here goes nothing...

Welcome friends, family, strangers and creepers.
I've been keeping a pretty big "secret" from many of you over the past two years.  In order for you to really understand where I'm coming from, I've finally decided to blog.  This is a really big step for me, but I'm hoping it's also a therapeutical help as well.  Bear with me - this will probably be just as hard to explain over the interweb as it is in person...

Two years ago my life completely flipped upside down.  I was diagnosed with a chronic, neurological-progressive disease called multiple sclerosis (MS).  Symptoms of MS are unpredictable and are different for every person - these include vision problems, fatigue, tingling, numbness, muscle weakness, pain, spasticity, memory, cognitive problems and a few other things.  Lucky me has managed to experience most, if not all of the symptoms over the past two years.  Some worse than others, which is where it all began...

It was the week after labor day, the weather had cooled down, my parents were in Europe and I was just enjoying some freedom.  I had come across sinus like headaches and a bit of a blur in my right eye.  I chalked this up to be something wrong with my contact lenses or allergies and figured it would go away.  The next day things didn't seem any better so I finally went to a walk-in clinic where the doctor didn't see anything wrong and told me it was normal.  September 11th, 2010 was a Saturday - I remember waking up and my vision had almost completely gone in my right eye.  Finally I decided that I see an eye doctor so I quickly called the closest one.  After a few tests, some fun dialiting drops and more tests the doctor looked at me and said "Don't worry, you just need to go to emergency RIGHT NOW and see the opthamologist that's on call".  DON'T WORRY?! Here I am, by myself, being told I need to go to the ER.  Luckily I was able to get a hold of my amazing brother who dragged his butt out of his bed to come drive me to the hospital. 

After arriving at the hospital, they took me in fairly quickly.  First they did a brief eye test (you know that poster with the letters that starts with a large E and slowly get smaller? well all I saw was a black blur..couldn't even see the E), then they asked a billion questions, drew blood, hooked up an IV and then disappeared from my room for a while.  Eventually a nurse brought me for a CT scan then back to my room where I sat and waited.  The whole time I had no clue what they were testing for or what was going on.  Not once did I see the opthamologist like the eye doctor requested.
Finally the doctor came back and said that they needed to run a few more tests and I had to see the neurologist but he wouldn't be in until the next day.  Lucky me got to spend a Saturday night in a hospital room on the neurological floor attached to an IV - still unaware of what was going on.  As I was wheeled up to my room my chart was sitting on my bed and all I saw was "multiple sclerosis" - but I didn't have multiple sclerosis? I just can't see! It's probably eye herpes or an infection from contact lenses? There must be a mistake!

After sleeping maybe 2 hours, showering, eating breakfast (what they say about hospital food is true...it looked nice, but man it was awful) and trying (failing) to get any information from the nurse, the neurologist finally made his way in.  He introduced himself, asked a few questions, did a few neurological tests and flat out just said "I think you have MS". That led to him saying that he had to do a spinal tap and an MRI, and since we were both already there he was going to do the spinal tap.  That might have been a good thing - if I had to wait for that then I would have googled it.  Luckily I had NO IDEA what it was until the moment it happened.  I will spare you those details, feel free to google it yourself.  This was followed by another IV, bed rest and lots of juice.  Then they finally let me go home - just to have more bed rest and drink more juice.

The MRI wasn't for another few days and by that time I had done a bit more research on MS.  Finally, my parents came home and the week after all of my results were in.  Mama came with me to the follow up appointment when I got the diagnosis.  The doctor did a couple tests, asked questions again then walked out of the room.  When he came back he handed me a book and said "You have MS, here's a book if you have any questions.  But please bring the book back when you're done with it".

Two years ago my life changed. Here I'm just hoping to explain a little bit more about the disease and a little bit more on my symptoms so everyone can understand.  I don't expect any pity parties, I just want support when I need it the most.