I was at the seaside with friends & I got a very painful spot on my eyebrow. (My friends were all laughing as I was making such a fuss about a little spot).
That spot turned into shingles over the right side of my face & head.
Those shingles led me to the GP as I felt SO ill & couldn’t recover my strength.
That trip to the GP led to a dx of ‘post viral fatigue’ & 6 weeks off work.
That 6 weeks led me back to the GP as I was still so tired and weak & could hardly get out of bed let alone work (& was eventually made redundant).
That trip back to the GP led to a referral to an ME specialist.
That appointment with the ME specialist got me dx with ME & referred for a ‘routine’ brain MRI.
That brain MRI showed some ‘worrying bright spots’.
Those worrying bright spots led to an appointment with a neuro.
That appointment with a neuro led to having a lumbar puncture.
That lumbar puncture led to a dx of MS in 2008.
That dx of MS led to a dx of PPMS in 2010 (plus a realisation that I’d been ignoring weird symptoms for years).
And it all started with that little spot on my eyebrow on the 1st of January 2006.
i had my first really bad ms relapse on the 1st january but it was 1992, i woke up completely numb down my left side, we had been out new years eve and i had got very drunk,so i thought i was badly hungover.
The phrase ‘read between the lines’ comes to mind.
Very well put Pat, there’s an autobiography waiting to be written. I hope the rest of your MS journey is very slow and very boring alongside a very active and very exciting life.
Not the nicest anniversary and you’ve made what was almost certainly a very difficult and stressful, not to mention drawn out time look very simple and straight forward.
10 years ago, I was coming to terms with losing my mum, we were renting a shoebox with an unheated single glazed downstairs bathroom and a steep narrow staircase upstairs. Coming down them was a work of art. I’d been diagnosed 12 years and was still working full time. Now. I’m retired, have a wonderful wife and daughter and live in a cosy ground floor flat which is all paid for. My wife is doing part time work and I have a piano pupil. The changes were all small things and life still has huge problems, but I won’t give up giving the beast two fingers.
