Salt is Not the Spice of Life’s Blog

Why do people say the stupidest things? I feel like this should be Bill Cosby’s new show – didn’t he have one that was kids say the darnest things?? For years I have sat back and listened to people mock, laugh and make fun of me when my MS is acting up. “Oh… she’s had too much to drink.” “I know she has cerebral palsy.” “What happened to you, someone run over your foot or something?” “But you look so normal, there can’t be anything wrong with you.” Newsflash – there isn’t something wrong with me, there is something wrong with you! And with the MS, I’m used to it. (okay – I didn’t really just sit back all the time – I have some snappy little comebacks when I’m in the mood…) You can sit there and make fun of me all you want to when I have a relapse. But let me clue you in on something. Ignorance is FAR more debilitating than MS will ever be to me.

Now with this heart failure I’m having to deal with stupid comments all over again. First let me say how amazed I have been that people seem to think having congestive heart failure is like catching a little cold. Umm.. please enlighten me – please in your infinite wisdom tell me how my heart going into failure, my heart saying I can’t pump blood thru it, my heart potentially stoppping (which FYI means I’m dead)is remotely the same as having a cold or anything like it? Secondly, it appears that everyone has slept at a Holiday Inn last night and woke up medical doctors today. If you have great low sodium recipes, please pass them on all day long. But if you have never been to medical school, have never known anyone with heart disease, have never had to deal with heart disease – then do not insult me by telling me how to treat my heart failure. And for those people who seriously are not medical doctors, do not for one second think that you know more than my cardiologist who specializes in heart failure or my neurologist who specializes in MS.

And for the love of God – stop asking me if I am “back to normal”? Am I no longer a normal person just because my organs don’t work the same way as yours? Does this make me some type of lepar in society? Its perfectly fine to ask me how my day was, how am I feeling, am I getting any stronger, how’s the low sodium diet going, are you getting more comfortable with the new life style. Genuine questions that people ask me about how I am and how my health is, thats okay. I don’t want to scare anyone off from checking in on me. I just wish sometimes people would think twice before they make comments to you.

It’s okay to not know the right thing to say. Hell, I don’t even know the right things to say to myself some days. Its okay to be scared about this. Trust me, I am. Its okay to not know what causes this and ask questions about that. I’m still learning and will continue learning about heart disease and MS.

I guess today I just hit my limit with stupidity.

This entry was posted on January 13, 2009 at 2:45 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.