Living With Multiple Sclerosis, and Separated From the World by a Stairway

Ms. Kessler depends on her son or a neighbor to help her go to the doctor or to the grocery store.

Ms. Kessler, who learned she had multiple sclerosis in 1991, can no longer make her way down from her second-floor apartment in Elmsford, N.Y., on her own. To go anywhere, she must depend on her son or a network of neighbors to carry her.

“I don’t say ‘Why me?’; I don’t look at it that way,” Ms. Kessler, 54, said. “I don’t have a lot of energy and my legs get weak, but my arms are pretty strong, thank God.”

Though Ms. Kessler uses an electric scooter most of the time, she tries to walk on level ground as much as possible with the aid of her arms. On a recent afternoon in her apartment, in Westchester County, she demonstrated her technique. Propping up her thin frame against the kitchen counter, she took a step and grabbed onto a wall, then swung her other leg around, placed her weight on a chair and took another step, reaching her scooter.

“I try to do as much as I can because, psychologically, it’s good for the head,” Ms. Kessler, a New York City native, said in an accent that revealed her Brooklyn upbringing.

While the trip down the stairs that run alongside her two-story building has become too dangerous for her alone, she can still make the trip up, pulling herself along the railing — a feat that can take up to half an hour.

“Sometimes I wish I could just stand up and walk and do everything,” she said. “I try, I really do.”

Ms. Kessler lives with her 34-year-old son, and aside from trips to the doctor or the grocery store, she spends most of her time in her home, watching television and playing with their 11-year-old cat, T.C. (Too Cute), and 3-year-old golden brown pit bull, King.

In recent years, Ms. Kessler has developed a special relationship with King, battling him in tugs of war and exercising her arms in the process.

“He’s very comforting,” she said. “I talk to him when I’m upset. I tell him everything. Some things you don’t tell people, even your closest friends.”

Ms. Kessler, who until 1997 worked as an accounts-payable secretary for a wholesale food distributor, is not one to complain, but she admits to missing one thing that the disease has taken from her.