MS brought us together
Combined, we've taken on this continual illness for more than a dozen many years. Jennifer was diagnosed eight many years ago and claims an unwanted seniority in excess of me by practically 27 months. She has secondary-progressive MS. Mine is relapsing-remitting.
We met three years ago at a unique Nationwide MS Society program known as "Obtaining Your Buried Treasure." Jennifer was one of the modest group leaders at this daylong system intended to help folks with MS rediscover the ambitions and dreams they'd misplaced sight of in dealing with the rigors of daily lives.
How hassle-free that a Nationwide MS Society plan manager told me to sit at Jennifer's table. She considered Jennifer and I would have a lot to talk about due to the fact we the two were younger and had been the two self-help group leaders.
We wound up speaking more about other things: our respective fantasy football teams, how her dog had destroyed her Tom Petty hat, and my passion for Bruce Springsteen's music. I fell in really like with Jennifer the day we met. Periodic e-mail messages led to standard telephone calls.
But one fateful Thursday evening, I received a mobile phone phone from her brother, who informed me they had taken Jennifer to the hospital.
Apparently MS felt it wasn't acquiring sufficient focus in our romantic relationship.
The next stage
That weekend I drove much more than 200 miles roundtrip to visit Jennifer in the hospital as she recovered from a serious exacerbation. In the middle of a heart-to-heart conversation about in which we believed our relationship was going, she let me know for positive in eight phrases.
"I think I want you to kiss me," she mentioned as she bit her bottom lip.
Not believing what I had just heard, I sought much more path.
"You suggest, like, correct now?"
Our romantic relationship took off from there. Jennifer lived a lot more than 90 minutes away from me, so for practically 3 years we invested at least an hour on the mobile phone each weeknight, and I'd make that 200-mile roundtrip to see her every single weekend. On October 23, 2004, I asked Jennifer to be my wife.
The principal occasion
Any person who has ever planned a wedding ceremony is aware of it isn't basic. From caterers and bands to flowers and guest lists, there are so a lot of particulars. And simply because most bridal magazines do not specialize in ideas for organizing available weddings, there were a whole lot of issues we had to figure out on our personal.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9MSHOYaULc
We held our ceremony and reception in the same hotel conference center. This limited scooter-to-van transfers and made things less difficult for our out-of-town visitors and our friends who also have MS.
A late-morning service and early afternoon reception place us all one particular step ahead of MS-related fatigue, and a jazz quartet enjoying at the reception extra a touch of class. It also thwarted the awkwardness Oversea Wedding of obtaining to sit out the Hokey Pokey or the Chicken Dance. We averted a cumbersome buffet line by possessing a sit-down lunch the place wait workers served us all chicken parmesan.
And our honeymoon? We took a week-lengthy journey to Toronto, where we noticed the Blue lays take on Jennifer's beloved Boston Red Sox.
From my MS fatigue and continual numbness to Jennifer's spasticity and normal Novantrone treatments, we willingly encounter each challenge the condition throws at us.
But the MS does not define who we are. And our adore story continues.
Dan Digmann is a leader of the Gratiot County-location MS self-assist group and a frequent contributor to InsideMS.
