Sites worth seeing
In my last report I mentioned I’m attracted to all things motivational and uplifting in regards to “MS recovery”. Unarguably this is an insidious illness which, if left unmanaged (for want of a better word), will chug away – stealthily corroding our nerve sheaths and eroding our functionality. Even the relapsing remitting phase will do that, with each relapse doing unseen damage – as was the case for me for many years while undiagnosed. Then we metaphorically wake up one day and find that geriatrics at the shopping mall can outrun us, or the footpath (sidewalk) rises rapidly to meet our outstretched noses. C’est la vie .. it’s still a beautiful world and, believe it or not, we’re very fortunate – any of us – to be alive and pumping gas in and out. MS may not be the best thing to have, but (for most of us) rarely is it the worst. We’re alive, and where there’s life there’s hope .. and we have at our disposal a myriad ways of learning how we can overcome MS.
Obviously I’m in a philosophical mood today. Life has dealt us our cards, and it’s then a matter for us (with the best help we can muster) to decide how to play our hands. And if MS is a reality, it’s how we deal with it that matters – in my view at least. If you’re reading my site today or have read anything I’ve written in the past I suspect you also might agree with that. It’s against such a backdrop that I’d like to highlight today 3 sites which I’ve recently discovered and which might assist you on the sometimes bumpy road to recovery, or inspire you along such travels.
The first is a revised and updated site of Professor George Jelinek who I’ve mentioned previously. George as you know is a medical specialist with MS, who’s a veritable fountainhead of enormously useful and efficacious information on MS recovery. At that new link George has updated and revised material which earlier appeared on his “Taking Control of MS” website, and taken the web-resource on that site much further. (Incidentally I feel very fortunate indeed to have contracted MS in the modern era, after publication of his earlier text.) George’s new (”Overcoming MS”) website has additional material, new synergies with other recovery information, and new and useful functionalities – for instance the Q&A page and the information on it; the ability to download and print out in glossy PDF format what you “can” and “can’t” eat on the Swank/Jelinek diet; and the printable reference pages. I’m also a great fan of podcasts – I love for example listening to the Writers’ Almanac and Canadian Broadcasting Commission’s (CBC) “Writers & Co” while I clean the kitchen each night (my task) – and I see that the good professor George has now also taken to the airwaves with MS-recovery podcasts.
The other 2 sites I’ve stumbled across recently are firstly a really interesting site by an anonymous guy in the US who uses the nom-de-keyboard of Man-on-a-MSion. His mission is a worthy one, and I like his wisdom. I’ve added his site to my favourites, listed to the right here. And lastly I draw your attention to a truly gutsy and inspirational peace-time march. It’s written by an Australian blogger – a friend, though we live in different parts of this wide brown land. She recently completed one of the pilgrimage routes of the Way of Saint James in Spain – hurling her “rollator” (wheeled walking frame) ahead of her. It’s great reading .. see the Wobbly Teetering blog link which I’ve also listed here.
But you may want to start with the new George Jelinek site and bookmark it as a reference point for MS knowledge – my guess is you’ll find it very useful.
All the best with your own recovery, KB