Accepting My Limitations Gave Me Freedom

By Cristiano Del Giacco

4 min read

If there’s one thing myasthenia gravis (MG) brings, it’s limitations: limitations on the capacity for activity, work, and the potential for productivity.

When I was first diagnosed with MG, the stubborn genes I inherited from my father lept into action: "I’m not gonna let this thing beat me. I won’t give in. No matter what it takes, I will continue living my life the way it was."

This line of thought definitely got me through the low times ... for a while at least.

Fighting my situation

I would approach my old exercise and work schedule like nothing had happened, even pushing myself harder just to show this villain inside me exactly who’s boss.

But, eventually, I had to face reality. As much as I personified MG as a villain separate from myself, the fact was, MG was a result of my immune system failing to differentiate self from other.

And so too I, with my pigheaded stubbornness, failed to differentiate self from other. My body was causing MG, my body was me, therefore, MG and I were one and the same. Thus, fighting it meant fighting myself.

It was this realization that led me to give up fighting my situation and accepting it for what it was. But that didn’t mean I gave up on myself.

Acceptance isn’t losing

When I say I gave up fighting my situation, I didn’t mean I gave up completely.

I still take my medication, I stick to my diet and exercise to help me feel better and combat some of the negative side effects of my medications. I still see my neurologist regularly and receive IVIG infusions.

What I gave up on was trying to push myself just to prove a point at my own expense. Accepting MG allowed me to be ok with not getting everything I wanted to get done in a day.

I was not comfortable

I was one of those people who was heavily invested in being productive. People knew me as the guy who got stuff done, and lots of it.

However, before diagnosis, I found that no matter how much I got done in a day, I wasn’t comfortable, because more things would just end up on my plate. For example, the more emails I replied to in a day, in an attempt to clear my inbox, the more replies I received that needed answering.

The more work I got done in a fast turnaround, the more it was expected of me, by others and myself, to live up to that turnaround. The kilograms I lifted or the kilometers I ran in a day, had to be beaten the next.

It took roughly 3 years of living with MG to show me my pre-diseased life wasn’t healthy: the irony!

Featured Forum

View all responses

Learning to adapt

Accepting the limitations MG brought, allowed me to be ok with what I could do. If I planned to get 3 things done in a day and only got 1 or 2 done, it wasn’t a big deal. I knew I could get it done another day.

To quote Lao Tzu, "An unbending tree breaks in the wind." I didn’t let the "fight" in me make me feel guilty. There was no war that I was losing.

Because pushing myself was hurting me physically, and beating myself up about it mentally was hurting me worse. It’s better to accept and adapt to avoid breaking.

Discovering what’s really important

As I mentioned earlier, acceptance doesn’t mean "giving up". I still get things done. I’m still productive; I’ve just changed what productive means to me.

Productive used to mean getting as many things done as possible. Now, it means getting done what matters most. I know I have limited energy and limited hours that can change from 1 day to the next.

So, if I wanted to get things done, I needed to clarify what was important. I made a list of 20 things in my life and listed them in order of priority. After identifying the top 5 things, I discarded the other 15.

These 5 things are the only things that get my attention. I don’t bother with the sixth or seventh items on my list, even though I may find them tempting. Because I know, I won’t be able to give them the attention they need. And that if I did, the top 5 on my list wouldn’t get the attention they deserve.

MG opened my eyes

MG allowed me to see that I wouldn’t be able to achieve everything I ever dreamed of. The truth is, people without MG won’t be able to achieve everything either. And most will sadly never come to that realization.

MG may be difficult to live with, but it did open my eyes. It allowed me to make hard decisions when it came to my time.

This acceptance has truly brought comfort and relieved the stress I had imposed on myself over all these years. And I’ll be forever in debt.

Do you have an MG story? Click the button below to share with our community!

My MG Story

This article represents the opinions, thoughts, and experiences of the author; none of this content has been paid for by any advertiser. The Myasthenia-Gravis.com team does not recommend or endorse any products or treatments discussed herein. Learn more about how we maintain editorial integrity here.

Join the conversation

Please read our rules before commenting.

CommunityMemberc59f5e Member
Great information thank you
Mark Member
The story is very relatable. At times I get cocky, and say I'm going too do this today.
1. kaitlynsutton Community Admin
 <inline-mention username="Mark" user-id="4222594"/> So glad to know this article resonated with you, Mark! Wishing you a gentle day. Best, Kaitlyn (Team Member)
Jazmin Clayton Moderator
<inline-mention username="Cristiano Del Giacco" user-id="4267891"/> Thank you. Acceptance isnt giving up. But it's very hard. well...for me it was. I get diagnosed at 17, fresh out of high school, starting my first year of college. I'm a theater major so my looks and voice was my ENTIRE life, and when I got diagnosed I thought my life was over. Especially because my symptoms hit me so hard. It was difficult to accept this disease. I would just tell myself I was okay with it but my actions didnt reflect my self positivity speech. I'm still working on trying to lighten the load of what I do in a day. Please any pointers would be appreciated. - Jazmin (team member) 
1. Cristiano Del Giacco Moderator
 Hi <inline-mention username="Jazmin Clayton" user-id="4262560"/> how are you? Thanks for reaching out. I guess, one of the best tips I can give in terms of acceptance is less related to the situation we find ourselves in and more related to being more forgiving of ourselves when we (I hate to use this word but will for the lack of better term) "fail" to get something done and more forgiving of ourselves when we have to make the hard decisions of what not to focus on in our lives so that we can achieve the things we find important. I can imagine being a theatre major you would be very organised and disciplined in your studies and performances. I find being this way is great and super beneficial, however, it cn often be a double-edged sword; where not meeting our own self-expectations can make us feel as if we are not being disciplined enough and we become disappointed in ourselves. I can only speak from my own experience here, so please use this advice as best you feel you can with your own day to day life. But the best thing I found, for me, was to set time aside and think about what I really wanted to do with the rest of my life. This then allowed me to make the hard decisions about what I didn’t feel was as important. Giving myself a hard number limit as to how many things were important helped too as not having this number would make these hard decisions impossible. Knowing what was important to me made it easier to say no to the things that weren’t (easier, not easy). I also felt mindfulness practice, like meditation, helped this process as it allowed me to step back and detach from the emotions like disappointment or feeling as if I were letting others down by saying no to things. Calendars and productivity apps help to organise the tasks in my day, but I keep in mind that they are just guides and not hard and fast rules for my life. The best thing about using digital versions of them like Google Calendar, Notion, Todist is that I can easily move tasks to other days if they didn’t get completed where I initially set them. The next piece of advice that I found really helped was switching from a mindset of completing tasks to enjoying the tasks at hand. After identifying what I found to be important, it made the tasks I chose to complete more interesting, that is, they had more purpose. Having a mindset of enjoying the tasks helped me become more engaged and I felt less writer’s block or aversions towards them. Let’s take watching a film as an example. If we approached watching a film with the mindset of finishing watching the film, that is, getting to the end, we wouldn’t enjoy it or take in the subtleties the director and writers had crafted for us. We would only be thinking about getting it over with. Now, when we watch a film fully giving ourselves over to it, we enjoy the experience much more and often come out with a different perspective (if the film was good haha) that might have missed out on if we were simply waiting for it to be over. At the end of each example scenario, the film will have finished, yet only one scenario would have benefited us. I hope this helps 😀
Sally Farrier Moderator & Contributor
Cristiano very well said!! The acceptance is a very hard thing!! We need to morn over the loss of how our life was. Knowing it will never be like that again. Just as any loss in our live. And not to compare ourselves to anyone else. Just people doing thing in a different way... on our own terms of productivity. Glad you are doing well!! Sally team member
1. Cristiano Del Giacco Moderator
 <inline-mention username="Sally Farrier" user-id="4153220"/> thank you 😀 Hope you are well too!