Multiple Sclerosis: Tips and Strategies for Making Life Easier

An MS diagnosis presents many unanswered questions: How is this diagnosis going to change my life? Where do I begin? How will I manage to take care of my family, work, and travel? No one knows the answers to these questions better than Shelley Peterman Schwarz, who has lived nearly forty years with multiple sclerosis. Schwarz imbues her updated collection of practical tips and short cuts with personal stories that highlight her trials and triumphs. Shelley shares her real-life experiences as a wife, mother, friend, and employee/employer coping, managing, and growing with MS with a humorous warmth and unflinching honesty.

This extensively revised and updated third edition is packed with helpful information and now includes over 800 tips and new solutions and strategies for confronting the challenges of living a full life with a debilitating chronic illness. With Shelley’s guidance, readers will learn to conserve valuable time and energy, develop techniques for making everyday tasks easier, manage symptoms, maintain positive relationships, stay motivated, and bounce back when MS knocks you down.

Expanded chapters cover medical issues, home safety and accessibility, dressing and looking your best, and travel. NEW sections include:

• A Thriver’s Guide
• Taking Charge—Mentally and Physically
• Family and Friends
• Marriage
• Sexual Compatibility and Intimacy
• Being a Parent
• Driving and Disability
• Working
• Finding Help and Support

With hundreds of new tips and tools, and practical wisdom for meeting challenges large and small, this book continues to inform, encourage, validate, and empower individuals and families living with multiple sclerosis.

Shelley Peterman Schwarz and her husband, Dave, live in Madison, Wisconsin. At the time of her MS diagnosis in 1979, Shelley was working as a teacher of the deaf and mother to a 5- and 3-year old. She has received numerous awards and is an internationally acclaimed author, columnist, and TV and radio personality in the field of living well with a disability. Her "Making Life Easier" columns appear regularly in newspapers, magazines, newsletters, and on websites.