[Southern Bell]

I want to start by apologizing for this vent, but as all of you know this illness will change your life forever. I have been diagnosed with both MG and SPS and my main "marker" of MG is ocular muscle weakness. So I have been on a daily dose of prednisone since January 2010. Starting at 60 mg per day for around 6 months (I don't remember exactly the time frame) then we have been slowly reducing the dosage (thanks to a change in neurologists) to 10 mg every other day. That will now be my maintenance level.

Well I learned earlier this year after a bone scan that I now have osteoporisis and over the past several months my back has been hurting more and more. I knew that my back has taken a beating over many years starting with a bad fall down of flight of steps 24 years ago to about a dozen falls over the past 3 years due to the SPS. So I went to the orthopedic doctor last week to see what was going on and he told me that I now have a compression fracture in two vertebre in my lower back.

Nothing can be done about it but live with the pain and if the pain gets too bad they can inject a substance much like cement into those vertebre which my doctor does not like to do.

I'm so very tired of living with this illness and the new problems it is causing me. I just want to crawl in a hole and never come out. I'm so afraid of what will be the next problem - will I fall again, what physical things can I do without causing another bone fracture.

Thanks for letting me vent.

Becky
Southern Bell