Model Patient

on switching meds & getting married

Three days before the August wedding, my August wedding, we travel six hours southeast to Baltimore to see a guru. The guru is actually my doctor, who I’ll call Gerald. He’s been my doctor since I was eighteen, and I definitely don’t call him by his first name to his face. He’s the type of doctor who is often surrounded by other doctors who hope to one day become him. Gerald’s trailing group of doctors will probably love being like Gerald, seeing patients only once per week in fancy city clinics. Dispensing advice with utter confidence, answering questions from patients graciously and carefully, remembering our medical histories, shaking our hands.

Now, though, three days before the wedding, this group of doctors is just too many humans filling up a small room in a multiple sclerosis clinic in Baltimore. They peer at me and my soon-to-be husband Tyler curiously, like we are specimens. In fact, this is exactly what I am. A few years ago, I was the type of patient who was brave enough to switch to a brand-new pill for MS. The first MS pill had proved to be dangerous in a few ways (it could stop your heart, or cause a fatal brain infection), and the pill I tried was the second pill. The second pill was safe but not as effective as Gerald hoped. And the truth was that when I tried the second pill, I wasn’t really brave, I was just tired of the once-daily…