When my daughter was small - she is now 33 - and l was always falling over - like l do now- but if anyone started to dash to help me she would say ‘‘No leave her - she gets up on her own’’.
Friends bought me a poster that has a picture of rugby players in a scrum. And the caption is - Champions always get up - even when they can’t. l think this sums up most of us. [Unless you are a footballer - then you scream and yell and have to be stretchered off].
Ok, understood.
But can you see why you come across as a wee bit harsh on the rest of us. If you’d spelt out what you meant in the first place, then we might (I might) have been a bit more understanding.
Personally, and for many of us who use this forum, it is actually a different matter. We are in fact too disabled to work, we perhaps can’t walk, see, use the loo, wash or dry ourselves, use our hands properly, eat without someone else cutting up food, wheel a self propelled wheelchair about, or get ourselves into the shower or a wheelchair without either the help of another person and/or a hoist.
Many people with MS actually do more than we really should. We maybe do various cleaning jobs about the house that are very difficult to do but we push ourselves and feel a sense of achievement for doing them. I am often told by my OH that I should ask for help rather than trying to do things alone. It takes me a long time to do things that would be way quicker done with help, but attempting to keep some independence is important. We are more social than we’d prefer, we try to help other people just like we once did when able bodied. Sometimes it’s hard to ask for help so we do more than we should.
I don’t have a job that I have to push myself hard to get to, so I applaud those people who do.
And if your colleagues feel you’re ‘lazy’ then all I can say is they should try living with MS for a week and still manage to do all the things that we do.
I still don’t think I use MS as an excuse for not doing things I don’t want to do. There are people I would rather not spend energy on but I have to because it pleases my OH. There are things I’d rather not do, certain social occasions that I’d rather avoid. Jobs around the house that I do simply because I don’t want to ask for help and because they have to be done. There are things I simply cannot do because of MS. Sometimes I infuriate my OH because I’ve tried and failed to do something. Sometimes I infuriate myself because I’ve tried and failed something.
I don’t have work colleagues so the people I see are friends and I know that I’m not seen by them as lazy, or as someone who uses my disability to get out of things I don’t fancy doing. Maybe I’m fortunate in that, or maybe I’m just more obviously disabled. Perhaps that’s the difference. When you don’t use mobility or care aids it is perhaps less obvious that everything you do requires more effort than if you were able bodied.
Sue
No.
In fact, No, was quite probably my first word, followed swiftly by Why? (according to my parents).
If I decline an invitation to a social event I don’t give reasons/excuses, just “Thank you but I won’t be attending”, if questioned on the matter “I’m not going because I don’t want to”.
I’m fortunate enough to be able to practice Taekwondo - and I have to be reminded to take things easy, I’m always up for new moves no matter how ‘Bruce Lee’ they might be, and would never use MS or any other form of illness as an excuse to not train - in fact, I sat on the sidelines in the training hall for 8 months watching when it was thought that my symptoms might be caused by compressed nerves/spinal damage in the neck (the Instructor wouldn’t let me train).
Workwise - I provide secretarial/PA cover usually for 7 people but for the next few days it will be for 14, there are very few reasons for refusing to do specific jobs
(a) I don’t speak ___________ sufficiently well to call __________ and discuss _____
(b) We don’t have the software installed to ______________, if we can get the software, then I can do __________
(c) I have 9 jobs in the stack and won’t have time to complete the job you want done today, if none of the other secretaries can take it then you can put it in my work-stack and I will get round to it, but it probably won’t be started until tomorrow.
(d) I cannot read your writing, please dictate it and I will then sort it out.
Everyone I train/work with knows I probably have MS (waiting on a definite DX); I don’t think people give it much thought.
I dont use it as an excuse but if ive made a fool of myself or got something wrong i have been known to say, in a quiet voice and a smile on my face that i have “a condition”…i just get laughed at. One thing i take exception at is other people deciding whats best for me or suggesting i might not be able to do something! I know its cos they care but still… x
i hear that there is a t-shirt print out there which reads “I’m not drunk, i have MS”. It is also regarded as the ‘invisible disease’.
and so your point Mr Krak, i think, can be filed under ‘no sh*t sherlock’. But again, i could not care less how other perceive me; i have been long misunderstood anyway! 
Just to add to my previous post= When l do trip or fall - l always say - lts alright - l like to do my own stunts.