Uncomfortably Numb: a memoir about the life-altering diagnosis of multiple sclerosis

About losing one’s life as it was once imagined, and the ultimate, uneasy peace that’s achieved with the permanent uncertainty which accompanies living with a chronic illness.

It begins with numbness on her left leg. Then it spreads. Even though an MRI finds a “mass” on her brainstem, it takes two more years for Meredith O’Brien to learn what is causing that numbness. Months after her 65-year-old mother dies from a fast-moving cancer, weeks after her father is hospitalized and she experiences an unexpected job change, she learns she has multiple sclerosis.

Suddenly, Meredith, a married mother of three teens, has to figure out how to move forward into a life she no longer recognizes.

Reimagining her life as a writer and an educator, as a mother and a spouse, she has to adjust to the restrictions MS imposes on her.

It is a life, altered.