Hi everyone. First time ive joined in the forum. I was wondering if anyone had any advice on grieving. I lost my mum in November after she suffered a stroke. I feel as though I’ve struggled since, initially I thought it was my body showing that km under a lot of stress but I dont feel that I’m getting better. Although in my mind I feel im getting somewhere, my body is so weak and I feel so fatigued and just want to feel better. Just wondering if anyone has felt the same when they have gone though losing someone so close. Any advice will be gratefully received Thanks
So sorry for your loss. Grief is difficult for anyone, and different for everyone, but of course it can worsen your MS. Stress always causes health problems, and there’s not much worse than losing a beloved parent. Are you able to discuss it with your doctor?
Hi Dan, firstly i am sorry to hear about your mum so close to xmas. I lost mine 2016 and i grieved hard for a long time and it did affect my MS.
then in 2017 October 3rd suddenly i lost my beloved husband and my MS went into a total tail spin. I have ppms. I have to say i thought i would never get through it. every day was hard. It was bad enough to loose him but with my MS it was a case of struggling to move forward as i didnt want too.
It takes time to grieve, i am still grieving. Every anniversary I feel really ill and can barely get out of bed. i push myself because i have my dog if i didnt have have her to be honest i wouldnt have bothered. I had to move too as the house was too big and into sheltered flat. its been really hard for me, but i take each day as it comes.
I did get private counselling to try and make some sense of it it all.
there are 5 stages of grief.
I wrote about my journey with it. It might help you. it might not.
It will settle down though. remember one day at a time, and talk about her, it helps really, it keeps their memory alives and i feel my mike and my mum around me all the time. xxxx
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I know somebody in her 80s who was diagnosed in her 20s. She was largely fine until her husband died when she was in her 60s. She then went downhill rapidly. I do believe grief makes it worse. I lost an uncle to suicide last year and my symptoms were definitely exacerbated after that.
I am sorry that you have lost someone so dear.
Personally, I do think that our body and mind work as a whole and deeply integrated system, not just as a set of separate and independent sub-systems (central nervous system, kidneys, guts, circulation etc). Unfortunately our medical specialist system is organised around the silo mentality, as any of us who have had more than one things the matter with us (or someone we care for) have good cause to know!
So yes, I feel that a person in grief will find that this manifests itself in physical ways, not obviously related to emotional distress. A hard-core conventional medicine purist might argue that is just waffle and nonsense until we have demonstrated a mechanism whereby the grief of bereavement can exercise a physical effect on the central nervous system. But I think most of us feel in our hearts that it just isn’t as simple as that.
When my (by then long-retired) family GP in my home town heard that I had been dx with MS, he urged my mother to pass on a message from him: that I was to avoid chronic stress above all things. I think he was right about that, and also think that he was ahead of his time in thinking so broadly and understanding that we work as a whole system, not just a disease. But then he was a broad-minded man for his time, having trained in aspects of Chinese medicine, and I think some of that holistic view informed his conventional practice too. We could do with a few more like him.
Hang on in there. These things take time, and there’s no rushing them, but I hope that you start to feel a little better before long. In the meantime, please do be gentle with yourself.
Alison