Avoiding the Unavoidable

I haven’t posted a blog entry in quite some time.  Here’s why: I’ve been avoiding…ignoring my diagnosis.  Other than the overwhelming feeling of fatigue that I push through every day, I feel fine.  That may sound silly to you, but singular fatigue versus the numbness, pain and fatigue combo I’ve experienced since October 1, 2009 is the upswing to whatever is going on with my body.

Since visiting a homeopathic doctor in my area, my left ankle and leg pain is almost gone. He gave me something called Pesticide Blocker to cleanse my body of the pesticides I was exposed to year after year while living on a farm and working in my parents’ farm supply store.  I did a lot of reading online, and everything I found on this endless resource of information we call the internet says the same thing about pesticides: once they’re in your system, they’re pretty darned hard to get out.

Since taking this supplement, which is really a high dose of Thiamine, the change in my physical feelings, other than the desire to stay in bed all day, have been incredible.  I’m working out again.  I’m more focused than ever, and when I get up in the morning to tackle the day, the pain that once nearly sent me crumpling to the floor is gone.  My ankle doesn’t “fail” any more.  I’ll take that.

Still, I’m exhausted.  Maybe it’s because of my schedule – full-time job, graduate school and teaching two courses a semester at a nearby university.  I’m not even drinking as much as I used to.  So what’s going on?  Why did I come home from a weekend trip with my boyfriend on Sunday, lay down for a nap at 3pm and not wake up until 9pm?  And why was I so eager to go back to sleep by 11pm and not so eager to get up at 7am today?

No matter how much I ignore the fact that I have MS, this unquenchable thirst for sleep reminds me every day that something is wrong. I’ve had almost every other part of my body checked for problems – mostly in an effort to debunk my neurologists.  I haven’t given myself an injection of Copaxone in over two months in hopes the real problem will surface.  No matter how rational an argument my dear partner makes to me, I still struggle with accepting my diagnosis.

Two years and three months after my diagnosis, I have no new lesions on my brain.  Yet, I’ve had an “attack”.  So where are the lesions?  Why aren’t they showing up on my new MRI?  Is my immune system just attacking the same spots on my brain over and over?  What are the chances of that?  And if they were “repeat offenders”, wouldn’t those old lesions show up as active?

I’ve spent my entire adult life as a journalist – digging to get to the truth of every situation, whether at work or in life.  But this time, I just can’t seem to get to the bottom of what’s going on – at least, not in my mind.  I just can’t bring myself to believe that I have MS.  And that’s foolish, because I know that, until I accept what three different neurologists have told me, I’m not going to beat this.

If you’re newly diagnosed, and you are reading this, know that the uncertainty of this disease does not go away.  At least, it has not for me.