I've been diagnosed for four years. I'd had symptoms similar to those that prompted the diagnosis for probably twenty or thirty years before diagnosis, because I have "innumerable lesions" on the brain, and on the spine as well. All doctors agree that I've had MS for decades. My symptoms are fatigue, occasional vertigo, weakness on the left side, back and rib pain, poor memory, UTI's and depression with anxiety (gee, wonder why?)
When one of these symptoms recurs, though, it is either brief, usually less than two weeks (vertigo, imbalance, double vision) or stays for months (weakness, pain in ribs and back, and memory loss, depression.)
I've never had steroid treatments (and feel fortunate), usually just an antibiotic for UTIs, ADs for depression and anxiety, or "get out of the heat and cool off" for the vertigo, blurred vision, confusion. The back pain and rib pain is usually answered with a "could be arthritis." I do have osteoporosis, and all of a sudden scoliosis (at age 60?), and have just had my first once-a-year Reclast infusion.
I have a new neurologist now, who immediately checked my vitamin D levels (very very low) and recommended a once a week high dose and daily Viactiv. I feel better now.
But what I have today is no different than what I've had for the past twenty or thirty years. It just has a name now, MS, or so they say. Yet when one of these things returns, the treatments are no different than they were.
I have never believed this is MS, the MS that I read about on these message boards. Fatigue and memory issues have driven me out of my classroom, retiring two years earlier than I'd planned ... if I didn't have the MS label I might have stayed and fought it out with myself for those two more years. Instead I gave in to the offer of a permanent sub to finish this year with (for) me.
I don't regret the decision to leave early - I could no longer be the teacher I have always been, forgetting students' names, wanting only a nap by lunch time every day ...I'm 61, so maybe that would have happened anyway.
But I am still struggling with the label MS. All of you seem to have accepted it, and your doctors seem to be treating it as MS. I like and trust my new neurologist, she is an MS specialist. Maybe in time I will come to believe this. But for now, I still think I'm having the same old occasional weaknesses that I've had for all of my working life.
Taking these injections every night seems somehow wrong, and wasteful, financially. I have good enough insurance, but feel guilty about using such expensive meds and not knowing whether they are really doing anything or not.
When is a relapse a relapse, and not just the same old same old?
When one of these symptoms recurs, though, it is either brief, usually less than two weeks (vertigo, imbalance, double vision) or stays for months (weakness, pain in ribs and back, and memory loss, depression.)
I've never had steroid treatments (and feel fortunate), usually just an antibiotic for UTIs, ADs for depression and anxiety, or "get out of the heat and cool off" for the vertigo, blurred vision, confusion. The back pain and rib pain is usually answered with a "could be arthritis." I do have osteoporosis, and all of a sudden scoliosis (at age 60?), and have just had my first once-a-year Reclast infusion.
I have a new neurologist now, who immediately checked my vitamin D levels (very very low) and recommended a once a week high dose and daily Viactiv. I feel better now.
But what I have today is no different than what I've had for the past twenty or thirty years. It just has a name now, MS, or so they say. Yet when one of these things returns, the treatments are no different than they were.
I have never believed this is MS, the MS that I read about on these message boards. Fatigue and memory issues have driven me out of my classroom, retiring two years earlier than I'd planned ... if I didn't have the MS label I might have stayed and fought it out with myself for those two more years. Instead I gave in to the offer of a permanent sub to finish this year with (for) me.
I don't regret the decision to leave early - I could no longer be the teacher I have always been, forgetting students' names, wanting only a nap by lunch time every day ...I'm 61, so maybe that would have happened anyway.
But I am still struggling with the label MS. All of you seem to have accepted it, and your doctors seem to be treating it as MS. I like and trust my new neurologist, she is an MS specialist. Maybe in time I will come to believe this. But for now, I still think I'm having the same old occasional weaknesses that I've had for all of my working life.
Taking these injections every night seems somehow wrong, and wasteful, financially. I have good enough insurance, but feel guilty about using such expensive meds and not knowing whether they are really doing anything or not.
When is a relapse a relapse, and not just the same old same old?
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