In the beginning...

I left Hawaii and arrived in Houston on Thursday to see my Dad who, as I was flying, was undergoing cancer surgery, and on Saturday I leave on the final leg of my journey to Panama.  To some it would seem that this is the beginning of my journey, but this journey started many months ago.  It has been 10 years since I was diagnosed with MS and the pattern of the disease seemed fairly mild and non-disabling for the first decade - which is a fairly common trait in most relapsing/remitting cases.  I modified my lifestyle quite a bit after diagnoses, trying to eat healthier and trying not to get overheated or overstressed, but for the most part I figured that I could go on indefinitely and perhaps was in denial about what the ravages of the disease ultimately leads to. After the 10 year mark the relapsing side of the disease became more dominate and all of a sudden I was hit with the prospects of loosing my mobility. I experienced fear, depression and apathy in strange combinations, for after all, everyone says there is no cure.


It was a combination of an e-mail from a friend with a paper attached that talked about mycoplasma (more on that later) and my husbands practical comment that if he had the disease he would be researching everything he could about it to try to find a cure.  He told me we had access to a world of information right on the computer.  Being computer illiterate to the point where I didn't even know how to turn one on, I had put off doing that research for almost ten years. In January last year when my symptoms suddenly worsened I was motivated to tackle my aversion of the dreaded black box.  It was a new experience and, except for some frustrating moments in the learning curve, not all that unpleasant.  It also had the added benefit that I could look up info on the Dallas Cowboys, which I may have mentioned is a casual passion of mine.


My symptoms in the beginning were tingling down my arms and legs and all over my torso, much like a hand or arm will do when it has the circulation cut off from it. These came and went at their own whims. Early on depression hit and I took a regimen of Chinese acupuncture and potions for several months but did not feel any relief.  I made the decision early on to steer clear of drugs having learned that they do nothing to combat the cause of a disease, only to mask the symptoms and often, due to side effects, the cure was worse than the disease. A friend of mine told me about Oasis products one day and I signed up, Within a week of taking a combination of their natural supplements the depression was gone and the tingling was reduced considerably. My hands and feet still felt somewhat numb most of the time, but I learned to live with that.  The symptoms were fairly consistent and mild until last year around December/January when quite suddenly they ramped up a few notches.  The numbness in my right foot progressed up my leg and into my hip.  I started getting what's known as foot-drop where my right foot has no muscle control and kind of just flops to the ground when I walk. I have to be careful now or it lands on it's side and the result is a twisted ankle. My right leg and hip aches most of the time and the muscles are in a state of atrophy.  My physical therapist says some neurons to the muscles are still firing but not all of them.  My left arm is going numb and it's difficult to hold things in my left hand, especially if I'm not looking at it. I'm beginning to get headaches and starting to have vision problems.  I still walk albeit with a limp but I can see the writing on the wall. Depression set in again due to the hopless nature of my situation.


In January I made the leap to the computer age and within a couple of weeks I began to see that all was not hopeless and the more I researched the more hopeful I became. I have an admiration for the countless people who take the time to put information on the web.  Yes you do have to check and verify many things, but at the core you can learn so much.  I will weave bits and pieces of the things I've learned though this blog and provide references for those who wish to delve deeper. I do not desire nor do I have the energy to just put it all down in the next thirty paragraphs and I think it would be fairly boring to most people, so it'll come in bite size pieces as my journey progresses.


One thing I will say at this time is that I don't believe that stem cells for multiple sclerosis patients are a silver bullet. I think the old addage holds true that if you keep doing the same things over and over and expect different results, your living on a river in Egypt... or something like that. From what I have learned, diet plays an important part of recovery and it is my desire to recover and to do everything I can to make that happen.  I told my friends that I would eat dog food the rest of my life if that is what it took to get better. My diet is quite a bit better than dog food, but it has changed drastically. For now I will just recommend the "The MS Recovery Diet" by Sawyer & Bachrach to anyone afflicted with MS. The research and results are quite amazing.


In the blink of an eye I will be heading south toward a land of hope and with the prayers and good wishes of many for a possible recovery that I thought impossible when this journey began. My vision of the future is tempered by the unknown but brightened by what I have learned. "My people perish for lack of knowledge." Hsa4:6