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This week from the MS & Me blog archive Joan Jordan shares how she is *learning* to have a stress free Christmas.

There are the parts of Christmas I love, like time with family, winter walks, twinkling lights and evenings by a cosy fire. But the parts I like don’t always gel well with my MS. As a result, Christmas can turn into something of a marathon for me and excitement tends to quickly give way to dread when I realise there is no way my body will cope with all the festivities.

This Christmas, it is time to gather your family and friends, work colleagues, school pupils and youth groups, or you local club members, and don your best (or worst!) festive Christmas Jumpers!

Let me share an incident that happened to me on a Luas recently. I was lucky enough to have nabbed the last available seat on a packed tram at rush hour in Dublin. I noticed an older lady standing beside me and I could nearly predict the scene that unfolded before my eyes. A Good Samaritan noticed that this older passenger needed a seat and looked straight in my direction. She asked me to give up my seat for somebody more deserving and I replied no. The Good Samaritan proceeded to shout all over the Luas about my lack of common decency and how people these days have no manners or respect. Outwardly I looked ok, this woman had no idea that I had been enduring MS fatigue since the moment I had woken up that day.

We have made a slight change to the agenda for our upcoming virtual conference. Dr Guido Guinti Garcia will be presenting from 4:30 – 5:30 rather than during the parallel sessions as previously stated.

The title of his presentation is: Involving people with MS to design digital health tools for fatigue: the More Stamina Case. If you still need to register for the National Conference you can do so here.

The European Committee for Treatment and Research in Multiple Sclerosis (ECTRIMS) Congress is taking place in Amsterdam this week. They are holding a special event for people living with MS on Saturday, October 29th which can be attended virtually. Click here for more information or to register fo this event.