In the Year of 1989 . . .
by Lon Honzell
. . . Fall, I think?
I was self employed, selling and installing commercial and residential overhead doors, having to carry door sections and springs up a 20' ladder which would at times be anywhere from 50 to 250 pounds. Then one day the hair on my right arm had this strange tingly feeling. When rubbing my arm, I was able to feel the hair. Even though it felt awfully strange with some numbness, I continued with my work.
After about a week of this, the same feeling that I was experiencing in my arm started in my right leg, still able to do my work without any problems. During the beginning of another day, I started experiencing blurring in my right eye. Never being one to go to the doctor just because I had a runny nose, I started to think that there must be more to this.
So, I went to an eye doctor, who found nothing. I was still doing my work, except when I would get inside a building with concrete floors, my eyes would go berserk. When closing one or the other eye, I was able to see fine.
Thinking that it was time, I went to a different doctor. I went to my family doctor. When he had performed his usual poking and prodding, he also found nothing! Hmmm!
That next morning I woke up with all of these weird feelings, except worse. I decided to call my family doctor back, and he suggested that I go see a neurologist. So he set me up with one. When I was at his office and discussing my problems, he set me up for an MRI. Kinda noisy, but after getting accustomed to it, I fell asleep.
Then I was out of that cigar tube and back in his office, waiting on his return. A nurse brought the films in and laid them on a table, saying that the doctor would be in in a minute. Now, this was not my fault – kinda like throwing a steak in front of a dog and telling it not to eat it. So I picked up the films and could see mostly white spots.
I'm not a doctor, but I could tell you that there was something wrong here!!
The doctor came back in and broke the bad news to me, "Lon, you have MS." After a short discussion with him and his instructions, he said, "Stay out of the heat." Well, during this time – my bout with this MS – the hotter it got, the better off I was. Every flare up that I experienced was during the cold months.
After reading more on MS I learned that no two people are affected the same. So, I dealt with this MS for six or seven years, not being bad enough to stop me from working. But on the seventh year, this MS hit me hard, and I was not able to work any more.
Just as soon as I was unable to work, my sweet loving wife divorced me, after our 20 year marriage, which was all great until . . .
That's between her and God.
The whole story will be in my book "Silent Killer," which will be coming out soon — typed with the hunt-and-peck method due to unsteady fingers.
I have it typed out, but the ones who have read it said it sounded like I was from East Texas.
Could be because I am!
Thank you
God Bless everyone!
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