Your twenties is hard enough to begin with but knowing you’ve got multiple sclerosis, it makes it a whole lot harder. Hi I’m Racheal and this is my ‘blog’.
I lead a normal life, I’ve got some crazy friends, a boyfriend, a loving family and a social life, which sometimes I can’t even keep up with, and I have MS.
I was diagnosed six years ago but this year is probably the first time it has really impacted my life so I thought I’d give blogging a go to speak to people going through the same thing as me.
I was first diagnosed just before my 18th birthday when I lost the feeling in my legs and then my arms. I’m pretty lucky because those are probably the worse symptoms I’ve had. I have a MRI scan every 12 months and on my last one my consultant noticed there was some new lesions on my scan meaning my current medication (gilenya) wasn’t working. This is when we decided to change my treatment to alemtuzumab – to prevent anymore new lesions appearing on my brain.
First I had to come off my old treatment (gilenya) so it would be out of my system before my new treatment could start. This meant my previous relapses came back to ‘cripple’ me physically and emotionally. Once I was ready for my new treatment I went into hospital for five days as a day patient. I had plenty of visitors and read two books so you would think it was a walk in the park but it was not. It was hard. Having to let your boyfriend see you with a rash all over your body (just one of my side effects) is not exactly romantic but my illness is something that I have to live with and changing treatments to improve my quality of life is just a small part of that.
My treatment is now fully in my system and I feel healthier than ever. I can exercise again (something I will touch on at a later stage) I can go to work without feeling useless and I can enjoy spending time with friends and family without feeling poorly and tired.
I don’t want to go into too much detail since this is just my first post and there’s plenty more to come so I’ll leave it there and speak to you next time xoxo
