Shit guys I forgot to tell you something really important and to be fair there will be plenty of times I do this so get use to the mystery that is me. I have MS aka Multiple Sclerosis. At the time of my 5k I didn’t know that, I just thought everyone felt this shitty. Fast forward a few years and a few races later and my health takes a nose dive.
I wake up and was like wow my head really hurts and my vision is blurry, so I call my doc, get an appointment and tell her all my symptoms. She immediately schedules an emergency MRI. Its fair to say I am freaking. I get a call directly from my doctor while I am work, so you know it’s bad like the doc is legit calling me. She said I need you listen to me, what I am about to say sounds bad but its not as bad at it sounds. This is like someone saying you have a little cancer or you are a tiny bit pregnant…
You have something called “Pseudotumor cerebri”. Ok friends what is the first word you see there. I will wait…….. TUMOR!. Doc did you just say I have a tumor? No, your brain thinks you have a tumor. Do basically the headache and vision problems were the excess fluid in my skull, ok great seems not tumorie ( is that a word, it is now). I get called back to docs, get meds honestly, I don’t remember what they were but she says we have to do a spinal tap.
Let’s back up, I had seizures as a kid, by the time I was 5 I had 4 spinal taps, this was terrifying to me, I didn’t want to do this but also, I kinda didn’t want to die. I get an appointment like an hour away, I turned into a child and all I thought was all the creepy scary shit that I went though as a child. They inject this fucking needle the size of a babies arm and the doc was like that’s weird, the pressure is you fluid is almost normal. My regular doc had ordered every test known to man, because in her words if you are going to get spinal fluid removed, we might as well test you for everything.
Within a couple of weeks, I was back to running and got a call to make an appointment with my doc, she tells me she thinks I have MS and needs me to see a neurologist. Make the appointment, see the driest yet best neuro I have met ever. You have MS, and I felt my whole world crumble, but I am a runner what can I do. My doc says you need to keep running, you are going to have bad days, I need you to stay as mobile as possible. That doc stayed my doc for years before I moved out of state. She always said I was her healthiest MS patient she ever had. So, I kept running. Thank you, Dr Barbara Graves of Bloomsburg, for believing in me and not letting me feel sorry for myself and making sure I do right by me.
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