sobering

we spent the weekend in kentucky visiting alex's brother greg.

this is probably the 4th time in the 3 years that we've been together that we've made the trip. it's not too far, about 4 hours-ish each way. greg is the second oldest of the 7, making him 47 years old, 16 years older than alex. he's a pretty cool guy.

he's also been living with MS for a little over 10 years.

now, i don't know all the details of everyting but i do know that he let the disease progress for awhile before going to the doctor. it had gotten to the point that most people thought he was a raging alcoholic since he'd fall all the time, black out sometimes and just generally was losing it.

it took greg a long time to face it himself. he was also pretty far along by the time ha was diagnosed. when we see him now everyone is very impressed with how he's doing and are quick to remind me i never saw him at his low.

i was, truthfully, very impressed with greg and how he lives on his own (i guess his wife left him after his diagnosis) and manages to get around using the bus system and really, it's quite impressive.

that is, until the time we visited him right after i had my LP. seeing greg then took on a whole new meaning to me. seeing how the MS has effected him. how he repeats things a lot. how eating is very difficult. how he has a hard time walking even with his braces. how one eye doesn't look straight ahead anymore and he can't read things unless they are up close. how he's kind of hard to understand until you get used to the slurry was he talks.

yes, that was a much different visit for me. knowing that could be my future.

then i was diagnosed. then un-diagnosed i guess.

then i had my latest MRI last week. i see the neurologist tomorrow morning. and for some reason i'm not feeling good about it.

seeing greg this weekend was... hard.

it's hard for me not to look at him and see all that he doesn't have now instead of focusing on all his HUGE accomplishments and to be amazed at how far he's come. i know that's not the right attitude, but i just can't shake it.

to hear him talk about his frustrations and what he "used to have" ...