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in their medicine cabinets, night stands, or beside the vitamins in the kitchen. Really sneaky addicts (and most of us are) will just empty your old prescriptions into our pockets very deftly and replenish your empty bottle with your ibuprofen or vitamin C. You don't know what your pills look like. Your kids do. Yes, they listen to me because they recognize truth when they hear it and see it.

I never thought this would be my mission. I never saw myself ministering to hurting people. But MS has allowed me to do just that. I'm even partway through my second book, which will be for parents and caregivers and tell them how to recognize the signs of addiction in their charges and then what to realistically do about it. This is like a dream life; one I want to walk and run and dance to.

It is inconceivable to me that God can get me through that heinous year and allow me to live to tell about it only to hobble me with something as droll as MS. I am a woman on a crusade today. If I can save one life or bring hope to a family who has lost theirs, then all the pain and all the shame, all the ugliness and scars are worth it. I'm doing my part. I'm walking the walk and talking the talk.

So, I'm no longer relying on the ABC drugs to keep me safe. Obviously, I cannot live out my life on painkillers. I am doing radical things with my diet (look up the Hallelujah Diet) and you'll see what I mean. First of all, they don't work on me unless I take a handful, and then I break out in hives that itch so badly I would gladly exchange them for the pain I was trying to kill. Or, they have to give me like 8 mg tablets of Dilaudid to do a bit of good. And then I'm functionally comatose, if that is not an oxymoron. At any rate, on any such substance, I AM a moron. Today I choose not to live like that.

I refuse to go from zero to sixty in two years. I refuse to stop walking, even though I limp today and will again tomorrow. I lost Patty's cane somewhere in a move and refuse to buy one of those orthopedic aluminum ones that screams out "old lady in the making." Maybe at the next craft show I attend I'll run across a really cool one with another hidden flask. Maybe I'll decide to keep it in my umbrella basket in case someone ever needs it.

Yay! Though I walk through the valley, I shall fear NO MS. I shall take myself now to bed as it is one o'clock in the morning and I do best on 8 hours of sleep. I'll take Olivia to school at 7:30 and then go on to physical therapy for my broken knee. It will help because I will let it help. Friday morning I am the keynote speaker for a 7 a.m. huge Rotary Club to which my father belongs. These days, no matter how my body feels, my mind has decided to show up. And you know what? When I show up, something miraculous and beautiful generally happens and if I don't show up, it probably still does. I'm just not there to savor it.

Learn more about this author, Judith Hillard.
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