My 4th attack happened two years ago, Thanksgiving time. Thanksgiving is a very big holiday for me. I normally have about 10 to 14 people at my house for dinner. I really go all out with the food and everyone always manages to enjoy themselves. When my attack happened, I totally freaked out because my hearing was affected. I am deaf in my left ear, no one is exactly sure why. I had to go to Puerto Rico for business trip to train people to use a specific accounting program, and when the plane landed, my left ear started buzzing really bad. Everyone sounded like an echo. It was awful, I could not adjust to using the phone there because I was so uncomfortable. When I returned home, my ear nose and throat specialist would not pinpoint as to why I lost my hearing. He said it was either from my MS, having deaf parents or the pressure in the airplane. So when my right ear started buzzing really bad when I woke up one week before Thanksgiving, I totally freaked out. I made an appointment to see my neurologist – Dr. Idiot that morning.

My sister came with me because I was so tired and my whole body was in pain. It was difficult to move normally without feeling like I had been attacked with pins and needles everywhere. When I got to the doctor’s he made me do the nose and finger touching, walking in a straight line, flexing my feet and legs etc. I never get that but he seems to scribble some notes into his chart every time we do these tests. He says to me “yep, you are having an attack”. I am like really? wow! that’s news to me! NOT! Of course I am having a bad attack. I said, ok what do we do now. He said well we don’t prescribe predisone anymore, you will have to go on inravenous steriods called medi-soluable. It is 1000 mg of steriods pumped into your body once a day. A nurse will come out to the house and set up the line for you. Oh great! I think to myself, how will I explain this to people at work, because they do not know I have MS.

I call in sick for 2 days, my work does not have a controller, I have been running the accounting department for 1 year. The nurse comes out and puts the IV line in and shows me how to use the steriods. The first treatment makes my blood sugars shoot up to 290 to almost not normal 300. I had to call the doctor to find out what to do. He told me to go to the ER.

The ER takes me right away because my sugars are high, and starts an saline IV and brings the sugars back down to almost 165 which is much better. What a stressful time. I decide to tell my bosses at work, and they seemed to be understanding about my situation. I told them that I was having an MS attack and I am in a lot of pain and can hardly move. Also, I would work at home so that things would not get behind. I manage to keep things under control.

I cancelled Thanksgiving dinner because I really could not do anything, bend over let alone try to cook. I was so disapointed. I felt like I let everyone down. My attack lasted aboout 2 weeks, after the IV steriods was done, I slowly began to feel normal again. The treatments really left me agitated and in a bad mood all the time. I felt like I wanted to crawl out of my skin. It was the worst feeling I have ever gone through.