Twenty five years after receiving a diagnosis of multiple sclerosis, I am lucky to still have the option to decide whether or not to reveal my condition to a new person or group. I’m not MS closeted, but I do like to wait until I’ve already formed an impression before I am designated/dismissed as “disabled.”  I’d rather expand peoples’ conceptions about MS than contract their conception of me.

I wasn’t sure if, or when, I would share that I have MS with the tai chi class I’ve just joined at the local rec center. The first session, I’d flowed along with everyone else and hoped I would have energy remaining for teaching my  class with college freshmen in the afternoon. Once I verified I could perform both activities in one day, I thought I’d be ready to add this new tai chi class to my schedule.   

When I went back for my second session, I stood with the other students and watched our instructor demonstrate the complete series of sweeping, balletic motions we would all be working towards. Most of the series looked like it might eventually become achievable for me. But not the kicks. 

We’d just spent the past hour meditating on our feet, then doing repetitions of the first three moves of the complex series. I’d been feeling like a badass for merely staying upright all that time. The instructor singled me out, as the newcomer, informing me I would one day be able to execute all the same moves he had just performed. 

As much as I don’t want to get in the way of reaching my full potential, I couldn’t see that my future would ever include a series of high kicks. I’d been feeling it would be enough for me to eventually execute the complete series while making smaller movements that merely approximated kicks.  

It was time to dial down the instructor’s expectations. 

So I made the call. I disclosed to the group that I have MS. 

The woman who’d been practicing beside me was baffled. She told me she’d worked with a lot of people with MS, and I don’t look like any of them. She said, I guess you know all about the latest drug.

A few years ago, I would have rattled off the good news about the latest drug, the one that had stopped my very aggressive case of MS. I would have told her how I’ve been commuting for years to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for my doses while waiting for the FDA approval to release untold thousands of MS patients from the shackles of disease progression. Life sure didn’t turn out that way. 

I said, “There is always a latest drug. I’m here because I’m interested in the oldest treatments.” Since she was clearly a regular, I asked her how one pays for the class; she told me I could work it out the following week. We both assumed I’d be back. 

That was a week and a half ago. Since then…my son texted. His text put a check my lifestyle. 

Everyone who knows me knows I love my son. I love him more than all the pee in China. I have traveled to the other side of the planet for my son. At his request, I am now going to hunker down. 

The other day, he texted from Indonesia to remind my husband and I about the dangers of Covid-19. “There is a two-week plus lead time, so it might be wise to start hunkering down before there are any tri-state cases.”

Now, this young man happens to be living in the future. Literally. The sun rises for him 13 hours before it rises for us. He has spent the last year and half as a consultant based in China. When we visited, my husband and I saw for ourselves that China is ahead of the US in many ways, some positive—China has way more efficient mass transportation—and some negative—China has way worse air and water quality. Sadly for China, they’ve been way ahead of us with Covid-19. 

Which ought to mean, we have been given an opportunity to prepare. 

My son and his girlfriend MC managed to get out of Beijing in late January, while there was still time Thankfully, Thailand accepted them. They’ve been on the run from Covid-19 ever since. 

As an, ahem, older person with multiple chronic illnesses, it makes sense for me to take Covid-19 seriously, and to cut out all unnecessary exposures. My schedule is jam packed with transcendent, meaningful, one might say, necessary, exposures—which start to look foolhardy when viewed through the lens of Covid-19, 

Yesterday I cut out what is probably my most dangerous exposure—my weekly workshop with the over-70 set at a senior living center, who are feeling as vulnerable to this virus as passengers on a stranded luxury cruise.

I will miss these writers badly, but the sad truth is, our workshop was already flagging. In the five years since the workshop began, ten of the writers have died. Seven are currently out of commission with health problems, and yes, one of those seven has a very bad cough. The two writers who’d shown up for workshop yesterday didn’t blame me for getting out. I love so very many people in that complex. I hope they will be spared. 

It was a no-brainer to decide to cut out the yoga class and the tai chi classes I’ve been taking at the local hospital…which may be the second most likely location for me to catch Covid-19. It was an easy call to suspend my gym membership. And as much as I love my yoga class at my neighborhood studio, I’d made a promise to my son. The new tai chi class will of course be the easiest unnecessary activity to cut from my schedule. Maybe some day I’ll be back. Maybe some day I’ll be doing those high kicks. It would be a shame to have fessed to a whole new community about my MS for nothing. 

I am not even considering cutting out my class at the art college. Those students are too young to catch Covid-19. Right? I counted seven students coughing yesterday. For once, I’d hoped they’d been smoking cigarettes or sucking down bong hits. 

Today, I have a fever. A mild one. 

Which caused me to call off the usual weekly writer’s workshop at my house. I can’t tell you how many workshops I’ve held while staving off a fever.

But things are different now. 

Be well!