However, we always lived under the cloud of "tomorrow morning your father might not be able to get out of bed." I've had MS for maybe 10-12 years. I hope my course is like Dad's. But because it's random, I know tomorrow might be the day I can't get out of bed. MS doesn't play fair. But as nemsmom said, everyone has some kind of struggle.