Multiple sclerosis is a strange, no, bizarre, disease.

To review: for many (most) people, MS is a relapsing-remitting disease. Attacks (relapses), which can have a variety of symptoms, hang around for days, weeks or months, and then go away (remission). Remission may mean that the person is free of all symptoms of the attack, or some of the symptoms may remain, usually at a less troublesome level.

When we read about MS, we read about relapses lasting at least 24 hours and at most a month or two. We read about remission being a long term thing, years or even decades for many people.

At some point, though, for many people with relapsing-remitting MS, the symptoms of a relapse don’t go away. Perhaps there are no more relapses. Perhaps there are relapses, resulting in loss of function, and they don’t get better. This variation of the disease is called secondary progressive.

As a person who has been unable to walk without support for over 5 years, I fall squarely into the secondary progressive category. But something has changed.

Early in December, I noticed that my brief periods of standing up and talking a few steps around the kitchen (hanging on to counters) to do dishes or cook were getting longer and stronger. For a week or so, I experimented with more walking in the kitchen. Pretty soon I was making it across the hall and into the bedroom. A while after that, I was doing it without crutches.

Several weeks ago, I started taking some small trips (with crutches) out into the outside world (massage appointment, choir rehearsal). Just before Christmas, I went to work with crutches for the first time since 2005.

Aside from getting a puppy in November (which, if anything, should have sent me to bed for weeks), nothing has changed (medication, PT, etc) that I can attribute this to, so I’m saying it’s a remission. Since it’s lasted (and I’ve seen improvements) over a full month, I’m feeling cautiously optimistic. My husband, on the other hand, is feeling wildly optimistic—he’s talking about buying me a bicycle!

Random observations about being upright after all this time:

• I’d forgotten how tall I am, or at least what the world looks like from this height—it’s a re-working of perspective
• What am I supposed to carry my stuff in? I have to buy a purse now that I don’t have my trusty wheelchair bag there 24/7
• All my pants are too long
• Wait, what do you mean I can’t wear the 2.5 inch high pumps I bought because they look good and it doesn’t matter cause I use a wheelchair?
• When did my husband get shorter than me?

Things people have said to me:

• Did you have surgery?
• Are you on new medication?
• Have you started physio-therapy? (No, but does exercising count?)
• Wait, I didn’t recognize you!
• (Even weirder) Nothing at all

Now I have to worry about how my ass looks. At this point, it’s a pretty cool thing to have to worry about.

P.S. I am not a superstitious person, but I hope announcing this to the whole world (or at least the two dozen people who read this) doesn’t jinx the whole deal.