RMS Podcast Episode 1-30 Thriving After an MS Diagnosis

My special guest today is Sherri Caughman, diagnosed with MS in 1992 at an early age after a car accident. In this episode, we talk about the grief of the diagnosis and the years of missing milestones in her children's and grandchildren’s lives.

Sherri Caughman is the author of Grandma Has MS, a book written to help children and grandchildren understand how Multiple Sclerosis can affect our lives in a format they can understand. This book will aid parents and grandparents in discussing this autoimmune disease with strength, love, and compassion.

Connect with Sherri Caughman to purchase her book, GrandMa Has Ms, at Amazon.com

Episode Transcript

(00:52):
Hello and welcome to all beautiful soulsout there. You're listening to the Restore
My Soul Podcast with Princess Millin's,your favorite grief coach and emotional wellness specialist.
In this space, we will helpthose who struggle with grief and loss
and have real conversations about how toovercome it in every area of life through
our personal stories, practical information,and wisdom from Princess and her special guests.

(01:19):
We are here to educate, inspire, and empower you with the strategies
you need in your emotional healing journey. We do not offer medical advice,
but we believed that we can alllearn to heal by creating a mindset to
grow, pass our pain and pushtoward our purpose. Our goal is to
remind you that grief is a journeyand you do not have to walk it

(01:40):
alone. No matter what the painor loss is, you can be restored
and live fully in your purpose.But let's push through the pain together as
we share our stories of resilience inone episode at a time. Well,
welcome in and everybody to the RestoreMy Soul Podcast. Thank you so much

(02:00):
for being here and joining in thisother episode. You know that We're here
to educate and inspire you and toempower you on your emotional wellness journey.
I am Princess Millin's, your favoritegrief and emotional wellness coach and the host
of the podcast. I am soexcited that you're tuning in and watching today.

(02:23):
And we have such a powerful guesttoday because you know, I believe
that we all have a story,we all have something that we can improve
on in our emotional wellness, andwe can learn to heal right by creating
a mindset that, in Blake,embraces resiliency and the ability to push through

(02:46):
the pain and walk in our Godgiven purpose. So our guest today is
Sherry Kaufman, and she has sucha powerful to estimony. She is sixty
years young, right, sixty yearsyoung, and she was actually diagnosed with

(03:07):
MS multiple scorious scorocious in nineteen ninetytwo. So she was diagnosed at a
young age after a car accident,and after the years of missing milestones and
missing some of her children's milestones,some of her grandchildren's milestones and their lives,

(03:35):
she'd have decided to be an advocateand write about life with MS.
So I want to welcome to theshow today, Sherry Kaufman, thank you
so much for being here, abeautiful woman of God. Thank you,
thank you, thank you for havingme, Princess absolutely. So we kind
of talked offline, and we knowthat this subject and tied of MS is

(04:02):
I think not talked about enough inour communities. And I know that you
had had the things that you hadto go through, even with the diagnosis,
even the things after the diagnosis,and the things that you've had to
endure, and I know the thingsthat you would share today will bless so

(04:23):
many people that is struggling with thesame thing or some type of illness or
thing that could be potentially debilitating totheir lives. Right, And so you
know, I know that you havelived this life of battling this disease of

(04:45):
MS, and you have and weknow that talk a little bit about because
it might be somebody listening that don'tknow what MS is and how it affects
you and your body. So canyou talk a little bit about what it
is? Yes, MS is anautoimmune disease and what that is. It

(05:08):
is a disease that affects the yourbody overall, and MESS in particular,
it affects the milin which is andand the way I describe it in the
book, and just to simplify itis to you know, the the body
has wires inside and it connects usto our brain and our legs and our

(05:30):
arms and organs. And what MSdoes. It attacks the milin. And
so if you take a wire andyou ring it and wear it out,
then let's say the headset or thecomputer or the light switch is not gonna
work. It's the same thing.And and sometimes you how do I say,

(05:59):
go off track? You go offtrack. Like sometimes if you have
a light that works and the switchand the quarter is worn out, it
might blink all and off. Well, that's what MS does to your body,
the same thing. Yeah, yourvision can go, your ability to
walk can go, your ability totalk can go. You know, you

(06:24):
can have a breakdown of your yoursystem where your process of elimination, you
know, you can have problems withthat. It's just so many things,
so many things. Yeah, yeah, And I know that it's something that
is there had to be a greatstruggle and try to manage such a thing,

(06:46):
right, And I know that inyour your your story is that it
was actually not knows with the caraccident that you had right, yeah,
about how this all came about,as was the car accident and it led
to the diagnosis and what happened behindthat. I was just finished up in

(07:13):
a friendly moved and I was sittingat a stop signed on a rainy night,
and next thing I knew, thiscar red ended me and I hit
my head on the steering wheel andI went out a few minutes. When
I came to the car was stillunder me trying to get out. But
let me tell you how good Godis. And I have to backtrack because
this part is so important. Therewas a trick and a car in front

(07:38):
of me when the car hit me, and I should have hit them,
but I didn't. Wow the carhit me. I went through these two
cars. There was a house infront of me, and the police said
a few more inches I would havehit the steps of the house, and

(07:58):
then a few more inches the carhad hit something under my car, and
a few month inches he would havehit my gas pand in a car would
have blew up. So the journeywas a journey. I'm still alive,
you know. And I woke upthe next morning and I was just a
wreck, you know. I wasshaking and trembling. I wasn't getting better.

(08:22):
I didn't go to the hospital thatnight, and I should have,
but I went the next day.You know, my husband at the time
took me to the hospital and Igot treatment, I got therapy, but
I just wasn't getting better. Andone doctor I was seeing, a neurologist,
he says, I think he mighthave a MESS, and I'm like,

(08:43):
no, you know, I've heardof it. Montelle Williams had it
and Thatt fun of Cello. Iknew of the mess. I said,
no, I was in an accidentand my body's just off whack. He
says, no, We're gonna dosome tests. So they did an MRI.
Excuse me. They took some spinalfluid, which is one of the
tests that they do take to determinewhether you are actually have MS. The

(09:11):
brain MRI had a brain, andthen an MRI had a spine. Well,
the brain came back with lesions,which is what they used to determine
MS. The spinal fluid came backclear, so that was a no with
the spine, but you can havelesions on your spine as well. I
didn't have it, and so thedoctors started treating me. But I'm kind

(09:33):
of very headstrong and a non believerto these things that they say we have.
And I said, no, Ihave an accident. I had the
accident and I'm healing from it,and that's what I took it. I
didn't accept it. I didn't acceptit at all. So for the first
ten years of my life, youknow, I didn't accept having ms A

(09:54):
all. I thought that I wouldn'ttake the medicine. I was getting all
the treatment, getting treatment for theaccident on top of it. And after
ten years, I kind of startedfeeling normal, back to my normal self.
And two years later, I wasin a bus accident and that just

(10:15):
flatlined me and just all sorts ofthings started happening. I went blind in
my right eye, my body shutdown, and I was unable to walk
a talk. I was in thehospital for a little time, and they
were planning to put me in anursing home, and I'm like, Okay,
God, I can't do this.I can't do this. So I'm

(10:39):
laying in this bed, not ableto move, not able to talk,
but I'm talking to God in myhead, Okay, God, you know
I can't do this. One andIt was a crazy day because I'm in
a back track. That day ata bus accident. I had just left
Virginia to help my father get establishingand home because he had dementia. He

(11:01):
was am amputated, and I washeading home to get a promotion on my
job. They told me, Kaufman, make sure you get home and because
we're gonna sing you downtown for processing. So the weather change. It was
beautiful and then it turned icy andcold, and my brother called me,
and my sister's like, don't go. And I'm so strong on and getting

(11:26):
this promotion. I'm like, no, no, no, I'm gonna be
all right. And I took thebus and on the bus there was a
little boy sitting with this young lady, and as the bus s frapped up,
he just shout it out, Iwant my daddy. We're not gonna
make it. And everybody said,and the girl with him said, why
would you say that. He's like, I don't know, but I want
my daddy. So I reached myhand out and I looked at the woman

(11:50):
that was sitting catacorn unto me,and she put her hand up and we
prayed, and I said, God, let us get all get there and
one piece God and one piece.And my sister was on the phone and
she heard what the boy saying.I told she said, get off the
bus. I said, no,we're fine, We're fine. She says,
get off the bus. I'm like, no, I'm not getting off
the bus. So the bus isriding. I'm kind of antsy, but

(12:13):
I knew. I prayed on itand I sat there and again, I'm
originally from New York, so wewere on the New Jersey Turnpike and my
sister called me. I said,okay, I'm gonna doze off because I
wanted to attend church in the morning. I was getting me a Sunday morning.
So as I nodded off and justkind of went to sleep, I
felt the boom. I jumped up, and the woman that I prayed was

(12:35):
said, oh my god, hewas going too fast, and all I
saw was the bus flipping over.When I came to I have to say
I had an out of body experiencebecause I couldn't move, and I couldn't
move, and a voice kept tellingme, get up, get up,
get up, get up, Andlater on I realized the voice was God

(12:58):
told me to move, get up, get up, don't go, because
I believe that's where I was thatand I started moving and there was a
gentleman in front of me, andhe was a large gentleman. I was
on seat number thirty five on thisbus and I was on the floor.
I didn't even know I was onthe floor of the bus. His seat

(13:20):
was on top of me with him, and someone was on top of him.
And these people got up and thenthey had to pull me up,
and my body felt like I wason fire, literally on fire. But
when I got off the bus,the first thing I did was look for
the little boy and I found himand I hugged it and said, you
know, we made it. Youknow, we had an accident, but

(13:41):
we made it. And that wasreally truly the beginning of my journey with
a mess. My body just literallyshut down. It was overwhelmed with all
the things that was going on withme, and it couldn't handle it.
And as I said, I wasgoing to go back to work that Monday

(14:03):
for this promotion, and I hadused my time up traveling back and forth
to make sure my dad was straight, so I had no time, so
I lost my health insurance. Everythingwas happening at the same time, my
father was getting sicker, my momgot sick. You know. It was
just so much going on, andthere was nothing that I could do but

(14:24):
gray because it was out of myhands. I had just bought a house
a few months earlier, so Ioff payroll. I couldn't pay my mortgage.
My parents were sick. Who wouldactually coming to New York to live
with me in the house. Andnone of these things happened. And the
journey was just up and down,up and down. I didn't know what

(14:48):
it was going to be from dayto day. I felt like I was
dying because I was so overwhelmed withfeelings and emotion and pain. I had
black and blues all on my bodyand it felt like somebody had a blow
torch holding it on me. Icouldn't sit long, I couldn't stand long.
I couldn't keep still because I wasin so much pain. And the

(15:09):
doctors were pumping me with drugs,morphine, all these drugs people get addicted
to them. That that just wasn'tme. So I'm fighting against that,
but I needed it to help mewith the pain. And it was just,
you know, trying to explain topeople because as I'm healing. I
looked okay from the outside, butinside I was broken. There was so

(15:33):
many things going on in my bodythat I was just broken. And when
people saw them and they said,oh, shall well, you look good.
I heard you had an accident,I said okay, But mentally I
wasn't there. I got depressed.I felt suicidal because I was that person
that was on top of things andon top of everything. And as I

(15:56):
said, the MS kicked into mymemory. It was the fact that I
couldn't remember things. I wasn't sharpas I used to be. I'm the
go to person that everyone went to, and I wasn't able to do that
anymore. And I didn't have anyoneto go too. Yeah, the church
that I was attending, I usedto battle with my pastor. He's like,

(16:18):
yeah, I can only help youif I know what's wrong. And
I would be trembling and crying becauseI wasn't used to reaching out and asking
for help. And that's been partof my journey too. You know,
you have to ask for help.You can't. I had to take the
s off my chest. I'm notsuperwoman, you know. I had to

(16:41):
ask for help. I prayed toGod and many nice, God, just
fix me, heal me, becauseit was too much. And he did,
yes, he did know absolutely.It seems like the accidents that you
had it caused an awareness, Itcaused an awakening to what was already taking

(17:06):
place. And a lot of timesI think that sometimes we don't pay attention,
you know, we don't pay enoughattention to what our bodies are saying
and you know what we need todo. And I heard you say that.
Even when the doctor at the firstaccident told you, you know,
this is what I think it is. It was a place of you didn't

(17:30):
believe it, in denial, youwere gonna say that on me and all
this kind of stuff. But Ibelieve. And see, this is what
I always say is with grief aswell. Grief is not always the depth
of someone. It would be differentthings, right even in our health,
right even with you know, evenwith just naturally, not even with disease

(17:56):
and sickness. But like when olderpeople get get old and they have their
they have to depend on other peoplenow, right, they get they get
the reliant on people and they losetheir independence. That brings on a level
of grief because they were able todo what they wanted to do and when

(18:18):
they wanted to do it. Andit's hard to Yeah, it's hard to
step away from being so self reliantto something that is have to be reliant
on somebody else. Right. Andso those accidents I saw cause some type
of awareness, but it causing awareness. But you know, I thank God.

(18:41):
I always see God in everything right. And the blessing that I see
is that sometimes we go through Godwill do something right. He'll send somebody,
he'll show show something to alert usthat something is wrong. Yes,
yes, And because of that,you know, as we look at accidents

(19:03):
are a bad thing, Yes theyare. But the accidents was the things
that made the doctors aware, thatmade you aware that something was not right
before it was too late. Right. And even though even the other part
is it made me stop and takecare of me first, because I was

(19:25):
taking care of everybody else. Ihad a sick father, had a sick
mother, had a brother who wassick at the time I was running for
this one, and that when Ihad my son had got shot. It
was just so many things. Iworked for social service in New York for
many years and we were in anew system, and I was that reliable
supervisor who didn't hang out and dostuff on the weekend and was always at

(19:47):
work early before time. So Iwas reliable and I had to stop all
of that and take care of mefirst. And that was hard, alright.
Oh oh, it was hard becauseI never done it before. I
never said no. I learned tosay no and be comfortable with no.

(20:08):
No, I can't do it,no, sorry, Because we'll talk about
how that process was for you,as far as the process of being a
support for everyone else and being therefor everyone else, and that process of
creating the boundary of saying no orsaying that I can't. You know,

(20:32):
I'm not going to do this.What does that look like? What did
that look like for you? Forme, it was hard initially in the
beginning because as I said, Iwas the go to person for everyone.
But I started turning the phone offwhen I needed my rest or time because
what was happening with the MS.If I got overwhelmed, as I learned

(20:53):
my body and what MS did tome, I would have reactions, so
I would get triggers. I wouldhave tremors, I would have seizures,
and those triggered are the things.It was like a rippling effect. Excuse
me. So if I got overwhelmed, I would get overheated. It would

(21:15):
literally get overheated. I would justfeel like I'm going to blow a gasket.
Wow, that process would make me. I could sit there and in
thirty minutes, if something happened whenI was overwhelmed, I could My speech
would get choppy, my vision wouldgo blurry, I would get tremors,
I would have seizures. My handswould get numb, and I couldn't move,

(21:37):
and I'm like, wait a minute, Well, I wasn't like this
thirty minutes ago, on an hourago? What triggered this? And I
started recognizing the things that were triggeringme, other people's business, trying to
help them, and I couldn't.I had to back away from it.
Not getting my rests. I hadto make sure I slep up a certain

(22:00):
amount of time. The medication,as I said, I was so resistant
to the medication, but it helpedme. But I found that if I
was taking oxy codon and it saidevery four hours, so if I took
it at one and I needed againand at four at three forty five,
I wanted the oxycodon and I didn'tlike that. I didn't like that feeling

(22:22):
of dependency. I didn't. Ididn't. I didn't want to do that
because I heard so many stories ofpeople being dependent on these drugs and it
scared me. So I started exploringnatural herbs, things that help you relax,
things that keep you calm, listeningto common music, and things that
would just keep you relax. Inthe church, I was on the choir

(22:45):
and there were certain songs that Iwould sing that kind of lifted me,
lifted me up, and the thehow do you say it? The your
aura? My aura was so dark, like I've always had a thing if
I close my eyes, I saybeautiful colors and brightness, and that's always

(23:07):
been my personality. But during thisprocess, when I had this accident,
being the second one, it wasjust so dark. I didn't see that.
I didn't feel that my energy levelwas low. I was just a
woking the press person. But thesongs and the music and certain things,
if I closed my eyes and Isung these songs, I saw this light
and I would walk around singing thesongs and singing praise and just finding things

(23:33):
that work for me. Because MSis different for everybody, some people go
into exercising and eating vegan and juicingand all that. I did a little
bit of those things. I dida little bit of a couple of things,
but I had to do what workedfor me. And I'm drug free.
I'm not on any MS medication.With MS, you have to take

(23:56):
an MRI every year for them tocheck to see if the lesions changed.
So for the past, what hasit been thirty some odd years. I
take my MRI and the legions haven'tchanged in my brain. There are no
additional lesions in my body, andI thank God for that. I've lost

(24:17):
friends along the way. I watchpeople decline with a mess and they're taking
these medications and injections and pain pillsand all kind of stuff, and I
said, that's not going to beme. The way I came in this
world is the way I want togo out. Absolutely that is so beautiful
because boundaries will actually save your life, and boundaries will save your life because

(24:44):
if you don't know boundaries, itgets a bad rep because boundaries is not
necessary to keep people out. It'sto show people how to treat you,
how you need to treat it sothat you can do what is best for
you. So what I have cometo understand is stress is a big factor

(25:04):
in triggering those things that's already wrongwith us. You know, no matter
what disease it is, when youadd stress on top of it, it's
a recipe for a disaster. Yes, So it's just a blessing to hear
you say that you were able todo those things that were best for you.
You know, listen to the music, get back to the things that

(25:26):
would bring your spirit back up sothat it can be healed the way that
And I believe that the way thatyou have conducted this whole thing right and
getting back and having that support system, having the things have led you to
be exactly what you just said,drug free. You don't have to,

(25:48):
you know, be out of yourmiris are the same every year. Nothing
is declining. Nothing, And that'sall by the grace of God. And
I thank God on your behalf becauseyou are such a testimony of just just
people in general. Right, becausewe don't talk about this topic of MS

(26:11):
in our communities. We talk abouta lot about cancer, we talk about
herd conditions, we talk about diabetesand things like that, but in our
community we don't talk enough about UH. Some of the auto immune diseases that
affects us every day, and soI'm so glad that you were here to

(26:33):
share your story and some things thatyou did for yourself to even bring you
out of that place and to beable to be that advocate that we see
today that will uh that continues toencourage other people in their journey. You
know what I'm saying, Yes,yes, yeah, yeah. So it

(26:55):
just before we end this broadcast today, I want you to share just one
thing, share one thing of encouragementthat somebody might be watching, somebody might
be listening, a word of encouragementif they're struggling in any sickness, any
illness, any disease, and theyfelt and they feel like you felt when

(27:18):
you first heard the news or youfirst got into and they can't seem to
break free from not knowing how tohow to survive in life. What encouragement
would you give them? The firstthing I would say is take it to
God, because he's the only personthat's really going to understand what you're go

(27:40):
into. Secondly, you have todo your part. You have to do
your part. You can't sit thereand just pray for God to fix it,
or a parent. You have todo your part, and your part
means going to the doctor, tellinghow you feel, having a conversation because
the doctor may want a drug youup and you say, well no,

(28:02):
but what's the alternative? What elsecould I do? Well, I've explored
this, let's try this first.Listen to your body. You know your
body's gonna tell you what you need. And some thing's a trial and ever,
like I said, with a mess, everything doesn't work for everybody.
I started writing when I first gotdiagnosed and really hadn't wrote a lot about

(28:26):
it, but my experience with tellingpeople it just didn't seem to register sometimes
because people saw me, Oh,share, you look good. They knew
I had these accidents, they knewI was going through all this stuff.
Well I knew someone that had amess, But they're walking on a cane
and nail wheelchair. Well that's them, But I'm not that person. You
know, you have to own upto who you are and don't let the

(28:49):
nay say is say, oh,well I don't believe you, because you're
gonna get a lot of that.And it's okay because people don't believe it,
and they don't have to believe it. You know who you are.
Know who you are and know whereyou stand and leave it at that and
don't worry about what people think aboutyou. My challenges of driving. I

(29:10):
drive during the day. I can'tdrive it not because I don't see.
And I've had all kind of jokes. My brother used to but I lived
in North Carolina. I'll be athis house and we're in the pool or
something. Okay, I gotta go. You're not spending the night. Nope,
because it's getting dark. And Iwould get on the road and the
head back home because I knew Icouldn't see in the dark. And it
was a joke for the family.Oh she's here. It's a little late,

(29:32):
it's getting dark. She's still here. But that was okay. In
the beginning. It used to botherme, and then I started laughing at
it because they didn't really understand whatI was feeling and what I was going
through. And they don't have toin the world we live in. You
have to understand that people don't haveto understand who you are as long as
you do. As long as youunderstand who you are and where you are,

(29:55):
nothing else matters of what anyone elsethinks. So yeah, such a
great word. Of encouragement. Thankyou so much, Sherry for being here
today and sharing this powerful story.I know I was blessed, So I
know that other people that are watching, they're gonna listen and they're gonna be
blessed as well. Princess, I'msorry, go ahead my book I ask

(30:22):
you about so I wanted to telleverybody how to connect with you, tell
everybody how to connect with you,how to get your book, how to
follow you on social media. Mybook is on Amazon and it's called Grandma
Has a Mess. It's a storythat I wrote for my grandchildren explaining what
MS was and why Grandma couldn't participatein all the things that I normally did

(30:45):
with them. I'm not big onsocial media, but I am on Facebook
Sherry Kaufman, s H E RR I C A U. G.
H Man and my email is SherryUnderscore Kauf minute you who dot com.
I'll be doing some books signing soonsin the Columbia area and eventually New York.

(31:11):
All right, Greg, thank youso much, sharing for sharing that,
sharing your story, sharing your book. You all make sure that you
go out and support and bless someoneyou know. And again, I know
it's about MS, but I'm prettysure it will be something for someone to

(31:32):
even bless with any disease, andhow to have that conversation with your children,
how to come whether you're a grandparent, a caretaker, a parent,
and sometimes we don't know how toexplain to our children what we're going through
and what we're experiencing. So it'ssuch a blessing that you are able to

(31:52):
write this book and continue. SoI want to encourage you to continue to
share your story, continue to showup in ways that God will bless And
I was just so excited for youto come on today and I thank you
so much. Thank you for havingme. Thank you so much. I
really appreciate it absolutely Well, y'all, that was another episode of Restore My

(32:15):
Soul Podcast and I hope that youwere inspired and blessed today. You all
remember to continue to follow me onall social media at Princess Miller's and at
my website at Princessmillings dot com.Remember that grief is a journey, but

(32:35):
you don't have to walk it alongand we will see you in the next
episode of the Restore My Soul Podcast. Thank you for joining another episode of
Restore My Soul Podcast. Be sureto listen and watch each week as we
continue the conversation on how to bounceback from the setback of grief and loss
and to become resilient so that youtoo can drive in life. Don't forget

(33:00):
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and share this with as many peopleas possible so they can be encouraged in
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and we'll see you in the nextepisode of the Restoring My Soul Podcast.