“Me & the Ms.: What an Affair!” is an inspiring memoir of the author’s introduction to M.S. The tone of the book is anything but self-pity. Rather, it is an honest insight into how the author discovered he had Multiple Sclerosis in 1996 and how he has resolved to cope with this condition ever since. The author uses an interesting way of telling his story. A story not only of his life, but one of how having M.S. has encouraged him to discuss past experiences and occurrences that he feels, might possibly have something to do with his getting the illness.

At age 43, the author is still winning the battle. In addition to his personal story, he has included a very detailed diary of his medication and how his condition has become more bearable over the years since diagnosis, which alone represents a significant contribution to coping with the progress of this disease. A graphical display of charts has also been included to enhance the diary entries. Photos from the authors past, before and after photos of the playground and a diagram of what it consisted of many years ago are located at the end of the book for the reader’s review.

  After Theresa left, I tried my best to fall asleep. However, a half hour or so passed and I was unable to sleep. Now, I really started to feel sick. All of a sudden, without warning, the room would start to spin. I opened my eyes to see the ceiling rotating in a clockwise motion followed by a counterclockwise motion soon to follow. I wasn’t able to get out of bed. Each time I tried to stand up, I would lose my balance and start to fall. To regain my composure, I sat back on the bed. I felt as if I was drunk.

            I managed to sit up at the side by gripping the bed with my left hand and keeping my eyes shut. When I opened my eyes again, the dresser was flipping over sideways. My body was leaning sideways in an effort to compensate for the shifting of the dresser and the room itself. No matter how much strength I could muster, I could not regain my balance. I was feeling very sick now. I began to expel everything. I had never felt this sick before. What was happening to me? Fortunately, there was a phone next to the bed. I reached for it with one hand while I used the other hand to prevent me from falling. With one eye propped open, I dialed the number of Theresa’s cousin. When Theresa was called to the phone, I wasted no time telling her that I really felt weird and that, maybe, she should come home.

Weird wasn’t the word for it. I lied back in bed and tried to hold on until Theresa could get home. I hoped that by not moving, my stomach would calm down and I would get over whatever it was. But no matter what I did, closed my eyes, cool down the room or just lie quietly in bed just was not working. I came to the conclusion that I needed professional help.

Although this is my first published literary work, I have had other experience with writing at work for years. One of my responsibilities was to write manuals for the operations group of the mainframe computer systems. All this writing was done on the mainframe computer itself, which did not have any type of spell checking that personal computers have today. When writing back then, I had to type out the documents followed by going over them carefully to make sure that everything was done correctly. Not only did the spelling have to be right, but the procedural functions of performing the tasks had to be correct and accurate as well.

Another task that I was responsible for was to develop and write, which was called scripting, messages to notify computer operations staff when system errors occurred on the mainframe computers. I also incorporated with my writing, response program maneuvers that were performed by the computers that monitored the mainframe systems. This writing of commands also had to be correct and accurate.

The last five years at work before my illness, I wrote what was called, track entry accumulative reports that went out to various levels of management. More than any other writing, these needed to be correct and accurate describing the errors, problems, and resolutions that took place on the computer systems. This was tedious and time consuming work. That is probably why I enjoy writing with the use of a computer as much as I do today.