A couple of months ago, I received an invitation from Healthline.com to respond to the above prompt. They asked the same question of other MS bloggers. Here is a link to our collective responses.

This is what I wrote:

“With MS, I’ve learned never to say there’s something I can’t live without, because that may be the very thing I lose next. But in the spirit of this question, one thing I would hate to lose would be my voice. I use voice recognition software to write my blog, the book I’m working on, emails, and texts. I use my voice to operate lights, ceiling fans, shades, and televisions. I use my voice to remind my wife that I love her. Given that I’ve already lost all of the function in my legs and much of it in my hands, if I lost my voice, life would become much more difficult.”

I struggled a bit with this assignment. I understand what they were after — describe one aspect of your life that is most important in easing the burden of MS. However, if you take the prompt literally, it asks what aspect of your life you would die without. I spent the last sixteen years ensuring there is nothing in my life that I couldn’t live without, because when you have MS, everything is on the chopping block.

When I was healthy, if you had told me that in the next decade or so I would lose my ability to snowmobile, hunt, golf, type, write, walk, work, or take care of myself in terms of eating, dressing, and grooming, I might’ve fallen into despair.

Indeed, one day I may become overwhelmed and unable to maintain my positivity, but it won’t be the result of losing something I can’t live without. It will be that there aren’t enough things to live for, and I’m still a long way from that point.