Yet again my neurologist surprised me with his dedicated work efforts by calling my home the other night around 9 pm. Because it was so late his call caught me off guard and the first thing I could think of was it had to be bad news? Luckily the call was because he needed my help completing required paperwork for the yearly renewal of my long-term disability. He was asking me a plethora of questions about my personal activities of daily living.

Can you get in the shower without assistance?
Do you have problems getting to the toilet?
Are you preparing your own meals?
Can you be left in the house alone?

To be honest with you, I need assistance with all of the aforementioned tasks to varying degrees on varying days, but for some reason I couldn’t relay that to him. My darn pride just kept creeping in. The worse part is, I know that he needs an accurate description to ensure my continued claim. I naively, tried to pretty up my situation. But I obviously didn’t because during our conversation he bluntly said, “You have been on a continued decline since I started treating you.”

Wow!

What could I say after that? There was just silent agreement on my part.

After the conversation, I was scared. Terrified of my not so distant future. But my husband reminded me that the doctor didn’t tell us anything we didn’t already know and live with on a daily basis.

That’s true but so hard to hear.