"My Funny Valentine": letters from our readers. (A Valentine's Day Special).

We called for dating stories, and we received anecdotes from an astounding array of people-from students who had never previously dated, from divorced men, from women who had retired years ago. Their stories were as diverse as their cultural backgrounds, geographical locations, and MS symptoms. Almost everyone described something MS had taken away from them--everything from self-confidence and positive self-image, to spontaneity, desire, and even long-term partners who could not handle the challenges that MS posed.

Despite this, nearly every story was as inspiring and illuminating as it was cautionary. And some were downright hilarious. A common thread throughout was that matters of the heart, like more practical matters, oftentimes require adaptations in how one thinks and looks at the world, as well as the physical adaptations already familiar to many people with MS. What follows are a few high-lights. To read the complete letters, visit us online at: www.nationalmssociety.org/InsideMS.asp.

After a bad break-up brought on by her diagnosis, Norma Lauben of New Mexico swore she'd withhold her diagnosis from any future suitors. Fate, however, had other plans: "Three days after my first date with Dave, I invited him over for dinner. I was wearing shorts, and an injection-site reaction on my thigh was peeking out from under the hem. `What happened?' Dave asked. `Did you bruise yourself?' `No; my seven-year-old foster daughter piped up, `She has MS!' `Is this true?' Dave asked. So we discussed my medical condition and its impact on my life on our second date." That was seven years ago. Norma and Dave just celebrated their five-year wedding anniversary.

Therese H. of Pennsylvania decided to "drop the MS bomb in small bursts." Making arrangements on the phone to meet a man who'd answered her personal ad, she told him, "I'll be wearing an olive green suit coat and carrying a walking stick." He asked how a walking stick was different from a cane. Therese admitted that they were the same thing. "Cool," was his reply.

For many, keeping MS a secret is clearly not an option. One reader's incontinence requires her to wear a diaper to bed--something she can keep hidden only in a purely platonic relationship. She described the first time her boyfriend saw her putting them on: "I was complaining about feeling like a baby. He patted my diapered bum and said, That's OK, honey "cause you're my baby:"

After losing two boyfriends during two successive MS flare-ups, Katherine Thompson, still in her early twenties, resigned herself to "live with my dad forever." Then she met an understanding young man in college. "Even if I have a very embarrassing bladder spasm, he'll just say, `Look, you're lucky; if you have to go you can just go, and you have an excuse--the rest of us would be in trouble: Our song is the commercial `Gotta go, gotta go, gotta go right now:"

Kenneth S. Newton was diagnosed with MS in January 1999, and in May of that year he was in a serious automobile accident. For two months he needed a walker to get around. "I met Jennifer while making my way around a local watering hole," Kenneth wrote. "She was impressed by my determination and struck up a conversation. I was equally impressed by how deftly she folded up my walker and slid it into her pickup. We were married four months later."

A number of our readers met a current partner on the Internet. The real test of these relationships comes when the virtual lovers finally meet and begin relating to each other in the everyday world. Veronica Parrish-McGruder, whose husband has MS, told us about their life post-Internet. "The major challenge we faced was the depression," she wrote. "Me, not knowing anything about depression, thought he should just get over it and change whatever made him depressed. Needless to say, that's not how it works. I've learned to just listen and try to offer support ... and mostly just let him go through the steps in his own way and time. The main thing I've learned is that, whether you have a disease or are in perfect health, it takes two people to keep a marriage going; you have to decide what you want to do and then just do it."

In every story we received, a relationship blossomed when both people decided that it was what they wanted. Hollie Ann Morgan, a 21-year-old from Washington, was given an MRI after being involved in a serious automobile accident. Her neurologist discovered a number of lesions in her brain. Soon after, she met and fell in love with Steve. "I was so worded because I had to tell him that there is a good chance that I may have MS. He held me in his arms, letting me cry and told me it was OK. He was not going anywhere."

Someone once described love as "friendship set on fire." These stories are testament to that--and to the equal truth that love is such a strong force in so many lives, it sometimes seems there is little that it cannot overcome.