Personal Narrative: Living With Multiple Sclerosis

My entire world was turned upside-down my junior year of high school. My father’s health deteriorated to the point where he was forced to make the difficult decision to be admitted into the Veterans’ Home after living with Multiple Sclerosis for thirty-five long years. The two of us didn’t always get along, but at this point I wanted nothing more than to do the impossible and rescue him from the place where I believed he didn’t fit. After all, a man his age should not have to live in a nursing home. I felt sick to my stomach the first night I walked out of Fifer, the building my father now calls home.……He was so young compared to the other residents in the home, but he was no better off physically than any of them. Multiple Sclerosis is a debilitating disease that I have witnessed, bit by bit, strip my father of independence. From as long as I can remember, support, and he gave up his driver’s license and became permanently wheelchair bound around the time I started …show more content…
He missed my sporting events, award ceremonies, and choral and band performances. As a child I would get angry about the things my dad couldn’t do with me that my friends’ dads did with them. He was also not the easiest person to get along with, and I don’t blame him. He is frustrated. Once he went into the Veteran’s Home though, he was also absent from my home life. I either visited him or he would come home on the weekends since my mother and I were around to care for him. I wouldn’t talk about my father in public because I always felt like people pitied me if they found out. I didn’t feel like I deserved pity. Growing up with my father made me feel strong. I felt like I could make it through anything because I had already had to put up with so much. My father inspired me to work hard and enjoy life because at any moment, your health, which he says is the most important thing in life, can be stolen from