Getting MS is like getting caught in a rip current at your favorite beach. One minute you're bobbing hopefully in the shallows enjoying the Five Esses (sun, sea, surf, sand, and sex), the only things on your mind are a developing case of sunburn and an inkling that your wife is starting to suspect that although your head is turned innocently to the left, safely behind your mirror-lense sunglasses your eyes are actually swivelled as far as they will go to the right, in fact they are almost on stalks watching the cute redhead in the string bikini, the next minute you encounter a rip current and are torn from the beach and tumbled into hidden depths in all likelihood inhabited by things with big teeth and eyes literally on stalks.

There's a lot of advice on dealing with rip currents to be found on the web. For example, NOAA, the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration, has thoughtfully provided us with the sign below that exhorts us to "Break the Grip of the Rip".

The next image seems to be from a pamphlet. I must admit that I'm particularly attracted to it because of the friendly "Don't Panic" message at the top, being that I'm a big fan of the late Douglas Adams' Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy series. (To read the fine print, click on it to get a larger version).

Let's take the beach as a metaphor for ordinary life, happy, carefree, and relaxed. The rip current is a metaphor for MS. It rips you willy-nilly from your formerly carefree life out into deep, uncharted water.

Some of us, heck possibly almost all of us go into denial when we first get MS. This is consistent with the Kübler-Ross model, also known as the Five Stages of Grief. The stages are, according to the Wikipedia article linked in the previous sentence:

1. Denial: The initial stage: "It can't be happening."
2. Anger: "Why ME? It's not fair?!"
3. Bargaining: "Just let me live to see my son graduate."
4. Depression: "I'm so sad, why bother with anything?"
5. Acceptance: "It's going to be OK."

I've noticed that for people with MS the Kübler-Ross model tends to be a repeating cycle, which kind of makes sense because MS is more often than not a lifetime thing. Once we reach acceptance, a new set of symptoms or new disability will put us back at the start of the cycle again.

Although denial comes with an attractive upbeat mindset, giving rise to such charming aphorisms as "I have MS but it doesn't have me", "I don't have time to give in to MS", and "I'm going to fight this thing", it's clear that MS doesn't give a toss for your mental attitude. In the long-term, denial means taking on more than you can realistically handle, and ignoring important symptoms that could perhaps be alleviated by early intervention. In general, denial is a realistic lifestyle choice only for those who have a mild case of MS, and those charming, attractive, and active role models you see on glossy drug pamphlets are at best fooling only themselves, and at worst fooling you too.

At the other end of the scale we have the people who completely embrace MS, who make a lifestyle out of it. MS for them becomes an affliction, a vocation, and an avocation all in one. In the spirit of turning every stumbling block into a stepping stone (see Electrickery), they often start a business catering to people with MS (excellent business plan there, making money from people who don't have any: people with MS are at best fighting serious medical bills and at worst on SSDI). I view people trying to make a profit from people with MS as worthless scumbuckets.

I don't have much time for people who set themselves up as role models either. A while back we had a new member in my forum who described himself at length as a role model for people with MS. The members of my forum were not, as a rule, in favor of this. When put to the question he chose to leave in a huff rather than justify himself, leaving a nasty parting comment that we were all "wallowing in despair". We found the cognitive dissonance between his avocation and his behaviour wildly amusing and inaugurated the emoticon at left, entitled "wallowing", in his honor.

The point we were trying to make is that folks who set themselves up as a role model for people with MS are guilty of massive hubris. How can one person be a role member for all of us when our experiences with MS are so different? How can one be a role model for people as diverse as the twentysomething with mild tingling and fatigue through to the sixtysomething with an advanced case of Primary Progressive MS who can move only one finger? Personally, I would find it hard to treat this guy who is on disability and has nothing better to do than try to raise the spirits of people with MS as a positive role model. I need a role model who has a spouse, young children, and is primary wage-earner, whose MS is a marathon rather than a sprint. My MS is not yours, my challenges are not yours, so my role model is not yours either.

But frankly, I consider role models to be harmful rather than helpful. They may help motivate me (which is a good thing), but what's to stop my well-meaning spouse, friends, and coworkers from looking at them, looking at me, and asking "Why can't you be more like them?" The answer is of course that my MS is different, but not everybody is capable of understanding this.

The person who is in denial, who doesn't have time to let MS get the better of them, is swimming against the rip current that is MS. The role models are the opposite, they swim with the current and end up way out to sea isolated from the mainstream of people with MS, the pluggers who can't give in to MS on the one hand, but have their quality of life hopelessly degraded on the other. The advice I give to the rest is taken from the rip current pamphlet above: swim parallel to shore. Don't fight head on, but don't surrender either. Swim sideways.

Hence the title of this article. My wife should also note that the pamphlet above also says that "Polarized sunglasses cut glare and help to spot rip currents". I was looking for rip currents, honey. Honest!