Multiple Sclerosis Diagnosis

In 2001, I experienced a rather strange sensation which was odd at first and worrying very shortly afterwards. My arms were numb and I was unable to lift them or do anything of importance with them. In fact, breathing was rather laborious too. A visit to my GP resulted in a diagnosis for Repetitive Strain Injury which happened to be the buzz word of the year 2001. Having had no Medical background, and being male i.e.gullible, I took the diagnosis as the Gospel truth. After 2 weeks of this, which had its moments to be sure, the sensations and abilities of my arms returned back to normal. So obviously it was RSI because rest and recuperation had healed me.

One year later, almost to the day, I started losing sight in my right eye. Everything appeared blurred and turning towards white. This was unrelenting because the whiteness persisted even when I closed my eye. Sleep was virtually impossible, for three reasons in particular:
1) the ever increasing whiteness made it hard to slip into sleep
2) the eye was hurting in a peculiar manner, and
3) when I closed my eye interesting patterns were flashing across a white background, which given my natural intense curiosity kept me wide awake.

Off to the GP again. My GP is brilliant! I described the problem and he immediately booked me in to see someone in an eye clinic a few hours later. This person shunted me onto the department of Neurology at my local hospital. Soon afterwards, a few weeks later in fact, I was booked in for a lumbar puncture and an Magnetic Resonance Induction (MRI) Scan. After some more tests the diagnosis was delivered. I was not devastated or even mildly upset, perhaps because I finally had an explanation and therefore something to work with. Ignorance probably played a significant part in this. But I quickly educated myself and my life partner, and we decided to try and have offspring before I got to a stage where things may not work as biology had designed. A personal note to all males with MS ... you do not have to worry about this ... trust me! It does take longer to ejaculate, so beware .... you will not be done in 10 seconds ... in fact, you may want to set aside a fairly substantial (in male terms) amount of time ... about 30 minutes if you are lucky! But rest assured ... it does not go limp and you will not fire blanks. The strange thing is that my wife does not see MS as a bad thing at all. Anyhow, I digress ....

In 2003, about 3 months before the expected arrival of our first offspring, I was 2 weeks into what is now known as a relapse. The entire left side of my body was paralysed, medically known as Sinistrous Hemiplegia. The first time this happened was probably the most frightening because I didn't know whether this was permanent or not. My first thought was "Would I be able to hold my child?". After 5 weeks there was good and bad news though. The good news was that it was temporary, but the bad news was that the recovery was not complete. After this episode, and subsequent episodes, I noticed a weekening on the affected side of the body, and each subsequent relapse has taken a little more functionality away from me. I know this sounds horrible, but at least I got back functionality albeit in a diminished amount. It could be worse ... a whole lot worse in fact. Again I digress ....

After the first Hemiplegia, I was immediately started on treatment. Stay tuned ...