Multiple Sclerosis brings many challenges, and can affect every area of your life. However, it might slow you down but doesn’t need to stop you entirely.
“Dear Multiple Sclerosis,
Just so you know I won’t give up, I won’t give in, I have endless hope, endless faith.
You may be in my life but you don’t own my life.“
I was diagnosed with MS in early 2012. It was morbidly amusing to me that while many doom-merchants were predicting that the World would end in 2012, in many ways mine actually did.
One day in March 2012 I woke up and both of my feet were that same sort of numb you get when you sit cross-legged for too long. “That’s a bit weird,” I thought. “I’ll just walk that off.” Well, I tried, and it didn’t work. In fact, over the next week the sensation travelled all up the way of my right-hand side and eventually reached my head, culminating with my vision going crazy in what I would late find our was called “bilateral optic neuritis”.
Needless to say, I was a write-off. I couldn’t see to read. I couldn’t drive (obviously). I couldn’t hold anything as my hands were so numb I couldn’t feel what I was holding and kept dropping whatever I held. My partner rushed e to the hospital where I was diagnosed, after an MRI, with MS.
This first attack lasted over three months, gradually the symptoms became increasingly milder after the first 8 weeks or so. And then, on month 4, BANG! Another attack, this time down the other side of my body. A complete mirror again, and the vision disturbance returned. I remember being effectively blind for the London Olympics, which I was so looking forward to, as one of the water events was going to happen near where my parents lived.
As an aside, while I was convalescing from these MS attacks, I would sit in the back garden of my parents house (I was staying there at the time) to soak in the birdsong and lift my spirits. When I was at my lowest ebb, out of the blue, a beautiful black cat started coming in the garden. We’d never seen it before, but we soon became great friends, and that cat, who I called Princess, was an incredible help to me, lifting my spirits just when I needed it the most.
I’d never known such a friendly animal, she just wanted to be fussed all the time, and changed me from being a “dog person” who hadn’t really any time for cats, into being a cat lover.
She’s probably gone now, bless her, as I write this all these years later. She wasn’t a young cat even then. She was, however, my little angel, and even though she must have belonged to a neighbour, I loved her dearly. The family we suspected who owned her moved away in 2013-14 and I didn’t see her again, nor did I get to say goodbye.
Thank you, Princess. Thank you, baby.
I’d go on to have four relapses that first year and a buit, following the attack every four months pattern. Like clockwork. So my neurologist sent me off to Addenbrookes so I could receive “front-line disease modifying therapy”. Dr Molyneaux at Addenbrookes diagnosed me with “Highly active rapidly evolving Relapsing Remitting Multiple Sclerosis” and “Brain stem onset, very active MRI scan, both supporting the need to rapidly gain control of her MS.”. He said to me “do you like straight-talking?” and, after I said yes, told me I was on a fast-track to blindness and a wheelchair. Ouch. Not what you really want to hear but pretty much what I expected given how crap I was feeling.
I signed up to the Campath/Lemtrada/Alemtuzumab trial which had the potential to be the most efficacious MS treatment so far, almost stopping the disease in its tracks.
MS is the Start of a Journey, not the End of Your Life
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