Introduction to MS book

The sun reflecting off the fields of snow outside provided all the light I needed as I read book after book while stranded inside a log cabin a few miles from the entrance to the Smoky Mountains National Park. I had no other way to pass the time.

We had traveled hours for the family funeral, but a freak storm had trapped us in this cabin. The grave high at the top of a hillside cemetery could not even be opened. After two days of reading by the reflected sun, my eyes began to act oddly. I blinked and blinked, trying to focus; however, when the funeral finally happened, I had to play the organ with one eye closed.

My plan to drive part of the way home so that my husband could rest had to be shelved. After trying to drive a while, I pulled off the road and proclaimed that I could not focus well enough to be safe.

I drove to work the next day with one eye shut. I taught that day looking at two of each student. By the end of the day I knew I needed to see a doctor. This was not going away.

“You have diplopia,” the ophthalmologist said, "and the cause could be many things—diabetes, Grave’s disease, Gilliam barre, aneurysm, myasthenia gravis, cataracts, or multiple sclerosis.” Of course, he quickly eliminated some, but for the others, he sent me off for a string of tests, ending with an MRI.

When I returned to the ophthalmologist for results, he left me sitting in a chair while he saw to another patient. Meanwhile, my folder with my tests results lay open on a table beside me.

Now, I am a naturally curious person with a good mind. I saw it this way. These were my test results. The doctor left the open folder in plain sight. Only a mindless robot with an overblown fear of doctors would not look.

So I looked, and I saw—“suspect multiple sclerosis.” I was not unfamiliar with the disease, but I was ignorant about it.

The ophthalmologist sent me to my first neurologist, who sent me off for a battery of tests commonly used in the 1990s to diagnose MS, including an evoked potentials test, another MRI, and a spinal tap.

I was lying forward on an inclined board while a nice doctor tapped my spinal fluid when he asked, “How did you get in this shape?”

I thought about my two weeks or more of going from one doctor to another and one test to another. You would have to know that I have always avoided doctors, going only when absolutely necessary,

“Do you mean how did I fall into the hands of doctors?” I laughed as I answered him, but had no idea how radically my life was about to change.