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Although I do not let it control my life, I have an autoimmune disease that I will talk and share a lot about on here so I think sharing my story and more about this is a good starting point.
In February of 2014, I woke up on morning feeling really numb in my right arm. I figured I had slept on it wrong, or maybe pinched a nerve working out or something. I kind of jsut delt with it. Several weeks had gone by and it was still there, so I finally went to my doctor, just for her to tell me what I already thought and give me an antiinflamitory, and to go back in two weeks.
By this point, we are in March now, and I went back to the doctor with no real imorovments, it was actually getting worse. My left arm had started to go numb and I couldn’t write (I’m left handed and a teacher at the time), tie my shoes, put my hair up, really anything that invovled my hands. She decides to send me to a neurologist. About a week and half later, I get a letter in the mail telling me I have an appointment in the middle of April. A whole another month away.
In the middle of all of this, I’m still teaching. I was working in small group special education classroom with students that required my one on one attention for lessons. I was also needing to take data to keep track of their progress, which is really hard to do when I couldn’t feel my hand. It’s also the middle of MCAS (a Massachusetts based testing required in public schools) and for my students, it requires the teachers I worked with and I to put together binders of their work. A time in which I couldn’t really be out, or away from school, it was an all hands on deck kind of process. Also, during all of this, my left leg and foot began going numb and became very heavy, so I began having difficulty walking.
On April 1, 2014 (happy April fools), I fell at work. I completely slid right out of my chair and never even felt myself sliding. I finally said to my husband, that I needed to go to the hospital, I couldn’t wait to see that neurologist. We went in that afternoon and I ended up being admitted.
There were many many vials of blood taken, CT scans, multiple MRIs. So many different doctors, coming and going. At one point I felt like a patient on Gray’s Anatomy ( one of my favs btw ), there was a doctor who literally asked if he could have his students come in and discuss my case because he was so puzzled by it.
On April 4th, I was finally told, you have MS, multiple sclerosis. I started a high dose steroid treatment to help stop the flare up my body was having. I ended up going to a rehabiliation facility for about another week. Then did more therapy as an outpatient for several months. I’m lucky in that I was able to regain all my feeling and strength back.
Multiple Sclerosis (MS) is an autoimmune disease in which the body is attacking itself. It specifically attacks the myelin that protects your nerves. So your brain sends messages to your body via your central nervous system. My body is attacking those nerves and is eating away at the fatty protection layer, leaving being had lesions on my spine and my brain, making it sometimes hard for my body to receive all those messages and resulting in different symptoms.
Although I’m lucky and most of my symptoms are pretty minor and I can deal with the pain or the annoyance of them, there are some that are not so easy to deal with. More to come on that.