Teen who cares for mom with MS: 'At first, it felt unfair'

Jackie Garrison first noticed something was wrong in 2014 when she started having numbness on the right side of her body. “From my ribcage down went numb,” the mom tells Yahoo Lifestyle. “There was tingling and burning at the same time.”

She eventually saw a doctor and underwent several tests. “Nobody knew exactly what it was,” Jackie says. But several months later, Jackie was given a diagnosis: She had multiple sclerosis, an unpredictable and often disabling disease of the central nervous system. MS can manifest itself differently in people, but it often causes symptoms such as fatigue, numbness and tingling, weakness, pain and walking difficulties, according to the National Multiple Sclerosis Society.

Jackie’s daughter Emily was in her early teens at the time. “At first, it felt unfair,” Emily tells Yahoo Lifestyle, referring to her stepping up to help care for her mother. But eventually, Emily says, “helping my mom became normal to me.”

Jackie still has the same tingling, burning and numbness on her right side and, she says, every now and then it happens on her left side. “Driving is a challenge,” Jackie says. “I can only drive without a stop for about 20 minutes now. I also have cognition issues, some vision problems, and whenever I try to speak, sometimes my words don’t come out in order. We laughingly call it ‘word salad.’”

After her mom’s diagnosis, Emily had to start helping her mom more than other kids her age. Now 17, Emily helps in her mom’s soap shop (Oma’s Favorite Soap Cottage), puts her mom to bed when she’s tired, makes breakfast for her, helps her remember things and translates Jackie’s words to other people when her “word salad” strikes.

Emily has also been there emotionally for her mom when her MS just feels like too much, like when Jackie was on a medication that caused bad reactions. “Sometimes I just needed somebody to be there and watch me cry because I was in pain,” Jackie says. “Emily was right there for me.” That was the case even when Jackie would have flare-ups in the middle of the night. “I would just talk her through it, and tell her she would be okay,” Emily says.

While Emily has needed to take on a caregiver role in her family, she says her mom has also made it clear that Emily needs to take time to care for herself. “She’s encouraged me to do bullet journaling because I have really bad ADHD. I forget stuff,” Emily says. “Writing down what I need to do for myself and to help her, that’s been really helpful.”

Emily stresses that helping her mom isn’t a burden. “It’s not my mom’s fault that she was diagnosed with MS,” she says. “It’s just something that happened.”

She wants other kids of parents with MS to remember that their parents want to do as much as they used to, but that they have physical limitations. “You just have to keep that in mind whenever your parent doesn’t feel up to doing something,” Emily says. “It’s not because they don’t want to; it’s because they can’t. You have to be patient with them.”

Ultimately, Emily says her mom’s MS has brought the two of them closer. “We’ve become friends,” she says. “You really get to know someone on a personal level when you help them. And I like helping people.”

Read more from Yahoo Lifestyle:

• Woman shares brutally honest fears on dating with a chronic illness: ‘Nobody is going to love me’

• Mom shares what it’s like to parent with a chronic disease: ‘I don’t want that to be my identity’

• Dr. Oz says people get one thing ‘absolutely wrong’ about multiple sclerosis

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