I Always Knew..... (Part I)

Diseases like multiple sclerosis (MS) were made for people like me.

Since I received my formal diagnosis in November of 2007 - 15+ months after the acute onset of profound right-sided upper and lower extremity weakness and debilitating fatigue that has not subsided since August of 2006 even after having gone into "remission," (full or partial recovery of "deficits acquired during the relapse") and 4 months after a bout of optic neuritis leaving me with residual near-blindness in my right eye, a constellation of symptoms that should have diagnosed me immediately but for "protocols" in the medical establishment - I have continued my search for answers. The question was never "Why me?" I already know the answer to that: Diseases like this were made for people like me. We don't give up. We find answers. We challenge the complacency and the COMPLICITY of an establishment that has willfully (and mayhap maliciously) chosen to relegate us to the annals of medical obscurity because it's not pandemic, it's not seminal, it's not a major-league hitter like diabetes or cancer, and worst of all.... it's not a money generator. It's a relatively rare condition that follows no predictable course and has no foregone outcome. At best, it's a curiosity, to be poked at with a bendy-straw from time to time because there's not enough money behind those doing the poking to buy a cattle prod.

I know I am not alone in my quest for answers:



You might ask, "What, exactly, IS the question to which I need an answer?" To be quite honest, I'm not really certain; but what started as a nebulous splotch in the middle of my psyche began spreading and finally coagulating, forming a scab to be picked at to make it start bleeding again.

I love to read. I read everything I can get my hands on (again, with the exception of romance novels.... good for nothing more than toilet paper or campfire starter). I love to think, reason, suggest and analyze and reject and counter-suggest, arguing with myself in a way.

I was begun on Copaxone in November of 2007, after I finally got my hard-fought diagnosis. It was so hard because I couldn't get anyone to listen. I was told I was stressed, it was all in my head, I needed a psychiatrist. I was told I was faking. I was told it was bad karma. My own persistence, my internal drive to not lie down and accept candy-coated bullshit at the price of $20 a whack (my office visit co-pay), my frank will to prove I was neither a nutcase nor a malingerer, and above all my maternal instinct, would not allow me to stop seeking the answers I needed and, in the process, finding out what the actual question is.

Deep Thought: I think the problem such as it was, was too broadly based. You never actually stated what the question was.

Now, I certainly don't intend to ponder 7-1/2 million years to get my answer (I don't think it's 42), and I most definitely will not be waiting another 8 million years to find out the actual question. Much like Ms. Elaine, I will be picking at that scab, lest it heal over and fall off, to be forgotten with nothing more than a tiny scar.

I am not a scar.