Thank you Alice and sdmama.

One advantage I have is that I have seven siblings. But I did the math, and if my parents both had a recessive gene, the odds of having seven unaffected children aren't ridiculously low (about 13%).

My neurologist is so confident that the Imuran will make a big difference in as little as six months--which is this fall!--that if I don't improve, I think he will be open to doing some genetic testing.

I am not so confident in the Imuran, because I can't remember ever reading here about someone who went into remission on Imuran alone. But I'm certainly willing to try it, especially because I am worried about getting other autoimmune diseases later in life (like lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, or MS). I don't have any evidence that taking Imuran could prevent these diseases in someone who's prone to them, but it seems like a reasonable conjecture.

Abby