Multiple Sclerosis and Weight Loss

MS - THE ONSET

THE ONSET
AUGUST – DECEMBER, 2004


In early November, 2004, I was 35 years old, but I felt much older.

I was experiencing shortness of breath, muscle pain and numbness, pains in my head and legs, and the most debilitating fatigue I had ever experienced. It was hard for me to work, even though I have a desk job, and any extracurricular activity was absolutely out of the question. Games with my daughter were too strenuous, so I stopped spending that time with her. Honestly, I usually hit the couch as soon as I got home from work and stayed there until bedtime, then get up and repeat the same cycle all over again.

I visited three different doctors in the three month span between August and October of that year, and finally received a diagnosis of Multiple Sclerosis from my neurologist in early November. She was very open and honest with me about the prognosis, and she gave me medications to help combat the fatigue and muscle spasms. After I began the medications, I felt really good for about a week or so, but after that I started feeling bad again.

There was the issue of how people responded after I told them I had MS. Usually, no matter how they treated me, I resented them. If they pitied me, I was all too quick to tell them that most people with MS live mostly normal and long lives. If they told me that MS wasn’t so bad, I would get angry at their lack of sympathy.

My family reacted to my diagnosis in different ways, from tears and worry to fears of how bills would be paid if I became disabled. Later, my father told me that he had known something bad was wrong with me for quite some time, because I had not been “myself” for over a year. He was 71 at the time and not in good health himself, and it caused me to worry that he was worried about me, so I began to make light of MS around friends and family. I would make jokes about what I would do when I had to use a wheelchair and referred to MS as “The Mult” – a term I invented to make the disease sound less like a disease and more like a ride at Disney or something.

To complicate things, my weight had ballooned to 265 pounds. The hope I had for my future would not have filled a thimble at that point. I began taking self-injections, along with the other prescription medications I mentioned earlier. I began having constant trouble breathing, and the doctor told me that sometimes MS affected the lungs, and that was probably what was happening to me; then she cautioned me to seek emergency help if the shortness of breath ever caused my skin to turn blue. I checked the internet and learned that when breathing was hampered by MS, it could be a sign of the most serious and dangerous form of MS. There were a lot of references to death in the pages I viewed. Perhaps I gave in or gave up at that point, but I had come to the conclusion that MS was quickly ravaging my body and I would either be incapacitated or dead within a few years.

**NOTE: Doctors say it is extremely rare for the disease of MS to cause death in and of itself. In fact, new therapies and drugs are helping in the fight against MS every day. Please do not read this and be discouraged if you have MS, because I am telling you what I was thinking at that point in my life – not what I was told by any physician.

It seemed as though everything I did required more effort than I had to give, even things as simple as helping my wife with the housework or picking up after myself. I knew I needed to lose weight and get in shape, but I kept telling myself that if I couldn’t even help with the laundry, there was no way I could get on a treadmill! Also, instead of trying to eat better, I ate more and more junk food and anything else I wanted. (I will give examples of my daily food intake later in the story. It will probably shock most of you.)

My job performance suffered greatly during this time, but I didn’t care. I had MS! Poor, poor me…Besides, my doctor had said there was a possibility I would eventually have to go on disability, or cut my work hours in half. So, what did it matter? It didn’t matter to me at all. Nothing mattered to me. The only thing I wanted out of life was to rest, and to be able to stop feeling bad. As you see, I was indeed on a downhill path, but I was the one who was leading the way, through my own insecurity and fear.

Christmas Eve, 2004, my family came to my home to open gifts and celebrate as usual. I was actually excited about it, but after only an hour or so, I got so weak and tired that I wasn’t even part of anything. To this day, I can’t remember much of what happened that night. In the week between Christmas and New Year’s Day, I weighed myself and was disappointed to learn my weight had increased to 284 pounds. But, then again, I had an excuse to overeat. I was sick, and I should be able to enjoy something in life!