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No More Secs! Living, Laughing & Loving Despite Multiple Sclerosis
When 44-year-old Ann Pietrangelo is diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, all previous assumptions about health, work, and her new romance are up for grabs.
How do you plan for life's second half with a body you've never met before? One precarious step at a time. From the impersonal diagnosis by email to a wedding presided over by a funeral director, this is no tragic tale of woe. Like relapsing/remitting MS itself, the book alternates between the serious (“When I turn toward him, there's a big hole where his right cheek should be.”) and the silly (“The bocce balls don't get out much.”).
This poignant and often humorous story of acceptance and change relies on a basic truth – good health and life are fleeting, but love and humor trump all. Every second matters, a point driven home by yet another life-altering diagnosis. Available in paperback and ebook format.
How do you plan for life's second half with a body you've never met before? One precarious step at a time. From the impersonal diagnosis by email to a wedding presided over by a funeral director, this is no tragic tale of woe. Like relapsing/remitting MS itself, the book alternates between the serious (“When I turn toward him, there's a big hole where his right cheek should be.”) and the silly (“The bocce balls don't get out much.”).
This poignant and often humorous story of acceptance and change relies on a basic truth – good health and life are fleeting, but love and humor trump all. Every second matters, a point driven home by yet another life-altering diagnosis. Available in paperback and ebook format.
- GenresMemoirNonfiction
262 pages, Paperback
First published June 9, 2011
9 people are currently reading
49 people want to read
About the author
Ann Pietrangelo
2 books8 followersAnn Pietrangelo is a freelance writer, health reporter, and author of "No More Secs! Living, Laughing & Loving Despite Multiple Sclerosis" and "Catch That Look: Living, Laughing & Loving Despite Triple-Negative Breast Cancer."
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
March 11, 2025
I was living with MS for years before being officially diagnosed in 2021. I got annual MRIs, and I did not take any meds due to side effects. I had one flare up in 2021. My legs decided to a break, and I was numb from the waist down. I decided to try MS-4 from Uine Health Centre. The numbness and Muscle spasms went away after a couple of weeks, but it took almost 3 months to walk properly without a cane. In June, it will be four years without incident, and I am extremely happy that I made the decision to not take any meds and went for the MS-4 formula even though my neurologist got upset and one told me to quit my job because I will be disabled. Well, I am not disabled, I still refuse to take those meds, and I am doing just fine. Believe in yourself and go with your instincts. Doctors don't know it all. I’m surprised a lot of people with MS haven’t heard of the MS-4 protocol, I got the treatment from uinehealthcentre. com I am absolutely confident that this protocol offers a viable solution. I hope you find it helpful.
October 19, 2012
My daughter who has multiple sclerosis recommended this book to me as an good account of what it means to live with multiple sclerosis. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have read it. I already knew a lot about my daughter’s condition, but this book, written by a multiple sclerosis victim, is an insightful addition, not just on the symptoms of multiple sclerosis, but the psychological and emotional impact on the sufferer and family members.
The author who was in her late forties when she wrote the book repeatedly emphasizes that one lesson that a person with multiple sclerosis learns is that life changes in an instant, a reality most healthy people are aware of, yes, but only in the abstract. Multiple sclerosis is a chronic disease, the causes of which are not understood. Even after it’s diagnosed, nothing is definite. There is no cure and treatments can vary widely. The author’s MS was of the relapsing/remitting variety, meaning that the symptoms have no predictability. For days or weeks, she would feel normal, then have attacks that left her either paralyzed, in pain in different parts of her body, weak, or unable to control erratic movements of her body. The unpredictability and frustration of MS is a reality for every victim.
Another issue that comes is the attitude of loved ones toward the victim. Is she loved for herself, or does her spouse just feel sorry for her and stays with her out of guilt? In the author’s case, her relationship with her husband is a solid one, and she comes to feel assured that he is not just a great actor, but a person whose “love for me is stronger than his aversion to MS.”
On the other hand, when she was in one of her remissions, she functioned close to normal and she felt a good deal of misunderstanding about her disease. If it was so debilitating, how could she seem like a perfectly healthy person? she felt people were thinking. She was the only one who was certain that a relapse was coming, and it did come, she would often become completely dysfunctional. One of the severe attributes of the disease for her was an incredibly high level of fatigue and the total inability to fight sleep.
What impressed me about Pietrangelo’s book is her lack of self-pity. Certainly, she has been dealt a tough hand in life, at times an impossible one to play out well. Yet, she says, “Coping with MS has taught me a great many things, one of them being acceptance of what is inevitable – like aging. The alternative, after all, is death, something I am reminded of every day. . .” Why this mention of aging.? She is talking about what gives women self-esteem, and in our society it is too often the appearance of being young and beautiful. With multiple sclerosis, all of those illusions are left behind. What’s left? Something close to an Alcoholics Anonymous attitude of living one day at a time as best you can.
The title? A double entendre throwaway joke about when one of her children would delay coming to the dinner table, with a “just a sec” response. In exasperation, she responded, “No more secs! An example of the book’s only flaw – a bit padded with good experiences, presumably to lighten the seriousness of her subject.
The author who was in her late forties when she wrote the book repeatedly emphasizes that one lesson that a person with multiple sclerosis learns is that life changes in an instant, a reality most healthy people are aware of, yes, but only in the abstract. Multiple sclerosis is a chronic disease, the causes of which are not understood. Even after it’s diagnosed, nothing is definite. There is no cure and treatments can vary widely. The author’s MS was of the relapsing/remitting variety, meaning that the symptoms have no predictability. For days or weeks, she would feel normal, then have attacks that left her either paralyzed, in pain in different parts of her body, weak, or unable to control erratic movements of her body. The unpredictability and frustration of MS is a reality for every victim.
Another issue that comes is the attitude of loved ones toward the victim. Is she loved for herself, or does her spouse just feel sorry for her and stays with her out of guilt? In the author’s case, her relationship with her husband is a solid one, and she comes to feel assured that he is not just a great actor, but a person whose “love for me is stronger than his aversion to MS.”
On the other hand, when she was in one of her remissions, she functioned close to normal and she felt a good deal of misunderstanding about her disease. If it was so debilitating, how could she seem like a perfectly healthy person? she felt people were thinking. She was the only one who was certain that a relapse was coming, and it did come, she would often become completely dysfunctional. One of the severe attributes of the disease for her was an incredibly high level of fatigue and the total inability to fight sleep.
What impressed me about Pietrangelo’s book is her lack of self-pity. Certainly, she has been dealt a tough hand in life, at times an impossible one to play out well. Yet, she says, “Coping with MS has taught me a great many things, one of them being acceptance of what is inevitable – like aging. The alternative, after all, is death, something I am reminded of every day. . .” Why this mention of aging.? She is talking about what gives women self-esteem, and in our society it is too often the appearance of being young and beautiful. With multiple sclerosis, all of those illusions are left behind. What’s left? Something close to an Alcoholics Anonymous attitude of living one day at a time as best you can.
The title? A double entendre throwaway joke about when one of her children would delay coming to the dinner table, with a “just a sec” response. In exasperation, she responded, “No more secs! An example of the book’s only flaw – a bit padded with good experiences, presumably to lighten the seriousness of her subject.
November 15, 2021
I read this book shortly after my diagnosis. Pages are definitely tear stained. It was so helpful to hear someone else’s experience. With each page I found encouragement to go through this fight as well.
February 3, 2017
Ann Pietrangelo's book, No More Secs!, Living, Laughing & Loving Despite Multiple Sclerosis gets a five-star rating from this reader! Maybe it takes living with disabilities to understand this book, maybe not. In my case, reading this book was like sitting across the table with Ann, sharing our stories, heartaches, successes, victories, and yes, complaining about the state of health care in the United States today. There were times I wanted to pick up the phone and talk to her. This book is truly a must-read for anyone who desires to delve inside the mind of a person with a disability. It doesn't matter what the disability is, people with disability share many similarities in their life stories. What Ann does so well in No More Secs!, is to describe how she makes the decision each and every day to push forward, to make her life the best it can be. I believe this describes the majority of people who do live with a disability in one fashion or other, not from the disability itself, as there are too many disabilities in the world seen and unseen. You can be anyone and start your life out without a hitch, ride along with nary a care in the world, and one day it may find you. Ann speaks from her heart, her mind, and her soul in this book. Except for our outward appearance, we could be the same person living parallel lives. I loved reading this book.
October 15, 2016
Extremely funny story of someone living with MS but having a sense of humor.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews