Welcome to this Throwback Thursday post on A Couple Takes On MS, where we repost some of our favorite essays over the past 14 years since we launched our blog. These will appear on the last Thursday of each month, and this one has special meaning to Dan and me. In addition to first appearing on our blog in 2009, this is the last essay in our book – Despite MS, to Spite MS – which we released 10 years ago this month. Celebrating the decade since our book came out was the focus of our recent podcast episode, and part of the celebration was for each of us to read one of our favorite essays from Despite MS, to Spite MS. Check out the episode to hear Dan read this essay, and bonus: listen to hear which one I chose to read 🙂
From October 18, 2009
It was early in the morning, and I was ready to leave for work. A travel mug full of black coffee in my left hand; car keys in my right.
Jennifer rolled down the hallway and asked, “Hey, Dan? Would you have time to help me go to the bathroom one more time before you leave?”
And so I stopped, set my coffee and keys on the floor next to my briefcase, and met her in the bathroom.
As we prepared to make the transfer from her power wheelchair, Jennifer looked up at me and asked, “Do you ever get tired of me always asking you to help me go to the bathroom and all the other stuff you do to help me?”
It certainly wasn’t the first time she’s asked me such a question, but this time I had a more descript response than my standard reply of, “Never. Do you ever get tired of all the stuff you do to help me?”
I then knelt down to get eye level with Jennifer and asked her if she remembered the time back in 2002, just after we started dating, that I drove back to Iowa by myself for Thanksgiving. And so, there in the bathroom, I shared with Jennifer what had consumed my mind for that 18-hour roundtrip drive to Monticello, Iowa, and back to Mount Pleasant, Mich., some seven years ago.
Imagine that: A tender moment, in the bathroom.
I told Jennifer that for the entire trip I searched for answers to my questions of whether such a relationship could work between two people with MS. Was I going to be strong enough to care for her as well as for myself? Was she going to be strong enough to care for me as well as herself? I threw around the reality that she no longer could walk, and Lord knows how my disease was going to treat me in the future.
It was early enough in our relationship that I think we could have mutually agreed a marriage likely could prove to be more than either of us could handle and MS would force us to “just be friends.”
When I returned from Iowa, I had made my decision, and unless Jennifer felt otherwise, I wasn’t happy with just being friends.
Fast-forward to 2009, and it was at that moment, in the bathroom, that I fully realized I am living the answers to the questions and prayers I had contemplated on that trip to the Hawkeye State.
I told Jennifer, “On that trip to Iowa, this is what I prayed for: that one day I’d be so blessed as to have you as my wife and we both would be healthy enough that I would be the caregiver for you and you for me, and we didn’t let MS prevent us from being happy together. So no, Jennifer, I don’t mind at all. This is what I had prayed for.”