My Immune System is so strong it's killin' me

In my last post, I breifly explained how Multiple Sclerosis works.

"It doesn't really get dangerous until your immune system becomes completely incompetent and just attacks everything near it..."

The down side of this, of course, is that it attacks things that I may need some day such as my Brain. However, the plus side of having a juiced up Immune System is that a almost never get a cold or The Flu. All my coworkers start calling out one-by-one as viruses mutate and attack their bodies one at a time. I am always worried that I'm gonna be next but, as luck would have it, I never am. Maybe H.G. Wells should have considered Multiple Sclerosis before sending his biomachines to a planet full of sickness and disease. Sure, they may lose control of their laser hand for a few moments and a few of the older ones may end up pooping their pants, but at least their entire infantry wouldn't be defeated by The Common Cold.

I also have the advantage of never being sleep deprived. Even when I was younger - many moons before my diagnosis - when ever I felt like I may be getting a sore throat or a sniffle, I would end up going to sleep early and getting in a good 11 - 12 hours before going to school. At my current job, I never usually need to be at work before 10:30am which allows me to make sure I sleep as much as my body tells me I need to. Again, this often leads to 11 hour comas and having everyone around me call me a lazy slob but I'll take it if it allows me to laugh at them when they are at home, tethered to a box of Kleenex and Dayquil.

I try never to let stress take me down. In my line of work - Renting Cars to Tourists at the Airport - I don't encounter much job-related stress and, when I do, it never lasts longer than 10 minutes before the situation - a.k.a. customer - goes away forever. In my personal life, as I mentioned in an earlier post, my girlfriend, friends, and family are the best I could ask for. There is no petty drama in my personal life. I am very lucky to have found the friends that I have and made the decision that Length of Friendship does not equate to Quality of Friendship and pushed away long time aqaintences who were adding stress without any real benefit. My circle of friends has been significantly reduced over the past few years but my quality of life has improved exponentially.

Whether you have a disease or not, making a regular inventory of your stresses and sending away as much of them as you can is always a much healthier way to live. I will follow that up with my usual disclaimer - I'm not a doctor.

My mother recently realized that a long time friend of hers was causing more harm than good to her life and finally, after 30 years of friendship, decided it was time to cut her ties. This was an incredibly hard decision for her. Sometimes, even though we have a long list of reasons to break ties with a person and have convinced ourselves time after time that we will feel so much better after we do it, we still can't bring ourselves to make that move. Anyone who has ever been in a failing relationship for far too long knows exactly what I am talking about. Months down the line, though, we wonder why we didn't make the decision sooner.

Stress is a powerful thing. Get rid of it. Sorry if this blog wasn't as funny as my usual ones but I felt it needed to be said.

Nick