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My Best Christmas Gift on My Worst Christmas Ever By Diane Bookwalter

I tried to decide if this story would be "My worst Christmas ever" ... "I'll never forget the Christmas when "..." The best Christmas gift I ever received"... and then I realized they were all the same Christmas!

My story starts in November of 1988. I had been feeling "funny." Not really sick just funny. I had no pain, no headache, no stomach ache. Just "funny." Then my foot "fell asleep" and didn't wake up. I thought in a day or two it would be better but it didn't.

I am not one to go to the "Doctor" so I decided to go see a chiropractor. He told me it was a pinched nerve and I would be fine in a few days. Instead of being fine I was getting worse until I ended up in the ER unable to hold a pen to sign myself in and barely able to walk into the hospital. I was admitted right away and in four days had my diagnoses of MS. This was the first week of December.

My oldest son was in the Air Force (and is now a Master Sargent. there). He was stationed in the country of Panama
and it would be my first Christmas without him and now here I was being hit with MS.

My Mother had come to stay with me and my family to help out and without my knowledge she had called someone about
having my son fly home to surprise me for Christmas.

I will never forget when he walked in the door. He was my BEST Christmas present on my "worst" Christmas. That
was 15 years ago this Christmas. I have been blessed in so many ways but I still look back at that "first" Christmas with MS and know that I can get through anything now.

Diane Bookwalter [email protected]
"Don't sweat the small stuff"

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