I had a really miserable night last night. In my previous blog post, I mentioned that I was given an initial diagnosis yesterday morning that I have Multiple Sclerosis, and I was shown the MRI scans that revealed five lesions in my brain. It wasn’t until late afternoon yesterday after I came home from work that I learned MS is a serious debilitating disease, and browsing YouTube for MS sufferers and information, .. well, let’s just say, I felt like I’d just involuntarily signed up to take part in a freak show.

I cried myself to sleep. And then I woke up in an hour, shivering cold in a pool of sweat, and kept counting sheep between tears. I think I got like two hours of sleep overall.

It’s scary for me. I live alone. I have family (parents and siblings) whom I can relate with over the telephone, but they’re living their lives and that’s the way it should be. My plan was to pay down my debts, re-stabilize my personal life, and (finally) get married like a normal human being. Who’d want to marry someone who needs constant assistance (as most MS sufferers do)?

I noticed this evening while browsing more on the ‘net that MS is a known symptom of aspartame. I had explained—twice—to my neurologist that I had suspected that my strange symptoms were caused by my heavy drinking of diet soda (Diet Dr. Pepper). My neurologist took note but didn’t say anything. I think neurologists’ hands are tied on the matter because the FDA has all presumed authority over everything and few are willing to do personal research or review the conclusive evidence of others if they are contrary to the norm. It’s the typical scenario with everyone—never question the established formal authority even if they are clearly wrong and effectively responsible for the death of hundreds of thousands of people.

Anyway, when I spoke to my mother today, she mentioned that I have a cousin—that is, the wife of a cousin, not a blood-relative—who had a very similar story as mine. She, too, like me, experienced strange symptoms, cut off the aspartame after suspecting it was cause for the problems, and watched the symptoms all but vanish, just like I did, just before she was diagnosed with MS. Yes, she was diagnosed with MS; she has had MS for ten years and, for all we know, there are no serious symptoms that she is struggling with.

So this makes me wonder if this could be an aspartame issue, where MS is a symptom, and only a symptom, and not a cause, and that the damage would be exacerbated by further intake of aspartame products, but my autoimmune system is not significantly participating in the process of the destruction of myelin in my central nervous system.

Nice to hope anyway. No more Wrigley’s Doublemint Gum for me—what a waste of half a box I’d brought to the office. :(

Interesting video from a fellow Arizona resident who was diagnosed with MS but is looking at aspartame as a culprit: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_WKuPp6VOM0 [Part 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8]