Getting Diagnosed

For me, It started with subtle changes. Things I attributed to just getting older. Muscle stiffness, walking slower than my family on outings Having to use a bucket or step to get on my horses to ride. Being off balance on occasion. Well allot and just blowing it off as me. Taking longer to peel myself out of the car whilst everyone else was waiting for me to get out. Slurring my words and having trouble getting my point across and expecting everyone else to read my mind ( I attributed that to working 12 hour night shifts three times a week ). And then this year after a lovely labor day weekend at our local county fair with my husband, I woke up with an acute vision change in only one of my eyes, in which I initially blew off again as a sinus issue, eventually I was forced to the opthomologist and a thorough eye exam and follow-up which then led to the first of my MRI's, which showed lesions that looked like MS with clinical correlation and a Neurology Consult and now a second MRI of my c-spine, first one was of my brain, which also showed lesions. And the talk with my Neurologist brought me back to at least a year of "flare-ups", at least two others, one in January of 2007, in which I woke up with extreme and annoying numbness in both arms and hands and the classic MS symptom in which one bends your head forward and you get an electric shock type feeling that runs down your arms and finally a weird month of horizontal vertigo in which I felt like I was walking around in a hamster ball in December of 2006. All those episodes and correlating MRI's , "Callie, you have MS, and I'd like to treat it with Avonex."