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When Jocelyn and I packed up our life in Weymouth, Mass., and headed west to Chandler, Ariz., June of 2009, I thought we were starting fresh. A clean slate. But what I didn’t realize at the time was that I was about to enter one of the most stressful, chaotic years of my life, and my MS would make sure I paid the price.

We didn’t plan for everything to fall apart at once. The real estate market had crashed, and Abbott, the company I worked for, was going under. I came home one day, sat down with Jocelyn, and said, “I lost my job.” 

She looked me in the eye and said, “I’m pregnant.” 

I took a deep breath, and with no real plan, no savings, and no backup offer, I said, “Wanna move back to Arizona and start over?”

I packed up the car and drove cross-country with our dog, Teddy, while Jocelyn who was eight months pregnant flew with our oldest son, Mason, who was just shy of two years old. When we got to Arizona, the heat hit us like a wall, and so did reality. 

That year checked nearly every box on the list of life’s biggest stressors:

• Major move
• Job loss
• Financial crisis
• Chronic medical condition
• New baby
• Relationship pressure
• Total loss of control

I was desperate to provide for my growing family, so I got my insurance license and started going door-to-door in the Arizona sun. Literally knocking on strangers’ doors, sweating through my dress shirt, trying to sell insurance with a forced smile while panic roiled in my gut.

I wasn’t sleeping. I was anxious 24/7. I couldn’t shut my brain off. I’d lie awake at night wondering how we were going to pay the mortgage, the hospital bills, or even afford diapers. I felt like a failure. Like I was falling apart while trying to hold everything together.

And through it all, my body was keeping score.

It started subtly — fatigue, dizziness, the return of old symptoms I had chalked up to recovery. Then it got worse. But I didn’t have time to listen to my body. I was too busy fighting to survive.

A full year passed like that.

Then, in June 2010, everything changed — because of one conversation during an infusion appointment at Banner Good Samaritan Hospital in Phoenix. I was venting about the stress, the hopelessness, the fact that nothing was working out, when a nurse named Amna Mohammed looked at me and said:

“Matt, we know about your writing. We know about your speaking. Is there anything you can do here at the hospital?”

I looked down at my gym shorts and IV line and said, “Amna … is this a job interview? Because I’m not really dressed for it.”

She smiled. “We have an office manager position open. But more importantly, when patients are having a bad day … we’d love for you to share your dog story.”

That moment — sitting in a chair with medication dripping into my veins — was the beginning of a new chapter. I formally applied, interviewed, and accepted the job. To this day, it's the only job I’ve ever landed while on an IV.

But here’s the thing: the damage was already done.

Later that year, I needed surgery to address spinal stenosis caused by a broken bone in my neck. To have the operation, I had to come off my MS meds. And during the post-op recovery, already weakened by a year of chronic stress, exhaustion, and untreated symptoms, I relapsed.

Looking back now, I don’t believe the relapse was just because I stopped the medication. I believe the stress I carried — day after day, month after month — set the stage. It created the conditions where my body could no longer hold the line.

We don’t always talk about stress like the serious medical threat it is. But if you live with MS, it’s not just emotional, it’s physical. Stress is inflammation. Stress is pressure on your immune system. Stress is a trigger that can light the fuse.

That year nearly broke me. But it also taught me to start listening to my body’s signals, to take stress seriously, and eventually — how to fight back.

If you’re going through it right now just know: you are not weak. You are not alone. And this moment doesn’t define your future.