Hi Joe,

Sorry to hear you are not feeling better this week.

Every spinal lesion attack for me has started with some kind of infection. The first TM attack was a virus (with a BAD fever), the second was an untreated bladder -> kidney infection, and the third stir up was due to an untreated tooth infection. That particular infection lead me into a series of many infections, including bronchitis, bacterial, bladder . . . until finally I had the tooth pulled.

I imagine spinal lesions can act up for no particular reason too . . . that is just my experience.

If you have a copy of your employee booklet for your benefits, you should look up LTD benefits. Most any company that has STD coverage, is likely to have LTD as well (at least here in Canada).

I don't know much about SSI, but you might want to start a thread about that. I think I recall that there is 5 month period without benefits, and it can take several attempts and legal help to complete the process.

Well, some weeks we make good progress, and other weeks we make none. You are on week 8 now, so you should continue to make substantial improvement over the next 2- 4 weeks (that will be 10 - 12 weeks, all up). It really is amazing how much difference there can be in that short period.

Ultimately though Joe, there may be some permanent damage, including fatigue, bladder/bowels, numbness, burning, or whatever. We are not necessarily stuck with that forever though, as we continue to heal even more for up to two years.

I know you must be getting tired of this, but has there been some improvement overall, since the "worst" period?

Cherie