Hi there, I'm brand new to the forum. Thanks to everyone for helpful info.
My neice, 16 y.o, was just diagnosed with MS following a moderately severe bout of optic neuritis. It now seems likely that a much light bout of ON a few months ago was a first relapse (Can you call the first one a relapse?).
Anyway, we're all trying to get up to speed. She's had two MRI's, and we've been told she has a number of lesions -- some neuro's suggested around 3, and another said over 10 -- apparently they're counting somewhat differently, they were looking at the same MRIs.
She has responded reasonably well to steroids and has most of her vision back. She was already leaning towards a veggie diet, so now she's modifying that and trying out the Paleo diet. She's mostly eating salmon for protein, she's taking D3, fish oil & turmeric, and she's getting lots of exercise.
Her Dr. suggested she start on Copaxone. Since we are early in the assessment, he wants to treat fairly aggressively until/unless we have confidence that this isn't moving quickly (at least). He also suggested that C has relatively few side effects (I read the thread 121465 and some others (I can't post URLS, too new to forum)).
I'm sorta out of time and energy right now for more research, so I'm just putting it out there: she will probably start on C any day now, unless there were some really good thoughts/info as to why she shouldn't.
Thanks, I look forward to learning from all of you. Thanks so much for all your sharing, I am already intensely appreciative.
Keith
Also: following my question about whether she'd be on C forever, the Dr. had what I thought was a pretty good strategy: try it for a while (he mentioned perhaps 5 years). Monitor the disease's progression. If it is not increasing at all, and she wants to, she could then go off it, under careful monitoring...
My neice, 16 y.o, was just diagnosed with MS following a moderately severe bout of optic neuritis. It now seems likely that a much light bout of ON a few months ago was a first relapse (Can you call the first one a relapse?).
Anyway, we're all trying to get up to speed. She's had two MRI's, and we've been told she has a number of lesions -- some neuro's suggested around 3, and another said over 10 -- apparently they're counting somewhat differently, they were looking at the same MRIs.
She has responded reasonably well to steroids and has most of her vision back. She was already leaning towards a veggie diet, so now she's modifying that and trying out the Paleo diet. She's mostly eating salmon for protein, she's taking D3, fish oil & turmeric, and she's getting lots of exercise.
Her Dr. suggested she start on Copaxone. Since we are early in the assessment, he wants to treat fairly aggressively until/unless we have confidence that this isn't moving quickly (at least). He also suggested that C has relatively few side effects (I read the thread 121465 and some others (I can't post URLS, too new to forum)).
I'm sorta out of time and energy right now for more research, so I'm just putting it out there: she will probably start on C any day now, unless there were some really good thoughts/info as to why she shouldn't.
Thanks, I look forward to learning from all of you. Thanks so much for all your sharing, I am already intensely appreciative.
Keith
Also: following my question about whether she'd be on C forever, the Dr. had what I thought was a pretty good strategy: try it for a while (he mentioned perhaps 5 years). Monitor the disease's progression. If it is not increasing at all, and she wants to, she could then go off it, under careful monitoring...
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