Everyone has an MS story....what's yours?

Almost everyone knows someone that has MS. Those that have MS have a story to tell and it's not going to be the same as anyone else.....so, if interested, post your story right here as a response to this blog.
Here is my story:
At the beginning of June 2008, I had a severe headache and wound up in the emergency room the first night. The second headache caused the left side of my face to go numb and was a bit scary. The headaches continued for the entire week and ended on June 7th (my birthday). My doctor and neurologist were concerned about internal bleeding in the brain, stroke or something more serious. I had a CT scan on June 6th and luckily that ruled out anything immediately life-threatening. I met with my neurologist on June 25th and he saw a “white spot” on my CT scan and wanted me to go have an MRI done to further investigate what was going on. Unfortunately the headaches had triggered a whole bunch of problems including increasing my chronic dizziness (that I have had since 2003), blurry vision, etc. which made doing anything challenging, but I had to work and attempt to take care of my children with little help. I went in for the MRI scan on July 1st and awaited the results. My neurologist called the next afternoon and told me that it looked like Multiple Sclerosis and was in shock that I was walking, hearing and seeing due to the size of the damage (called demylination) to my brain stem. I met with my neurologist again on July 10th and we looked at the MRI scan images and decided it was best to get a lumbar puncture (also called spinal tap) to help confirm MS. I had the lumbar puncture on July 14th and again awaited the results. On July 22nd, my neurologist called and told me that there was not much doubt that it was in fact MS. I won’t go into too much more detail (or else this will end up being a long book), but I started medication in August, a daily injection of Copaxone. This medication doesn’t treat the problems that I’m left with, but is supposed to reduce the frequency of attacks and delay the disabling impact of the disease. We won’t really know it is working until my next MRI, which will happen later this year. I have spent the last nine months learning how to live with this chronic illness and increased medical bills, etc. The good news that comes out of all this….is that I’m not completely disabled nor am I dying. I am still able to work, walk, see & hear.

Until next time....

~Hope~