Aperture

I am an angry bunny with a cane. 

This is a negative, rage filled blog. Read at your own risk. 

I am sick and tired of the Montel Williams and other MS people talking about how if I buy his juicer and eat all fruits and veggies and exercise like him them I will be all buff and in shape and doing wonderful. 

First off, I don’t have enough money to buy all the veggies and fruits like he does. Have you priced these items lately. But that’s a whole other rant. 

My big rant is exercise. First off, let’s get this straight. He can do these exercise routines that I can’t so he is a much better person than I? But tell me… who is up 6-7 times a night with sick kids? Who scrubs his toilets, does his laundry, cooks his dinners, cleans his house, runs his errands?

Do you know how many spoons these uses up? (Only spoonies will get that,)

But let’s put all the excuses aside. Let’s focus on the exercise alone. I wish spokespeople for Multiple Sclerosis would tell the truth. 

Yes, exercise is great. You will be healthier and feel better. We get that you are trying to be an inspiration, but all you make us feel like are failures. Show us the truth. 

How one day you walk on the treadmill and it hurts but you fight through and make it 25 minutes and you get off and collapse but feel accomplished. How that inspires you and you have a great outlook on life. How then you are able to go outside for a nice slow hike the next day. 

And then… and then the next day you get on the treadmill, hoping to do 30 minutes that day. But then 2 minutes into it those muscles that hurt when you walked downstairs to the treadmill, they start seizing up. And I don’t mean the muscle pain the average person feels when they start walking, I mean tightening up so tight it feels like your skin will split into as the muscles bulge and tighten. 

Then by 4 minutes you have tears streaming down your face. But you are strong you can do this, after all, all the celebrities can do it. By 6 minutes the first cry of pain escapes your lips, only to increase in frequency and loudness by the 7th minute. By the 9th minute you are grateful your neighbor next door no longer lives there to hear your screaming. 

I am pushing myself and my left calf muscle is so tight I swear it will explode and by minute 10 I find myself collapsed on the treadmill sobbing with self defeat. I am simply not strong enough to fight through the pain. 

Truth is, I may not be able to walk on the treadmill for a few days. Or maybe I can walk 5 minutes tomorrow and 25 the next day, and none the next. 

That’s the truth that needs to be told. That is what these spokespeople need to talk about. 

I get these MS magazines with a woman in hiking boots standing atop a mountain. First off,  I cannot even wear my hiking boots, they are too heavy for my legs to lift as my legs already feel like they weigh 75 lbs each.

But she stands atop the mountain, looking out over the beautiful landscape and boasting how she has MS but MS does not have her. Bullshit. MS has me by the balls. It is squeezing the life out of me. 

Now granted, I am fighting with every fiber of my being, and I am not giving up. But MS does have control of my life. 

It is ok to show that hiking and such is possible with MS. I do it. Yes, inspire people to push themselves to make the most of life, but be realistic and tell the hardships on how you got there and how you cannot do that every day. How on some days just breathing is a chore. 

I just feel as if they, at least in my case, are failing to inspire me, but rather they make me feel defeated. 

I guess that is why you will see me appear bipolar in my blog. No, I am fortunately not bipolar, I have enough to deal with without that. But I show life as it is. The good and the bad. My life is not all sunshine, rainbows and unicorns. But it is not all doom and gloom. Just like you, no matter who is reading this, whether you have a chronic illness or not, just like you… my life is a roller coaster. 

I don’t feel my blog would do anyone any good if I only showed the positive. That only leaves people feeling like their life is much less fortunate than mine. But to be all negative does not inspire. When I show both sides of my world, I feel people can better relate. 

The same goes for MS spokespeople. 

After venting and typing this, I came across this video. CLICK HERE TO SEE

The first few minutes explains how a woman in the airport approached Montel about this same subject. She said, “I got to tell you something, you make it very hard for us. My husband came to me and he said why aren’t you like Montel, why don’t you go to the gym, why don’t you get a job, why don’t you get up, why don’t you go walking.” 

Perhaps he may have changed his rhetoric, I don’t know, I don’t watch him anymore. He just seems to be hocking a product all the time using MS as a selling point. 

But what the woman said in the airport is true, but on a much deeper level. Yes, the likes of him makes it difficult in how other people view us, but they do more damage to how we see ourselves. 

I bought my first cane the other day. I have these old people canes that were given to me, but this is the first one I have bought. It was such a hard purchase. 

I have not had to use it yet, (I have used canes, just not the one I bought) but these things wear on one’s psyche. To have to buy a cane. 

But let me tell you this. Anytime you are out and you see someone with a cane, look at them with a sense of awe and respect. Because that person is not giving up. They are fighting through pain to live. The refuse to let their illness or injury stop them. 

So yes, today I feel completely deflated. I am lying her in pain, bad spasms, and trying to avoid taking medication as I don’t want to sleep. But, I know tomorrow, I will give the treadmill another try. Fail or succeed, I will still try.