By Kerri Havnen Gordon
The Living Experiment
“I am pleased with how everything is. I suppose I could want more. Everything could always be better, but perfection doesn’t exist.” True, but the comment sounded remarkable coming from a man who has a progressive form of multiple sclerosis.
Art Plank had problems with his balance and vision for 15 years before his MS diagnosis in September 1998. He was understandably concerned, because a neighbor was virtually incapacitated by the disease.
He learned that his MS was the secondary kind, which is worse than the remitting/relapsing variety but not as bad as the primary MS that plagues his neighbor. He also learned that his MS can be fairly well controlled by drugs.
Plank had been an athlete all his life. He played basketball in school and remembers how it felt to be well coordinated. His 10-year-old son, Jack, plays basketball now. “It saddens me that I can’t show him how to drive to the basket. I can explain it, though it’s not the same,” he said. And he worries that his daughter, Erin, will have to explain to friends that her father’s “wobbly gait” isn’t inebriation when he has trouble climbing the bleachers at her high school basketball games.
This is as morose as Plank gets. When he spoke about having to give up golf due to his “medical malady,” I sensed that his journey is as much attitudinal as it is physical. I asked him whether he missed the game, and he said, “Not really. I got to play a lot of golf. I’ve had a hole in one, twice. Eagled the second hole at Pebble Beach.”
He is equally positive about his law career as a commercial litigator: “I may be sickeningly optimistic, but the last three years have been my best years at work. I may not be able to play golf or lift weights, but I am more focused on what I can do. Maybe I am even doing better work now.”
Plank’s hobbies are now more cerebral than physical. He is passionately developing his music appreciation skills, having worked his way through comprehensive CD sets of classical and jazz music. “It’s amazing. I’ve been listening to Miles Davis’ ‘Kind of Blue.’ It’s probably one of the greatest jazz albums,” he said with a degree of astonishment and gratitude, as if his MS has afforded him more time to enjoy music.
“The MS is likely to get worse over time,” he admitted, “but I am not willing to change from being a positive person. Maybe I won’t be able to walk. I don’t think so, but maybe. Maybe I won’t be able to drive in a few years. I am hoping to finish my career, 10 or 15 years more. I am not expecting a miracle, but who knows? Medical research might make things better. I am hopeful, but I don’t dwell on it.”
Clearly Plank is far more interested in talking about his hobbies and those of his wife, Karyn, and their children. And he is aware that MS has brought a fresh perspective to his life. “No question now that I am more interested in other things - gardening and wrestling my way through the book ‘The Elegant Universe’ by Brian Greene. I think MS is just something that makes a 50-year-old man think about things he would have thought about anyway,” he said.
Plank said that he is a “count your blessings kind of guy” who doesn’t allow himself to get depressed over his MS. “I try to take whatever it is, accept it and make it OK. And I go from there.”
It is so easy to respond a lot worse to far less. The next time I need a little perspective, I hope to remember Plank’s inspiring exuberance for life and his steadfast refusal to let multiple sclerosis get him down. As he said, “You’ve got to take the bitter with the sweet.”
Kerri Havnen Gordon writes The Living Experiment monthly for the Town Crier.
E-mail: livingexperiment@pacbell.net
