I am Sarah Longlands Wheldon and Cheryl, I can say that my diagnosis was definitely secondary progressive multiple sclerosis. After having been very mild since I was 24, it suddenly turned very aggressive and the Addenbroke's based neurologist warned my husband to "make arrangements" for me. He is a consultant level microbiologist who had trained as a neuropathologist under the renowned David Openheimer at Oxford. He had previously, in his early clinical years, seen people with end-stage MS, abandoned by their families, unable to move, twisted with spasticity, blind, unable to eat except with a tube into the stomach, permanently cathetered and worse. He didn't want to see me having the same fate.

Something about the way I was reacting, though, reminded him of other people he had seen with serious infections. He therefore spent the first few days after my diagnosis searching the internet for possible answers. What he found was the Vanderbilt University research into chlamydia pneumoniae as the infective cause of MS. Having treated other such infections, he knew exactly what I needed to start with,so brought me home a pack of doxycycline.

It is now nearly five years since that diagnosis: the page which Mark was quoting from is a bit out of date. I finished treatment nearly a year ago and I have done nothing but improve since starting. There is no new disease activity on my MRIs and not only am I now painting again after having had a nearly paralysed right arm, but my mind is clearer than t has been for years. I can't say that CPn is always the infective cause of MS but it certainly was with mine and I am truly thankful for my husband of only a few years to endeavour to find this out.



Sarah