[Natalie8]

Dear group

I've never joined a message board or an online forum before. Nice to meet you all. I'm 40 years old. I got married for the first time 3 months before the diagnosis and my career is just taking off. Life seemed great. My diagnosis arrived completely out of the blue. I am still in shock yet slowly doing better. In July and Aug. 2007 I had mild blurred vision in one eye but still 20/20 vision. The first week of Sept. I got a headache. My family doctor said "let's do a MRI of your brain just to play it safe." Well, at 6 pm, exactly 1 hour after I got home from the MRI she called and said "I have some bad news. It doesn't look good. There are multiple lesions on your brain and you have MS." Needless to say, "I have some bad news" made it much worse than a simple matter of fact explanation of what was in the radiology report. Plus I was thinking I'd have more than 1 hour to wait on the report. The shock was so intense I actually fainted when I got off the phone. I've never fainted before!

Fast forward to December at the Mayo Clinic. I had other weird abnormal blood tests along the way and a lingering fever the whole time so they weren't sure if it truly was MS (even though I had the Dawsons Fingers on the MRI)--hence the trip to Mayo. The neurologist at the Mayo Clinic told me that yes I did have MS and not only did I have lesions but also some black holes and that my "brain looked punched out, just like swiss cheese." Now was that designed to make me feel better? He said, "we normally do wait and watch at the Mayo but these black holes show your brain can't heal so you need to go on a drug immediately." Oh yeah, and he was such an arrogant #*%*!!! Anyhow, my experience with alarmist doctors has made me deathly afraid of this disease. I started getting tremors in my hands, heart palpitations, and dizziness but since it resolved with tranquilizers I figure it was anxiety and not MS. Other than mild optic neuritis I haven't had any other symptoms but I can't get the swiss cheese comment out of my head. I worry that multiple lesions and black holes means I will have a bad case of MS. By the way, I started Copaxone 5 days ago (couldn't tolerate Rebiff). It has caused some nausea and headache but mostly anxiety and insomnia (as if I need more of that) and buzzy feelings (like drinking 20 cups of coffee). Has anyone on Copaxone experienced this and do the side effects eventually go away? I need some reassurance to ride it out for awhile because taking the shots is still a scary proposition.

Finally, I read so much about people who had longstanding problems with symptoms before being diagnosed, even for years, and people who once diagnosed look back and think, wow I've always had strange symptoms and now it makes sense. I can't relate to that. Before the optic neuritis I cannot for the life of me think of anything odd or abnormal...only that after having a bad case of mono in 2006, when I took a hot shower sometimes I felt abnormally fatigued. There is nothing really to look back on and say "oh yeah, it must have been MS all along." I think this adds to the shock.

Oh, and 3 weeks before my family doctor told me the "bad news" my mother got diagnosed with MS at 62. And even though we are not close at all, that freaked me out enough that I'm sure my diagnosis shortly after was even more traumatic.

Anyhow, thanks so much for listening to my story.

Natalie