ok, first entry in a while..YOU GUYS WILL BE SEEING A LOT LESS OF ME IN THE FUTURE. HERE'S WHY... WOW... what a weekend... ok... try to follow... this is serious to me so if you only have some smart ass comment, please do me a favor and save it. I dont need it right now, and I am EXTREMLY scared right now. For about the past month, i've been sick NON STOP and we (my Dr. and I) couldn't figure out what was wrong with me.... I was told by m'boro doctors that i had had a toxic reaction to some plants at work... I was told i had symptoms of Lymes Disease (Like a tick is gonna be out in February) and a few other diagnosis' and this and that....This started two weeks ago on Saturday night. I swelled up so bad, my face swelled so bad it gave me black eyes when the swelling finally went down... my hands had streaks running up my arms and the dr. said that was due to the infection in my bloodstream... anyway... friday morning i woke up early and noticed that I was beginning to blow up again. I called my mom immediately to tell her that I was on my way home DIRECTLY, before the swelling got too bad for me to drive... Believe it or not, it is extremely painful. I immediately packed my shit and was off to west tn... by the time that i got there (3.5 hours) knees looked like softballs... I couldn't tie my shoes, because my feet were so swolen it hurt to tie the strings around them. At about 1pm, I went to my family dr in DYERSBURG (West TN) and the first thing he does is draws some blood... He told me to come back at 3pm, and he'd have my results... I asked him if he wanted to examine me or anything other than just draw blood. He said nah! that if the bloodwork didn't answer his questions, then he'd check me out... Anyways, i came back at 3pm with my mom... I was called to one of the examination rooms and asked by one of the nurses to jump up on the table, (the usual routine, bloodpressure, temperature, blah blah blah... Then Dr. Robinson came in the room with my folder and asked my mom to step out into the hall with him for one minute... This made me nervous...I knew something wasn't right, if he couldn't directly talk to me with out consulting my mother... I heard the low mumbles of their conversation for almost 5 min... finally, Dr. Robinson came into the exam room with me, but my mother didn't follow him... It was just me and him... He looked at me for a minute and set my folder down on the counter by the sink and just took a deep breath and sighed, as he did this he took off his glasses and by the look on his face, I knew it wasn't good, especially since my mom wasn't in there now. My heart sank... Anyway, to cut to the point, he explained to me that he ran my bloodwork just to back up his diagnosis, and that he knew what was wrong when I walked in the door. (Don't go jumpin ahead... i dont have AIDS or anything... i know what it sounds like so far) but anyway... he explained my blood count to me and all that and preceded to tell me that I tested positive for MS... Multiple Sclerosis... for those of you who dont know what that is, it isn't contageous. (go here. this is where the dr. sent me) (
http://www.msif.org/) anyway... it is a disease of the nervous system.
When I heard MS, my stomach turned inside out and I lost it... I was trying to keep myself together till i left the dr.s office, but I couldn't... when my mom heard me crying, she came back into the room with me and just held me... then i could see that she had been crying too... thats why she didn't come back in with Dr. Robinson... Anyway... there are meds for it, to ease the pain, but no meds to get rid of it... just to suppress it... I take 4 pills in the Am, 2 pills at lunch, and 4 pills and a shot before bed. The whole shot thing (giving myself a shot) really bothered me the first few times I had to do it, but I think I'm used to it now... Dr. Robinson made me give myself the shot in the exam room... he walked me through what to do. It isn't so bad.... and hey... michael j fox has ms and is living perfectly fine... The shots, make me shake... That is what bothers me most... I cant decent write my name anymore... I shake like an old person, and it is very obvious... I went to walmart this morning to get some sneaker cleaner and when I swiped my card to pay, i had a little trouble pushing in my pin number with their pen... I couldn't keep it still enough to hit the screen. the girl who checked me out gave me the most offensive look... She looked at me like I had no nose or like I had no limbs... like I was a sideshow at a circus or something. That depressed me greatly... I dont want everyone to stare at me or make comments about me behind my back because my hands and fingers shake... I cant help it... anyway....this is what is goin on in my life right now... I'm not gonna let myself get too down about it, because I'm already sick enough, but my emotions are flying in all different directions and i'm tryin to cope with this enormous blow... I need my friends the most right now... I love you guys.... anyway. i'll be going back to west tn once a month to a specialist in memphis... Good thing i have good insurance... <----thats me trying to find a little humor in the situation.
I hope to see ALL of you soon....
Love always...
mattw