"Perspective"
by Karri Thompson
It was Friday morning and I was receiving a dose of Solumedrol as preventive medicine. My neurologist thought my fatigue was brought on by a flare-up and that we could take care of it with three monthly doses of Solumedrol.
I thought about how terribly my neck was hurting –how I must have slept on it wrong. I have a disc bulge in my neck, so maybe I just aggravated it.
Friday night came, and I awoke with a pins-and-needles sensation on my whole left side. It was the most bizarre sensation I had ever encountered! I was worried my circulation had been cut off, so I wandered around the house for an hour. It didn’t do a bit of good. "I’ll sleep it off!" I exclaimed to my husband, who was also pretty worried. So I went back to bed and slept like a baby, or tried to.
Saturday came and went, but my symptoms were still there. In fact, they were getting worse. I had difficulty walking and I had some weakness in my left arm and leg, but I had convinced myself that it was a pinched nerve. Sunday came, and I could barely get myself dressed, let alone walk without assistance.
Finally I called the on-call neurologist. I tried to convince him of my "pinched nerve" theory, but his response was "Well, maybe, but I’d really like you to be examined." With that, I hung up the phone and made my way to the emergency room. My husband and I kept looking at the clock as my symptoms worsened. Finally, four hours later, they called my name! I felt like I had won the lottery!
I tried to convince the ER doctor of the same pinched nerve theory, stressing the fact that my neck hurt, but that I also happen to have MS.
(I tried very hard to minimize the MS diagnosis).
I was so afraid that my left-sided numbness and weakness was MS-related that I had successfully convinced myself that it wasn’t, and now I was moving on to convincing the doctors that it wasn’t MS-related. But you can’t fool an MRI scan!
The MRI scan revealed an active lesion and it was much worse than any of the others. I couldn’t walk.
I couldn’t do the nose-to-finger test, and my Babinski reflex was positive. I was admitted to the hospital for a week and placed in ICU for a few days. This was the most terrifying time I’d ever had with this disease! I was unable to walk or feel any sensation on that side of my body. But, since I was left-handed, I had afforded the right to have my steak cut up for me!
Just a few months prior, I was very independent.
I worked full-time, shuffled my kids back & forth to day care and karate lessons, had dinner on the table by 6:30 and the kids bathed by 7:00, homework done and in bed by 8:30. Whew! It was exhausting.
In stark contrast, I had given up my job (or rather, they gave me up), met my kids at the bus stop every afternoon and didn’t have to apply the same strict schedule with dinner and bath time. It was refreshing not having to be so hurried all the time.
I walk with a bit of a limp, but this attack has made me slow down – w-a-a-a-ay down.
I’m still recovering, and the lingering symptoms still remind me of that difficult week. I’ve learned a few things from this attack, however.
I’ve learned, first of all, to pace myself, not to overdo it, to respect my body and all that it is capable of, and not dwell on what it’s not capable of. So what if I can’t brush my teeth with my left hand? I’ll use my right instead.
Secondly, I learned that denial can be a wonderful thing. It protected me from feeling so overwhelmed with fear and it allowed me time to accept the changes at my own pace.
Finally, I learned to keep things in perspective.
This was the most important lesson to me. For without perspective, I would continue to take things for granted and remain impatient with the "little things" in life.
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