My long and winding road

Hi I'm a 46yr old guy who first came down with MS when I was 19. The first time I noticed something I was out partying with friends, my left arm and leg and my tounge were the problem this time of course I didn't think anything of it so after about two weeks all was better then about six months later my entire right side including my speech were paralyzed so I went into a hospital and the docs there did a whole load of tests and finally after a few weeks had passed they decided that I had MS and I had my first dose of ACTH which is a steroid.

At first the MS would hit me every six months, in Spring and Fall. It was like I was on a timer. But eventually it started easing up a bit so that I was able to get myself into pretty good shape but then came the spring of '94; the MS hit my brainstem. The first symptom I had was vomiting every 20 min and my dad wouldn't let my mom take me to the hospital he was an old Navy man and he just wanted me to tough it out so eventually it just became too and after my parents argued about it I went to the hospital and when they saw me they admitted me and that same night I stopped breathing the thing that saved me was a nurse was passing and she noticed I wasn't breathing so they ended up putting me on a ventilator and my doc started me on a massive dose of ACTH so much that it caused me to hallucinate. I had started on Betaseron but that caused problems with my while cell count then I started Avonex and now I'm on Tysabri But eventually I made it back to where I am now doing some volunteering at a retirement center.

There is probably much more that I could say but that's enough for now.