Looking back I think 2004 was one of the worst years of my life, I’d been living in the beautiful state of Colorado for a couple of years, I had a great job earning more than $75,000 p.a. and had a beautiful house and a Dodge Ram with a Hemi. It seemed great to me although I’d started to have problems with my health. Actually I’d started to have problems several years earlier but the doctors all told me there was nothing wrong or at least they couldn’t see anything in my blood tests.
One morning I’d gotten up at 5.30 as usual and started getting ready for work, I collapsed in the bathroom after experiencing the strangest symptoms, my vision became fuzzy and I felt like my head was shaking violently from left to right. My head was stationary but I felt terrible and then collapsed.
It couldn’t have been more than a couple of minutes but feeling so dizzy and nauseous while my head was pressed firmly against the carpet wasn’t a nice feeling, one of my wife’s cats, was meowing like crazy till my wife appeared asking why I was attempting to eat the carpet.
She helped me up and guided me back to bed, she was adamant I wasn’t going to work and said she’d call them in a couple of hours to let them know I wouldn’t be in.
Later that day I saw my doctor, actually he was a physicians assistant, like a doctor but better in my opinion as he wasn’t brainwashed by the pharmaceutical industry.
He recommended I go to the emergency room at the local hospital and let them do as many tests as possible, which is what I did. The advice he gave me was to not let them officially diagnose me with MS. I’d seen him several times before with symptoms, he’s initially thould ir was my thyroid and prescribed synthroid which had no positive effects on me. That’s when he thought it could be MS but said it would be a mistake to let them officially diagnose it.
The problem in the States is unlike here in England the NHS will look after anyone with a health problem, the only way of getting decent health care is by having insurance.
My insurance at that time was around $120 per month, if i was diagnosed with MS it would likely go up to $800 per month and MS meds would take that up over $1500 per month. So the was no way I could let that happen.
After three days in hospital, an MRI, Cat scan, EEG and Lumbar puncture, the neurologist came to my ward and said “there’s no way of breaking this to you gently, you’ve got MS”. He then said he wanted me to come back in two weeks so he could officially diagnose me and get me on to some medication. The advice from the physicians assistant came flooding back. I told the neurologist I wouldn’t come back and I wouldn’t take the medication. He then said that if I didn’t take the meds the I would be in a wheelchair in six months.
More tomorrow….