From the time I can remember I many difficulties with my health, yet at the same time I was relatively healthy. Thing started my freshman year of high school in gym class.  It was fall and we were playing soccer, one of my favorite games and every single time I went to kick the ball my knee would give out. I was told I had weak knees and had to wear braces for the rest of the year (which I typically didn’t do because they itched) and was forced to set out of gym. 

I didn’t expeience a single symptom again until my senior year, when I started having urinary problems. I would get UTI’s like clockwork every month and by the time I got to the doctor’s I had a kidney infection. I went to specialist after specialist and nobody had answer for me. So the monthly kidney infection became a regular life style for me, and I had to plan accordingly.

Then in the fall of 2005 and winter of 2006 I was working at Staples and started to develop more evident problems. My vision was blurring, I was losing my balance, getting easily confused, and if I didn’t write information down I didn’t remember it. In all honesty I didn’t but any thought into these symptoms because I figured if I went to the doctor all I was going to get was well there is nothing wrong, it’s all in your head sort of thing.

The Break Through

I was lying in bed on night in January 2006 watching Strong Medicine.  For those of you who are not familiar with the Lifetime series about woman doctors dealing with woman health issues in their clinic. As I watched the program unfold I felt like “Oh my God that is every single symptom I am dealing with.” At the end of the program the woman was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis, which sounded so scary. However the next morning I called my doctor and made an appointment for that day. I went in we discussed the problems I had been dealing with and he told me that it was probably nothing but he was going to run tests (a doctors favorite words!). 

I patiently waited what seemed like forever for the results of the blood tests and the MRI finally I got a phone call. I had a lower than normal vitamin D level, and my thyroid was not working properly however they had not received my MRI results back yet. A few months went by and I forgot all about them, I figured that if there was a problem they would have called. One evening at work I started to feel the all too familiar symptoms and I was like I need to get answers, so I called the doctor’s office the next morning. Turns out the test results had been misplaced and I did in fact have Multiple Sclerosis.

My Daily Life with MS

Now almost three years later my life is not at all the same. I do not have physical symptoms daily however I am reminded of the condition first thing in the morning every day good or bad with a shot. That’s right I have to give myself a shot everyday on top of the pills I have to take for my vitamin D levels, my thyroid, and to help with my concentration and memory.  

However all the medications are well worth it because they help to lower the physical symptoms I suffer which is safer for my son.  Some days it just seems so hard, and I don’t want to give myself another shot but I know I have to for Hunter!