Sunday, June 29, 2008

How it began...

"You have MS....do you have any questions?"


The words kinda echoed in my head. Questions? How could I think of a question? All I could do was sit there open mouthed. Less than 2 weeks had passed since I started feeling numb and tingly in my feet. A few days later, it had spread upward to my waist and stopped there. I figured it was a pinched nerve or something since alot of my time at work found me at a desk. Nothing a chiropractor couldn't fix, right? I even remember checking out WEBMD, and seeing MS mentioned and thinking, 'right, MS. It ain't that'.

SO....after my chiropractor sent me to my regular doctor because she was stumped, and my regular doctor sent me to a neurologist because he was stumped, the neurologist sent me in for an MRI. Very trippy experience if you've never had one. 2 1/2 hours of confinement in a giant toothpaste tube where the only time you feel an itch is when they tell you not to move. Kinda sucked, plus whatever I had was still a mystery, and the incredible pace at whick I was moving through the system had me a bit out of body.

Within a few hours of the MRI being complete, my neurologist (still weird to say the phrase 'my neurologist') had the results and called my wife and I in.....cue opening line...."you have MS....do you have any questions?" Luckily my wife was there, cuz I wasn't about to be talking. There was one question trying to coagulate, but I was doing my best not to focus on it.



I remember walking out of his office and into the waiting room where my two kids were (my step son was with his dad). I wasn't sure what to say or even if it was real. It didn't quite seem real, or even possible. MS? What the....? That's some serious left field shit. How could I go from fine to tingly feet to MS?

SO...after breaking it to the kids and some tears shed, we all headed home to start scouring the internet for answers to questions we had and for those we hadn't even thought up yet. It was a pretty trippy road that was laid out before us, but it was one that we now needed to head down. My goal with this blog is to not only let those who know me how I'm doing with all this but hopefully to be a place to share what the experience is like for others who are diagnosed with MS and maybe create a dialogue.


Please post any comments you have and I'll do my best to respond.

Cheers!

No comments: