Out of all the MS areas on this site, this one would have to be the hardest for me to to write.  Of course I had help on the others, *laughing to myself*, but...




I'd been having problems for years that just kept escalating until the last week of June in 2006.

I would constantly forget things, would wake up in the middle of sleep with my hands being numb, and of course the constant wanting and needing sleep...never feeling as if I had enough.  All those factors were a problem with lots of people where I worked because I worked in an auto factory and so, especially since I was a single mother of three children, I just shrugged it off.

Until that last week of June.  It felt like something was in my eye early in the week and no matter how much I blinked or looked for "it", I could never lodge it loose or find it.  The feeling would go away long enough for me to do that forgetting thing and then it would come back worse after a bit of time.  After a few days of this, it started to feel as if my eye was bulging...as if something inside of it wanted to come out.  Then there was Friday, the end of the work week, when I had gotten up that morning intending to go to the ER to get "it" washed out after work.  I worked on a line where I had to put hot plastic on hot rubber going down the line and when I tried to angle the machine right to do so, my left eye, the bulging eye, refused to work.  Just would not follow the part.  It caused my right eye to "freak" along with it, so I had to call my supervisor over to do it for me.

Needless to say, there was nothing in my eye and, since the doctor knew just enough to do a bit of checking after he found nothing in my eye, he sent me on to a CAT scan which found a biggish something or another on my brain which then got me sent to an MRI, which then got me sent for a weeks stay in the hospital.  At work, during that day, a headache (that I'd also had for years almost daily) turned into a near migraine because the MS had decided it would finally come out and say hi via my left eye.  I had a lumbar puncture and it just confirmed what the MRI said.  Hello Multiple Sclerosis.

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I am retired at the age of 39 (have been for almost 2 years now) from my job at the auto factory, and have filed for social security.

I had lost my home and had lived, with my two daughters, at a halfway/homeless shelter for 10 months, and am now currently living, with government assistance, in a rental.

Those are just the financial aspects of what this disease has cost me.  I am waiting for my appointment at an MS Clinic for help regarding the rest of it.  The mental portion and physical aspects of what MS has cost me have come to the point where my neurologist (though an amazing doctor in his own right) can no longer help me as the daily Copaxone shots and the Neurontin are just "not getting it".  I have had a lot of IV Steroids given me to help with the constant flairs and there comes a point where, though they have helped, there is just so much that can be done.

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And now...the Blessings

And blessings is with a capital B because I would never have realized truly how blessed me and my family really are without this disease. 

Does that sound funny?  As in strange?  Most likely.  But never the less, it is true.  Without this stuff in my head, I would have never found out the strength and loyalty that my friends and I had, the wonders that are visible in our daily lives without it.  I was too busy working, literally.  So much overtime at my regular job (12 hours of it) and at times, a second job as well taking another 4 or so hours out of the day.  Combined with the daily "job" of transporting my children to their extra curricular activities and homework, cooking, cleaning, etc.  There really were no extra hours or even minutes in the day for me to appreciate the beauty of my children and all the love that I had for them and they for me.

If MS had not hit me, I would still be running around mindless of all the beauty life had to offer except in those nano seconds when I got lucky.  Now? Now I have the ability to see it all every day!

I now understand that I can not do it "all" like some supermom and don't have to do it "all" by myself.

I take walks, I take pictures of whatever and whoever happens to catch the eye, and I talk with my friends and family on a weekly basis and am much closer to them and happier as a result!  There are so many things happening in the medical community, even as I write this and you read it, that I know it is just a matter of time for me to be able to go back to school to learn to do something else in my life to help me feel more productive with it...something that will allow me to be able to keep the closeness that I have now been able to get with my children and friends.

These blessings are what have helped me keep my humor and love of life and all it has to offer and for these blessings...I will be forever thankful!







My friend, Tim, and I getting ready for a Memorial Day Motor Run in 2008!  Just goes to show life is never over until you say it is!