diagnosis

I had hoped I could write this in a brief, emotionless paragraph. I managed kind of okay with the emotion but not so well with brevity because I would forget part of a sentence and get confused, find myself writing in circles, unable to copy from sources because when I look up I forget what I was just looking at. I've been trying to write this for days. After I've whittled it down you won't see the circles it. I hope.

Multiple Sclerosis: no fun
Partial Seizures: pretty nifty
Optic Neuritis: I've lost some color vision & have blurry vision as well, which makes me uncertain about every image I post and makes photography pretty difficult.

A nurse came to my house the day before yesterday to teach me how to give myself injections so I could begin treatment with a medication called Rebif for MS. This won't cure it or undo any damage the disease has already done but it will hopefully slow the progression of it and the time between relapses. I will be giving them to myself, three times a week for the rest of my life (or till I can't give them to myself, I guess? I don't know). She said I'd feel pretty miserable for about the first three months of injections. So far I just feel tired.

So that's the diagnosis. This stuff below is from the net and the Rebif pamphlets with pictures of shiny, happy people living comfortably with their disease. Some folks with MS might get a chuckle out of that “comfortably” part. Heh. (Turns out, the "shiny, happy people" pamphlets had the most helpful information.) Darn it, now I've got that song in my head. Well, they were shiny, it was a glossy looking picture. ;-)

Multiple Sclerosis is a neurodegenerative autoimmune disease. Normally, the immune system helps fight viruses and things like bacteria. In an autoimmune disease, something causes the immune system to attack the body itself. With MS, where the body attacks itself is its own nervous system.

The nervous system is made up of nerve cells that send signals to each other. Each cell is covered with a protective coating called myelin. It acts like insulation on an electrical wire, lets these signals pass between nerve cells at high speeds. This is how nerve impulses from our body reach the brain and how the brain sends signals to muscles. Kind of like a relay system. With MS, for some reason, the immune system attacks the myelin sheaths and strips it off. This is called "demyelination." This leads to a breakdown in that signal function which leads to disability.

Multiple Sclerosis is unpredictable and incurable. It's mild in some people and severe in others. It affects no two people alike. You don't know when a relapse will occur, how long it will last, what it will consist of or the amount of damage that will take place during that time, in other words, the outcome of any given relapse.

But nowadays, we are lucky, we can give ourselves these injections and slow the process down. "Don’t worry, be happy…laa….ladadadadadada……….ladadadadadada……….ladadadada"

Try to get that song out of your head, ha!

Oh yeah, the injections and the nurse's warning...so if I don't post it would probably be I'm just feeling something wretched I'm supposed to be feeling so don't worry...be happy :-D