A Little MS with a Little MSW

When my MS-like symptoms first burst onto the scene nearly four years ago, everyone in my family was perplexed. Multiple Sclerosis? What?! Not in *this* family. Surely this had to be a fluke. I needed to go back to bed and wake up again – see if I could sleep off this group of foreign, uninvited symptoms. The idea that my body was attacking its own myelin simply wasn’t possible; for in all the history of all the branches of our overweight, heavily processed, mentally unstable family tree, had anyone had their myelin attacked.

I thought myself a myelin-deprived trailblazer. Never a leader, always a follower, I found myself in unfamiliar territory, and my chronic autoimmune disorder a formidable charge. My body, also not accustomed to taking the lead in anything, didn’t like its newfound role as Attacker of the Myelin and retreated after only one three-month-long brutal attack. Hence, my subsequent diagnosis of Clinically Isolated Syndrome.

Isolated. The only one in my family to have ever experienced such an attack. Or so I thought…

Some backstory –

My dad was diagnosed with peripheral neuropathy a few years ago and has been experiencing agonizing nerve pain and balance issues with increasing intensity ever since. His father, my grandfather, had a diagnosis of Shy-Drager Syndrome (now called Multiple System Atrophy) before his death in the early ’90’s. My dad was recently told by a doctor that MSA is a form of MS (which is what I believed to be true when I started this post a couple days ago), and while incorrect, they ARE both neurodegenerative disorders with some overlapping conditions.

All of this to say that my dad is going to have a brain and spine MRI, as well as a lumbar puncture in the coming weeks and I am very curious to know the results. As stated earlier, his only diagnosis to date is peripheral neuropathy. But, given my grandfather’s condition and my diagnosis, I would not be at all surprised if he has something more going on than neuropathy.

This post was a little more exciting when I thought my grandfather also had a condition related to MS. I still wonder about my dad though. He is 80, and I think it would be a little unusual for him to receive a diagnosis of MS at his late stage of life, but his symptoms sound eerily familiar to me and my family clearly has a lot of neurological stuff going on!

I will keep you guys posted!