March Madness and life lessons

March Madness in full swing, and so, talk of the Sweet 16, Final Four and Cinderella teams emerging through upsets such as No. 11 Dayton beating No. 6 West Virginia 68-60 reminds me of the Multiple Sclerosis lessons I learned on the Pine Avenue Elementary School basketball court.

For the first few months following my MS diagnosis more than nine years ago, I lived in fear and was very cautious about what and how much I did. After all, I was living with a chronic illness.

I had reluctantly strolled three blocks to the elementary school to shoot baskets. Every 10 steps or so I’d dribble the ball a couple times, which was enough for me to realize the MS-induced numbness in my hands had stripped any sort of “soft touch” I had with the basketball.

Next to the school, on the flat slab of concrete that seemed more like a really big patio than a basketball court, I experienced firsthand that my ball-handling skills weren’t that great and my jump shot was a little off the mark. I was undaunted by my lost dribbles and air balls because I knew my true personal test would come from the freethrow line.

Shooting freethrows is the telltale sign because it’s easy to track my accuracy – or lack thereof. I always shoot 10 shots for easy percentage conversion purposes.

So I stepped up to the line. Now, I have made it a rule that I never start counting until I make one shot. SWISH! one for one … BOINK! … one for two…. BOINK! … one for three … SWISH! … two for four …

That first day, I went four for 10 from the line. Forty percent. Hmmmmm. Thinking back to how I shot before my hands were all but asleep, I usually shot about 70 percent. My gosh. I had lost 30 percent accuracy. MS was getting the best of me, and I was fading fast. Next year, I thought, I’d be lucky to make two baskets.

But I wasn’t meant to be a freethrow god that day. Instead, it was on that day that I began to rebound, from the “glass is half empty” mentality that I had embraced the day I was diagnosed. I looked deeper and realized that I couldn’t blame the disease for my 30 percent decline. The real reason I missed six of 10 freethrows: I hadn’t shot baskets since nearly six months earlier. Of course I was going to be rusty. That’s how I am the first time out every spring. Plus, I remembered that I was never Michael Jordan to begin with.

I never attended Pine Avenue Elementary, but I learned on the school’s patio-like basketball court that I shouldn’t be so quick to blame MS for everything that isn’t going as well as it used to in my life. I’m not so naïve as to think that MS won’t adversely affect my life, but the even greater lesson I learned on the court that day was that I shouldn’t be so quick to give up on myself.

Two days later, I drained eight of 10 from the line.