For Hamilton's Ruth Cotton, knowledge is power when it comes to health conditions and living with uncertainty.
Ms Cotton was in her early 50s when first diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.
That was 25 years ago. Her world changed forever.
"My first response to receiving unwelcome health news is to get information, first from the practitioner, then from a reliable source," she said.
"It helps one work out what questions to ask, decide what one needs to know. And I'm never afraid to ask for help."
Ms Cotton, known for her Hidden Hamilton history blog and books, has written a memoir, titled A Fragile Hold - Living with multiple sclerosis and other uncertainties.
The book, recently released in local and online bookstores, describes the mental and physical challenges she has faced.
It also describes her husband's journey with melanoma, which was found to have progressed to a stage four cancer in 2020.
The cancer metastasised from his back to his lungs and brain. He underwent brain surgery during the pandemic.
Overwhelmed by a sense of life's fragility, Ms Cotton turned to writing.
"I was writing for survival, to manage my feelings of being stressed and overwhelmed," she said.
"It was a way of processing my experiences and how I was feeling about them, making sense of what was happening as COVID-19 swept in and confined us indoors."
As well as writing, she finds solace in poetry.
She tried computer games to help with memory, reflexes and peripheral vision.
"I was hopeless. Then the idea of memorising poetry came to me," she said.
"During the pandemic, as I pushed my walker around Hamilton, I would be mentally traversing the lines of a poem I loved."
Ms Cotton and her husband are both immuno-compromised, so they are considered particularly vulnerable to infection.
They haven't had COVID.
"We had to self-isolate for extended periods, even after lockdowns had ended."
The fear and anxiety she experiences can be intense.
"I'm most afraid when I don't know what is going to happen, when things go off the rails and I discover I'm not in control of my life after all," she said.
For anxiety, she uses cognitive behavioural therapy to "help me reframe situations in more positive ways".
She has a mindfulness technique in which she closes her eyes and focuses on three things she can feel and three things she can hear to calm down.
"Having lived with MS for 25 years, I've learned a lot about acceptance, and how to adapt to changes in my capacity," she said.
In the book, she quotes a fellow writer and friend advising her on Zen Buddhism.
"In Zen we speak of remaining upright on the cushion, all the while being buffeted by storms and demons.
"But for this to happen, remaining upright, we need a strong container, a process, a practice. Zen is but one in this context, your writing is another."
Ms Cotton took the advice to heart, describing in the book the Zen mind she needed - given her mobility troubles - while taking out the bins when her husband was in hospital.
She tries not to let her predicament get her down.
In her view, taking an adversarial approach to a chronic health condition is counterproductive.
"I've never been a person who rails against life. My MS is part of me. My husband's cancer is part of him."
She felt good fortune to be well enough to work in health services consulting until her late 60s.
"During my working life, I thought of MS as my watchdog. Step out of line and it barks," she said.
Stress, overdoing it and heat were the main triggers. So she "befriended" her MS.
"In a strange way, we'd come to an understanding of each other and could cohabit in the same body," she said.
One positive of having lived with MS is being better prepared for ageing.
"If I've managed to cope with a challenge like MS, that gives me confidence to believe I can cope with the next challenge, whether it is ageing, my husband's illness or disability in someone I love," she said.
She said growing older is "complicated enough", but even more so with a chronic and disabling condition.
"I see friends younger than me who refuse to recognise they are ageing and fight against ageing as if it is an enemy."
She's not afraid of death, but said "the dying process doesn't appeal at all".
"I believe that just as we prepare for a birth, we must prepare for a death."
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