Off to a great start

Taking a quick breath, I look at the calendar and am torn on how to react. In one sense it’s like, “Oh my God! It’s already Jan. 15?” In another sense it’s more like, “Oh my God! It’s only Jan. 15?” Seems like a lot has happened in the first two weeks of this new year. Health Central Jennifer and I are regular contributors to HealthCentral.com, and we had the opportunity to write the first Question of the Week in 2012 on the website. How exciting! Our question – “What Would Make Your MS Life Better?” – has generated some interesting and hopeful...

See a quarter, pick it up

You all know the storied good-fortune saying about the copper one-cent coin featuring the 16th president of the United States. “See a penny, pick it up, all day long you’ll have good luck.” OK, so really. If you’re walking or rolling along the sidewalk and you see a penny sporting Abraham Lincoln’s silhouette, do you really stop and pick it up? And if you do, are you really feeling destined for great things on this day because it’s in your pocket or coin purse? Either way, imagine if instead of a penny you saw a quarter. A silver profile of George Washington...

Looking back ever so briefly

College students packing their vehicles to go home for the holidays is an all-too-familiar sight for me. I’ve worked at Central Michigan University for nearly a dozen years, and with my office positioned right across the street from several on-campus residence halls I see this each time I step out of the office around mid-December. Exhausted from their week of final exams I catch them leaving the places they’ve called home the past four months. They’re lugging laundry baskets loaded with dirty clothes and jamming them into the cars awaiting them with popped trunks...

Not today

I think I don’t want to have MS today. I don’t want to take my injection today, because really, are you sure it is anything more than glorified water? And I’m tired of asking for help all of the time. “Will you help me in the bathroom?” or “Will you drive me to the store?” or “Can you help me get dressed?” Because that is what my MS has done to me… turned me into a grown-up child. And today, I’ve decided I don’t want to deal with it. I just want my life, my future, my dignity, and my privacy back, which means I don’t want MS today. Truth be told,...

Living history • Game 6, 1986

Most people from my parent’s generation can tell you exactly where they were the day John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Exactly where, when the United States’ 35th president was shot at 12:29 p.m. Dallas time on Nov. 22, 1963. Among similar events that I experienced with my fellow Generation Xers while growing up, I can tell you that I was: • Riding the school bus home from elementary school when I first heard John Hinckley Jr. attempted to assassinate President Ronald Reagan on March 30, 1981; • Sitting down in the junior high cafeteria when I first learned of the...

Your support inspires our efforts

“Just finished my book by Dan Digmann and his wife, Jennifer! Finished it over my lunch hour with tears in my eyes … happy tears! Such a remarkable book by a remarkable couple! ” Reading comments like this one from Nanci in Monticello, Iowa, reassures us that our recently released book is accomplishing what we were hoping for. We wrote “Despite MS, to Spite MS” to increase awareness about Multiple Sclerosis, demonstrate that life doesn’t end with an MS diagnosis, and to touch and inspire others wherever they are in their lives. We are blown away that within...

MS and Charlie Sheen’s ‘Red Dawn&#...

I never asked for this disease. As far as I know, I didn’t do anything to bring it upon myself. So much is not known about what causes Multiple Sclerosis, I can’t even justify my diagnosis as being in the wrong place at the wrong time. It just happened. Poor, poor Dan. I sobbed so incredibly hard the day the radiology report indicated my symptoms of numbness in my hands, feet and chest, “most likely was MS.” And I cried just as much when nearly two months later my neurologist confirmed all that I feared: I, without a doubt, have Multiple Sclerosis. Within a couple...

Tick tock

Can you hear that? Maybe it is one of the clocks in our front room. Tick tock, tick tock. Nope, that’s not it. Tick tock… there it goes again. Only faster now – more like the stopwatch from the television show 60 Minutes. Less tick tock, more tick-tick-tick. I wonder to myself, “Hmm… where is that coming from?” It’s an annoying noise that is driving me crazy. Not until my cousin Kirsten recently gave birth to her second child did I start putting the pieces together. Then, when my niece Anna was born August 23, it smacked me up side my...