I cannot emphasize this subject enough.

I was dizzy and had a pain in my lower back in 2004 on a Friday afternoon. My first thought was "what's MS doing to me now?"

Fortunately, I didn't succumb to this thought. I went to the hospital (via ambulance). Turned out it was an ascending aortic dissection. Or, in layman's terms, my aorta had torn where it attaches to the heart.

Open heart surgery really sucks when you're a smoker and you got a smoker's cough during the recovery...

Tom