What are you worrying about today? The kid’s school project, what to make for dinner, or maybe how you are going to get your four-year-old to finally use the toilet.
Many mothers are selfless, being bombarded with thoughts only of others; especially those in her care.
It is easy to take for granted our own health, and ability to keep going; thinking that we will always be there for our children. But that isn’t always the case.
One mom got the news of a lifetime, wreaking havoc on the comfort that comes from caring for a family and routine.
It all began when Amanda Thompson woke up with severe lower back pain. Not giving it too much thought, she went about her business.
Moms are busy women, a little back pain is par for the course sometimes!
But then it wouldn’t go away, and the symptoms became more abundant.
Trying the chiropractor first, Thompson went to an appointment to see if the pain would diminish with an adjustment, but that did not go as planned.
Thompson told Yahoo Lifestyle:
“I went to a chiropractor to try to get the back pain fixed and ended up with numbness in my right arm and hand. I thought the chiropractor had pinched a nerve or something.”
After some time of waiting for the back pain and right arm and hand numbness to subside, she decided to go see her primary care physician.
Thompson described to her physician the strange symptoms she was experiencing, in addition to the onset of fatigue that had been plaguing her recently, and the doctor suggested something she never thought she would hear
“My doctor said it might be neurological and mentioned multiple sclerosis,” Thompson exclaimed to Yahoo lifestyle.
One can only imagine how unbearable it is to hear that a debilitating disease is invading your body.
Thompson wasted no time in finding out what she was dealing with.
“I literally went to my car and Googled, ‘What is MS?’ because I had no idea what it was,” Thompson said.
The National Multiple Sclerosis Society explains what exactly the disease is:
“MS is a chronic and usually progressive autoimmune disease that damages the sheaths of the nerve cells in a person’s brain and spinal cord, according to the National Multiple Sclerosis Society.”
The disease causes people to struggle in various ways, such as fatigue, pain, difficulty walking, numbness and tingling, and spasticity.
Many of those with the disease get flares or relapses of symptoms. Web Md reports:
“With relapsing-remitting MS, flare-ups can bring new symptoms or make ones you already have worse. They come on suddenly over 24 hours and get better slowly over weeks or months.”
Thompson reacted like most of us would have- with a little panic and a lot of research.
After reading through the symptoms and reflecting on her own ailments in the past few months, she noticed that the signs had been there all along.
“It all started clicking and making sense,” she said.
Things moved quickly after the initial suspicion of multiple sclerosis, and the doctor immediately got an MRI and a spinal tap.
Thompson reported that “It was kind of crazy and scary.”
When the results came in from the testing, the worst was confirmed. Thompson had the incurable disease, multiple sclerosis.
She was put on a disease modifying drug and sent home, Yahoo Lifestyle reports, and then left her to do follow up research on her own.
With “minor relapses” for the first five years after being diagnosed, she thought she was dealing with the disease well.
That is until February of 2018, when she had a major relapse.
“All of the sudden, I started talking like I was drunk,” Thompson said.
She describes the horrifying experience:
“.. I was on the phone with friends and all of the sudden, I started talking like I was drunk. I couldn’t quite figure it out.”
Following the initial symptoms, she quickly worsened to being off-balance and not being able to hold things; even swallowing became nearly impossible.
The mom of two children adds:
“I was unable to talk, talk and feed myself for months due to my MS. It was pretty scary, especially for my kids to watch. It was a really quick decline — it all maybe took less than a week.”
A stellar medical team eventually uncovered that a series of infections are what caused the severe relapse.
“Your immune system ramps up and that’s when you get into trouble with an autoimmune disease,” she says.
Stuck in an intensive care unit for 10 days, then off to an in-patient rehabilitation facility for 5 weeks, was hard on the whole family.
Around the clock monitoring by Thompson’s husband was necessary for some time while she learned to do everything all over again.
But after physical therapy, occupational therapy, speech therapy, and a lot of determination Thompson is almost back to her old self.
Working and caring for her family again, she does not take her health for granted and tries to be vigilant in preventative measures.
World MS Day just recently passed, and it brought much needed awareness to the struggles many people endure often with multiple sclerosis.
Get involved on social media at #MyInvisibleMS to let others know of the 2.3 million people who suffer from a disease in need of a cure.
Please let us know in the comments section if you have MS, and what your biggest trial has been.