The Beginning

While January 2000 was to be a bright new beginning for all, I was not so lucky.  I had just turned 24 the November before and although I had just given birth in February, my husband and I were already considering trying for another.   

January 13th, 2000: 

My husband and I were leaving that week to finally take the honeymoon we never got to have and I was incredibly stressed that the money we needed to travel had not come in from pulling our savings.  On top of all that, while having an emotional conversation at Christmas with my father in law about  my daughter's colic, he states and I quote, "I guess they don't make mother's the way they used to."  Another moment  in the 2 years knowing them where I  felt less than good enough for their son.  Although I should have shaken it off , my nature at the time was to over analyze and replay the situation over and over in my head.  I remember thinking about it to the point of shaking I was so angry.  Needless to say, I was beyond stressed.  I needed this vacation. 

 I remember it like it was yesterday,

I began to pour the hot water to wash the supper dishes and proceeded to put away the left overs in the fridge.  As I returned to the sink and reached my hand in, the feeling was bizarre and foreign.  It felt as though my left arm was inside a rubber glove. I couldn't feel the water and my brain couldn't process what was going on.  I was instantly terrified.  "Why can't I feel it?"  I called out to my husband and told him what was going on and although he looked concerned, it wasn't like him to worry about things. My grandmother had MS and it was the first thing to enter my mind.  By the next morning my the numbness has spread to as small patch about my lip and over the course of my honeymoon I experienced numbness in my left leg as well.  

To make a long story short, after numerous visits to a number of different doctors,  one finally sent my to a neurologist who discovered 2 lesions on my brain.  Inconclusive but if the numbness transfers to the other side, it is more than likely MS. 

July , 2000:

My husband  and I had just moved to Fort McMurray Alberta from small town saskatchewan.  We lived in a fourth floor apartment with no balcony and our view out all of our windows was of a cemetary and looking down we would regularly see guys smoking crack behind a dumpster.  My daughter was 18 months old, we had no friends, my husband worked 16 hour days, 16 days straight and I was depressed.  Numbness spread to right arm and I mentally confirm I have MS.  

August 18, 2001: (yes a year later)

After another MRI and the addition of another lesion, they diagnose with me with MS.  I had already come to terms with it and done my crying at home alone so my neurologist was a little taken aback at my lack of emotion.  They put me on Copaxone....daily injections of an amino acid that seems distract my immune system so that it attacks the copaxone instead of my own cells.  For the first few years the needles were powder and water in two different vials.  I had to mix my own and the needles were sharp.  But there came a time where they decided to pre-mix the copaxone which meant that the needles were different.  Boy were they ever!  So different, they didn't puncture the skin.  While I had spent the last few years manually injecting myself with a quick 1-2-3!  I now had to depend on a gun to slam it into the skin and with a full CC to inject, you could be certain it wasn't pleasant when it was being injected by a gun.  

Eventually the anxiety of the needles got to be too much and they sent me for retraining which was pointless and in the end I was removed from my meds.  My doctor stated that my diet and exercise had probably done good that the meds had done anyways. Because over the 12 years, my MS had been relatively calm and in the blogs to come I will talk a little more about my symptoms and how I have dealt with my "MonSter".