Good to see some familiar faces. Its been a rather rough year. My dd is sick-something neurological/psychiatric and scaring us half to death. Waiting for an appt at sick kids beginning of Nov witht he pediatric ms specialist.

I'm on no meds right now. Not much for me as i am in category limbo. Am i rrms or spms or rpms..the debate goes on. It makes little difference on my day to day life-but whoah, the labels make or break a drug deal.

Hi Dale, welcome back.

Funny you should be here at this moment. I had just posted on the thread about the autologous stem cell transplant and said sometihng to the effect that you had considered it, or had actually tried it.

Welcome home, my friend! I wish you had the options for meds in Canada that we tend to have here.

Hi Dayle, great to see you and sorry about your daughter having medical problems! How long has it been going on, all summer? I cannot imagine your worry and I hope for the best possible outcome to this.

Hi cherie, pardon my ignorance here what kind of options do you mean for meds?

Hi Dayle, nice to see you again. I didn't realize you are Canadian, and/or that you didn't have a category yet.

I was going to ask the same question of Cherie, endure . . . I think we have the same options here as in the US.

Cherie

I think Cherie is likely thinking about availablity of IVIG (which she and I have discussed). It is not available for Canadians with ms. Also tysabri has been held up with health canada and hospital ethics committees..i know a friend who was in the trial is just getting back on the program this week. It will be more limited here at least for now.

But we do have access to the MPB8298 trial..which is not available in the US yet.

Just saw this and thank you dayle for answering the question. It was exactly what I meant but I did not want to give too much personal information that dayle had not given me permission to share.

Thanks for the clarification Dayle and Cherie.

Tysabri is pretty new to the scene . . . so I'm not surprised that Canada is not ready to move forward with it yet. I've heard (on other boards) that it is expected to take less then the usual (2 yrs ?) to get it moving here though . . .

You wouldn't be a candidate for that treatment though, would you Dayle (without a confirmed MS category)? Last I heard, it's approved for active Relapsing MS, and only after other therapies have failed . . .

I didn't realize we didn't have access to IVIG. Could someone explain what that is, please?

Thanks, Cherie

Sorry. I've gotten much of my information about the Canadian Health system and what is available for MS from Dayle and Patricia2. Haven't spoken with Mark Freedman in a little over a year. He, at that time, said that Canadians had access to most of what US citizens did for MS care but Canada Health was watching some of the newer trials longer and more closely before adopting them. IVIg...not sure why.

And I think dayle has a firm MS diagnosis but with the degree of illness this year, they have not yet decided where she has settled in the spectrum. I will let her give details of the broad range of therapies that have been tried.