I'm sure by now you've all seen the famous optical illusion of the old woman/young woman in the above picture? You DO see both images, right? The old woman has a feather in her hat as does the young woman looking over/toward her right shoulder?? If not, keep staring at it...it will come to you...eventually.
I've decided Multiple Sclerosis is like an optical illusion...very little about the dayumed disease is truly visible, and yet we SEE the disease showing up in our every day lives via fatigue, pain, vertigo, visual changes, etc., because we are LIVING with it. All those nagging symptoms that remain most likely UNSEEN on MRI, blood work, or even physical exam are easily identified through the eyes of an MSer. But for those "outsiders" that just catch glimpses into an MSer's life, it is even more difficult to understand what they cannot "see".
I have a strange hope that if they just stare at us long enough (metaphorically speaking or not!), eventually their vision will adjust
to what we MSers see on a daily basis...both the obvious and the hidden parts of this disease. It's just a late night thought...
8 comments:
What an interesting analogy. This is a wonderful way to illustrate to non-msers what MS can entail. This just might inspire a blog post of my own.
S.
Sometimes those late night thoughts become the basis for a blog post!
It is when I get my most inspirational ideas for writing and my editor always wants to know where the ideas come from. Ah, would you believe......
No, she doesn't!
What an excellent explanation!! I feel the reality of this every time I get an MRI in response to new symptoms and people tell me they “hope it comes back clean”… I understand what they mean, but without evidence for the outsiders, it means the new symptoms are still just another illusion.
I think you hit the nail on the head here. Only other people who have experienced MS really get it. That is a huge part of why I blog. I don't want to jump down a friend's throat when I mention extreme fatigue and they say, "Oh, I'm really tired too." At least here in blogland there are other people who know exactly what I mean.
Like ALL the non MSers out there I have trouble with optical illusions, so nope, I only see the young woman in the photo. I ain't got the patience to look at it any longer.
BUT I DO HAVe MS and I DO try to help my friends understand what I'm feeling/what I'm going through.
There must be a lesson I need to learn from this...um, what were we talking about?
Amen Sistah!!
Wow.. this is great. Thanks for sharing this one.
Jim
What beautiful and insightful post!
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