Here I go again!

I just got diagnosed with MS in November 2015. Starting in early October, I had a strange sensation of not being able to sense cold with my left hand. I went to the doctor and we discovered that the loss of cold sensation included my left arm, the left side of my chest up the left side of my neck to my ear. Puzzled, he sent me to have an MRI, which confirmed that I had lesions of demyelination in my brain and spinal cord. A week later, I saw a neurologist who confirmed that these symptoms were consistent with MS.

When I was 21 years old in January 1988, I was diagnosed with MS after an MRI showed demyelination in my brain and spinal cord. I had numbness that started at the ball of my left foot which eventually spread up my leg and spread to my right foot. I had difficulty walking and had to start using a cane. I had bouts of double vision and blurred eyesight. Additionally, I experienced fairly extreme incontinence.

My symptoms seemed to peak by April and by June, I seemed to have recovered almost fully. My neurologist at the time said that my recovery was a normal occurrence for what I came to understand was recurring-remitting MS.

Fast forward to November 2015, almost 29 years from my first diagnosis of MS. For those 29 years, I had believed that I had dodged the MS bullet. Unfortunately, this was not the case. Hence my title, "Here I Go Again!"

My symptoms in November included the strange lack of cold sensation, slight dizziness and sudden onset of fatigue. The dizziness is mostly gone now and I am now able to sense cold once again in my left arm, but I now feel a strange feeling of constant heat in my left arm all the way up to my left ear. I've described this feeling as something like a heat lamp constantly on just above me to the left. I also still experience the sudden onset of fatigue, but I'm slowly learning to pace myself to help prevent it.

I take Avonex with the auto-injection pen; I've been injecting myself since November. However, I find myself hesitating and agonizing over pressing that button on the end of the pen. It's been mostly painless, but I seem to psych myself out and think "What if I hit a nerve this time?"

I'm trying to keep myself moving by seeing a personal trainer at a local gym, but they always seem to tire me out to the point of exhaustion and soreness. I understand the need for exercise, especially with my MS coupled with diabetes, but I'm still trying to find that elusive balance.