I really never planned on using this "personal blog" for constantly yakking about my medical health and health issues. But I just wanted to add one more thing.

I came across this today: http://www.necksecret.com/Multiple_Sclerosis.html

Skip the first 3/4ths of the page (blah blah blah). Read the notes and watch the video at the bottom. 

It turns out that the neck can produce MS-like symptoms, and it could perhaps even be one of the culprits of MS causes (that might be saying too much, I don't know). 

But I can say this. The very first time I got one of those really weird dizzy spells that felt like nothing I've ever felt before, which was the beginning of a couple weeks worth of this same thing recurring over and over again every hour or two or with each deep inhalation of air, that first time it happened, I was sitting on my sofa, with my head tilted way over to the side while I was slouching, and I sighed and twisted my head and pulled myself upright. That's when it all happened. It wouldn't surprise me at all of this was neck-related. 

As I previously blogged about, I had been given an early diagnosis of multiple sclerosis (MS) based on a brain MRI that showed lesions in my brain. This diagnosis came about by my asking doctors questions about some strange neurological events I've been experiencing lately.

I saw the doctor this morning. The latest rounds of diagnostic tests--a VER test, an MRI of my neck and spine, and some blood work--all came back showing normalcy. No sign of MS. So far, only my initial brain MRI suggested MS.

My neurologist is still "leaning" towards MS, however, because of the brain scan. So it wasn't all good news; I now need to get an ABER test and a spinal tap. If those come back negative, too, the neurologist will close the book on all this. Or so my neurologist says.

I'd be happy with that, except for how the spinal tap was described to me. The spinal tap procedure already kind of scared me. But now it's what's after the procedure that upsets me. I was told today that when I get the procedure done, I need someone to drive me home while I lie down on my side in the car, and then I need to go straight to bed. And then I need to lie there in bed for 24 hours. Joy. After a day has gone by, I have to put a pillow under me and wait an hour or two, then put another pillow under me and wait another hour or two, and keep doing that, and when I finally get up and am able to walk around, well, great.

This becomes a potential logistics issue. I live alone. 

Since I was given an initial early-diagnosis of MS (and am still waiting for confirmed diagnosis results from my neurologist, now that I've had a VER test, blood work, and a spinal cord MRI that took an hour and a half), I've been paying more attention to my body and logging (into iPhone) the strange things that are happening to me. My symptoms so far are quite mild.

1. Most notably, for about two weeks starting on that day of my last neurologist meeting, I logged tingling in my left arm and left leg that would never go away. Sometimes it was so bad that my foot (actually both feet) would get a bit spasmic.
2. For a few mornings I kept waking up with a partially deaf left ear. There was one morning that it was almost completely deaf after I got out of bed. It only lasted an hour or so. It's not so bad anymore, although I have chronic ringing in mainly my left ear.
3. There were a couple mornings when my left index finger felt strangely cold, and crushed, like I had recently pounded it with a hammer. But it wasn't a throbbing pain, it was just a really vague sensation of coldness and a crushed feeling.
4. One morning after getting only a few (like, three) short hours of sleep and having to get up to get to work, I noticed that all of the above was really badly compounded, and I was getting a little bit of vertigo, and even as I laid there in bed trying to gain consciousness I started getting some twitching on my left cheek. The twitching was psychologically uncomfortable. I've had muscle spasms before; these weren't muscle spasms, they were very strong, but brief, muscle contractions at full, 100% clench-power. It was as fast as a spasm but more painful in that split second than a leg cramp. That was fine; what makes me so uncomfortable is knowing that it could get, and probably will get, a lot worse, with a lot more of these happening, for longer periods, and not just twitches but all-out seizures, if I don't get this MS thing under control.

My greatest fears about MS are:

1. Losing cognative abilities, including the ability to think, to speak, or to control my emotions.
2. Losing internal functions such as a broken-down digestive system or loss of bladder control.

Most other known MS symptoms don't scare me as much, not even the notions of being in a wheelchair or losing my vision.

Anyway, I've come to new conclusions at this point as to how MS happens and how I can keep fighting it.

The new theory that I'm pondering is Vitamin D deficiency. My neurologist suggested Vitamin B12 deficiency, but I suspect Vitamin D, which is created internally in the body when exposed to sunlight. I used to joke with friends and colleagues that I have the darkest "monitor tan"--the "tan" of radiation from a computer monitor screen that actually shows itself as the palest white imaginable because I really don't get any sun whatsoever. This would make sense, and it fits because the only known lifestyle pattern that I've heard of that relates to the risk of acquiring MS is "people who live in high altitudes" or "people who live in cold climates". The places these people live in are really just low-sunlight areas. Canada, for example, has some of the highest MS rates on the planet, and it's half-dark there compared to here. Yet, the only sunlight I ever see is the light exposed to me as I walk (waddle) from my home to my car to get to the office, and back again. If anything sets my lifestyle apart as high-risk for MS it's the incessant exposure to a computer screen and lack of exposure to sunlight.

Now that I [might] have MS, or at least have been given a pre-diagnosis of MS, the questions become, how do I combat it?

MS is incurable, but there are therapies, none of them are likable. They are taken as injections, and those injections come in different ways. Sometimes they are injected into muscle tissue, to make them last. Joy. I really don't want to deal with this, but it might be that I'll have to.

Meanwhile, I'm going to stock up on Vitamin D. I've already been taking Vitamin B12. And I've also boycotted the use of aspartame, which I still think might have played a role in worsening the whole situation.

Exercise is important, but not in the same ways that exercise is important for most other things. It's not as important as it would've been if, say for instance, I was struggling with high cholesterol. What exercise does do that's good for me is produce chemicals that are good for my brain and helps me cope, and perhaps stay stronger, longer. It's still important, but won't fix anything.

When and if internal functions begin to fail, such as not sensing the failure of internal organs, or being unable to digest food correctly, or being unable to control my bladder, that stuff I have absolutely no idea how to manage. I'm not there yet, maybe I never will be. Let's see where this train ride takes me.