Kevin Byrne shares how writing became a powerful outlet after his multiple sclerosis diagnosis, helping him process his experiences, connect with others, and remind newly diagnosed patients that they are not alone.
Transcript
Hello, everyone. I’m, I’m Kevin Byrne. I live out here in Portland, Oregon. I have been battling multiple sclerosis since I was diagnosed when I was in the Army in 1999.
Back in 2010, since I’m seen by the Department of Veterans Affairs, their MS Center of Excellence, they asked me if I’d be interested in writing a, a blog series of articles, to post on their website about life with multiple sclerosis.
So I said, sure. I always, I always like to write. I always like to talk. So I started writing for the, the Department of Veterans Affairs. And then pretty soon after that, I also started to duplicate those posts on my own blog site that I created.
Eventually, the, the blog site that I have kind of overtook the need that the, that the Department of Veterans Affairs had, and some of the content was, the content wasn’t necessarily focused on veterans with multiple sclerosis.
So a lot of my — a lot of my blog posts just went straight on to my post. And then throughout the year, telling stories about my MS, about other people’s multiple sclerosis, about living with the disease.
In 2016, I was writing some fundraising blogs, and I wrote this one blog that was kind of a — it was a story about myself and my daughter. She was pretty young at the time. She was a 6 years old.
I wrote it in this sing-song “Dr. Seuss” kind of style and got some really great feedback on that. On that story. To the point that several people convinced me to take the story down, clean it up a little bit, and publish it as a children’s book.
So I, in 2017, I published my first children’s book called “My MS And E.” It just kind of kicked off that fact of something that I love to do as a hobby, love to do with fundraising, but really started to like telling stories and telling my story and, and sharing that.
Quickly, that desire to want to tell stories went beyond just telling my story. And I wanted to tell someone else’s story. I wanted to make up their story.
So I, I went to this little cafe with my laptop and wrote this story I had in my head. And, and that turned into my first book, “In Abeyance,” that I wrote. After that, I spun that into a couple of other short story novellas, and I have now written two full-length novels, “Moments” and “Sensations.”
But one of the most valuable things that I get from that is, you know, besides my own cathartic relief, the feedback from people who who admire my, my tendency to keep on biking, to never stop and never quit, to to share these stories, these intimate stories about myself and to create these fictional, fantastic stories in my mind and share them with them. It’s great getting that feedback.
And then the most important group I get feedback from is people who reach out to me and say, “I was just diagnosed with MS.” And making those connections with people. So one, they realize that they’re not alone. And that’s — that’s why I continue to do it.
There’s times when I sit down and write just because there’s, there’s so much inside of me physically, mentally, emotionally, that’s hurting that I just need to write. Because the more I do, the more it will leave my system and kind of, kind of spew out onto the, the computer.
So what I do is I write using voice-to-text, and everything that I write out — you know, the first book I wrote was typed, everything after that, two full-length novels, a bunch of short stories, published works, have all been voice-to-text technology.
Do what is best for you, for your mind, and your body. That goes into stories, that goes into health, that goes into relationships. That goes into talking about your disease. It’s do what you need to do that’s good for your health, your body, and your mind. For me, writing is, is one of those — one of those cathartic releases.
