Hey guys, we are just doing a chat about our new diagnosis. This is Christina - hello!
And my name's Cara and so we recently were both diagnosed with MS and we are
doing a blog and Instagram lives about our own experiences. So let's kick it off
with Christina. So when were you diagnosed with MS and how did you feel
about your diagnosis? Okay so I had optic neuritis in late September last
year and I didn't know what it was. I woke up one day and my vision was just
off, so I went to an opticians and they couldn't see anything wrong
with my actual eyes - so they knew it was to do with nerves and they sent me to
the hospital straight away and I had all these emergency scans and
whatnot. They said to me they thought I probably had a tumor or stroke and that was
causing the vision change - yeah that was scary! And then after the scans
and stuff they said we think that you've got MS and we'd like to do a scan of
your spine as well just to double-check. And it took from
September till January to get the results back and so in January it was
officially sort of confirmed once they got my spine and results back, and to be
honest, because after they got my brain scan back in October and they said
you haven't got a tumor we think it's MS, I was quite relieved and I didn't know what MS
was, I don't know anybody who has a MS and I think I was like,
well okay I haven't got cancer. Things aren't that bad, so I felt
relief. But it took me a while to come to terms with it because once I went
home I Googled everything and I really scared myself. I was only finding
the negative stories and I struggled to find people my sort of age
who I could relate to and reach out to. So yeah I'd say don't do that! Only use the MS Trust or the MS Society.
Only use information from your neurologist not
what you've googled and made up in your own head. So it took me a
while but I've realized that it's not a death sentence. I have a
lot of life to live. I'm gonna hold on to that hope
that the research, the new advancements that happen all the time
will just carry on developing and we've got the best shot at living a
full life. And everyone is so different, so you can't compare your experience to others.
That's how I handled it, which you know
everyone's different and I don't think I handled it very well but now I'm in a better
place. Out of interest, how old are you? Just so we know? So I'm now 26, so at
that time I was 25. Turned 26 in January. It was like a few days before my birthday that
they said yes you've got lesions in your spine and
it is MS. Some sort of sense of relief I'm sure. You know, although
it's close to your birthday, you were kind of like happy-ish I guess? Yeah I
kind of had come to terms of it in a way, but there was this slight bit
of hope that I held on to that maybe it was just a one-off and there's
no condition that I actually have, it's just
an isolated incident. There was this tiny bit of hope that was
then gone. But because I'd kind of come to terms with it, it
wasn't as big a hit as what I'd been going through since October.
What a way to start your 2020.
Sort of similar for me. In December, I woke up, I was just getting over a chest infection and I
woke up one day and I was like oh my foot is numb and I was kind of like is
this may be a symptom of what I have? My chest infection. I wasn't too sure and I
remember, I was in the car with my dad on the way for my driving test, and I
said Dad, my foot's numb, like do you think I should be worried? And he's like,
you know classic dad response, oh no don't worry I'm sure it's nothing you
probably slept funny or something like that.
Anyway, it just got sort of worse I guess. It sort of travelled all the way up
to my hip and the other side of my leg and
my foot and then I kept getting these weird like electric shocks from my head.
When I would tilt my head forward, it felt like someone was
electrocuting me, sort of going all the way from the top of my spine down to the
bottom of my feet. It was very painful and I initially thought it
might be like a spinal injury, because I do go to the gym and like I lift
heavy weights and I thought maybe it might be related to that so I got
referred to a spinal surgeon and we had an MRI and it was only half of my
body and he found nothing. I was clean as a whistle and I felt like, you
know, it was all being made up in my head and no one believed me and it really
really got to me and I feel like it still does get to me now thinking about
it. And then I kept pushing and pushing and pushing and then I got
numb hands and then I couldn't like hold a pen and I was getting really worried
because I was like, you know, it's getting worse it's not
getting better. It's actually getting worse and I remember being at
work saying I think it's a nerve damage, maybe I've got like a
trapped nerve or something like that. Anyway I went back to see the
spinal surgeon and then we did another MRI but we did a whole body MRI and he
was like, yeah you've got white lesions and they're kind of everywhere.
But he couldn't diagnose me because he's the spinal surgeon, he has no idea. He
works in orthopedics. So he referred me on to a neurologist and the neurologist
confirmed, we another MRI just in case. But
yeah my journey has been quite short so far because it started in
December time and now it's June and I got diagnosed in March and during the
coronavirus, it's just been a bit of a whirlwind to try and get any
form of treatment. But yeah I feel, you know, happy that I've been diagnosed and
somewhat relieved because it's not going on in my head. There's like an
actual diagnosis to it all. But yeah it's been interesting and I mean we're
both only at the start of our journeys.