I think I’ve always had MS. I can remember certain times in my early childhood suffering from different symptoms that I suffer from now. I can’t help but wonder if you are born with MS and it is not something that develops later in life. I have asked my doctor’s that, but they tell me it is not possible.

I remember when I was really young around 8 or 9 years old, my family lived on a farm and there were bunk beds. I remember the hall light being left on because either my sister or my cousin was afraid of the dark or something like that. I was on the top bunk and I would turn over because the light would keep me up. Iwould get dizzy, the room started to spin. The feeling is almost like you are drunk and trying to sleep and the room starts to spin. Same idea. It would last for a little while, couple of days and then it went away. I remember this happening a lot when I had to sleep on the top bunk.

Other times I remember when I was 14 years old, I  belonged to the girl scout group and one year we all planned to ride our bikes to Mackinaw Island and back with the boy scouts group. The whole trip was going to take about 2 weeks and it was going to be in the beginning of July. I can remember doing the long bike rides and feeling so tired and not being able to continue. I could never keep up with anyone, always last and often felt like I was going to pass out. The girl scout leader had to pack my bike up on the truck and let me ride in the front seat with the air conditioning on I slept long periods of time. This happened several times through out the trip. I remember feeling hostility from some of my girl scout group comrades.  I couldn’t explain why I felt the way I was feeling.

Another time I remember very well, I was 22 years old I had joined an exercise group that had dancing and aerobics at the same time and it was upstairs in a hot room in Florida. The instructor made us run around the room about 50 times while having done aerobics for about 45 minutes straight. When we were done, a friend and I had to go downstairs to get out of the building and the hallway got really dark and big huge spots appeared around my eyes and I had to grab the railing to prevent myself from falling down the stairs. I was so dizzy I could not make the hallway stop spinning.  I was exhausted for days after that. My friend was so upset with me because I did not want to do this type of exercise anymore.

These are times in my life that I just did not feel good and people got mad at me because I felt those things. To this day I wonder if this was the beginning symptoms but because the disease was not talked about back then in the 70’s not very many people knew about it as much as today.