Hi! Annie (forum username Abbas child), my wife of 35 years had her first symptoms in late 2004. She was diagnosed in July 2007. She lived with her disease with a truly miraculous joy. Her attitude was the same as Paul's in 2 Cor 5:6-8, "Therefore, being always of good courage, and knowing that while we are at home in the body we are absent from the Lord— or we walk by faith, not by sight— we are of good courage, I say, and prefer rather to be absent from the body and to be at home with the Lord."
Annie departed this world sublimely peacefully in Dec 2011 to be at home with the Lord. Through her ordeal, the Lord has given me an enduring empathy for anyone afflicted by this type of disease.
-Phil