Vacations and MS...a not lovely combo

The decision to visit New Orleans in May had been decided by factors beyond our control, like when we could take the vacation time. So, it was a bit hot when we arrived.

New Orleans is about 10 hours from here by car and since this was before the days of $3 a gallon gas, we decided to drive. It meant we could stop along the way if we wanted and we would have our car available to drive out to the site of a swamp tour we wanted to go on.

Now, I had been to New Orleans, specifically the French Quarter, before and knew we would be walking a lot, but I had no idea how miserable that would be.

I drove the first portion of the drive, about 4 hours, to West Memphis where we stopped for breakfast. By then, my right foot was starting to seriously ache from being in the same position too long and I sort of limped into the restaurant. My husband decided to drive after breakfast and drove the rest of the way into the city.

We got to our bed and breakfast about 6 p.m., check in and then decided to farther into the French Quarter for dinner. We wandered down to Decatur Street and found a great restaurant and had way too rich a dinner. By the time we got to dinner, my back hurt some, but I rubbed it a bit and then it felt better when we sat down.

After dinner, we wandered aimlessly back toward our hotel, over shot it by a few blocks and ended up with a mile walk back. By then it was dark and people were heading to Bourbon Street. My back was killing me and I had to stop every so often to put my fist in my lower back to rub out the knot forming there.

My husband was furious. I was stumbling along, clutching the nearest building for support and had tears streaming down my face. To try to maintain my balance, after falling three or four times, I was walking very rigidly and looked for all the world like a really tense drunk.

By the time we got back to the hotel, my husband was ready to pack up and come home. "You new this was going tobe a lot of walking, how can you be so out of shape," he grumbled. Through the tears, I tried to explain to him that it wasn't that I was out of breath or tired or anything like that, I simply could n't feel my right foot and my back had completely seized up. He continued to bemoan how foolish I looked, how it took an hour to walk such a short distance and the loss of our walking vacation until I took my shirt off.

Where I had been rubbing my back, trying to figure out why it seized up like it did, there was a fist-sized bruise and a giant knot. He felt awful, apologized a million times, and rubbed the knot out of my back. Then, we had to reevaluate. Should we stay and go ahead with our vacation plan even though walking killed my back?

We decided to sleep on it. By morning, my back felt a little better and we had developed a plan. Short walks with lots of breaks to sit and rest my back. It worked and we had a wonderful trip, but what I didn't know was all that was the beginning of an MS attack.

We got home and recovered from the vacation for about a week before I noticed the new problem. We were sitting watching television when I discovered that if I looked at things off to my right, I was seeing double. At first, I blamed dirty contacts. I knew better, but I liked it as an explanation.

So, since I worked for an eye clinic, I asked the doctor at work that afternoon to examine my eyes and tell me what was wrong. His diagnosis: 4th nerve palsy. The nerve that tells your eye where to focus when you look to the right, in my right eye, had stopped functioning properly. It would focus anywhere else, but not to the extreme right.

This was an optometrist, not an MD, but he told me there could be a lot of different causes, from old muscle damage that I didn't even know about to diabetes to neurological disorders and sent me to see one of our ophthalmologists. To save time, I called the MD where he was working at one of our other offices and asked if there was testing I should do before I saw him. He ordered a visual field test and blood work to rule out diabetes.

I got the blood work done and did my visual field. I knew right away from it that something was wrong. It showed an overall dimming of my vision, like I couldn't see very faint lights. Two days later, I saw the MD and ran through a thorough medical eye exam. He confirmed my optometrist's diagnosis and started digging for a cause.

I think he knew then what it was, but he tried the less serious diagnosis first. The bloodwork had ruled out diabetes. So, he wanted me to have a CAT scan to see if there was muscle damage that was somehow impairing the nerve movement. By now, he had told me that by neurological causes they meant MS, Lupus or ALS. I think that may have been the first time soemone prayed for muscle damage.

Since I scheduled tests with our local hospital all the time, I was able to schedule my CAT scan for the next day. And, since I worked in a small office, I was able to see my results later when they faxed them to the doctor. Nope, no sign of muscle damage.

My MD was working in another office again, but I called him with the test results and asked if he needed to see me or if I needed to go ahead with the MRI we had discussed. He said to get the MRI of my brain. I said I would call the open MRI center to get it schedule and he told me no.

No? They aren't as accurate as closed MRIs, he said, and if I was that claustrophobic he could give me something for it, but I had to do the closed MRI. So I called the hospital and set up my test for Friday morning before work. The MD was in my office that day and said he would run over to the hospital at lunch to look at my test results.

I knew immediately after lunch that something was seriously wrong. This particular doctor always came in from lunch and sat at the desk next to mine and checked his email after lunch. This time, he didn't. He immediately started seeing patients and when he brought the first one up to check out after lunch, he was halfway back down the hall before he told me over his shoulder, "We need to talk later...."