Isn’t it weird the things your intuition has you do? Looking back at my pictures I see one from September 11, 2017. I remember going into that neurologist appointment with total positivity.
I had grown to dislike my MS doctor. Just about every appointment with her I ended up in tears or feeling down on myself. I'm not going to harp on this long, but for example, after asking what I like to do for physical exercise. After telling the various things I enjoyed doing for physical activity, basketball being one thing I mentioned, she proceeded to test my coordination (which was routine)by having me jump on one leg and then switch to the next one. After seeing me not be great at it (not a surprise whatsoever given that I had freaking MS and balance was one of my main symptoms) voiced her opinion that she thought it would be pretty hard to play basketball with that coordination (Boom. roasted).
Back to what I was saying, I went into the appointment with a positive outlook. I was in a fantastic mood. Whatever the nuerolost critiqued me on in the previous doctor's appointment I made sure I practiced it till I got it perfect. The first, walking one foot in front of the other without looking. Boom. Putting my fingertip to my nose and then out to a target continuously. Boom. Jumping on one leg and switching. Boom. Well, that one wasn't actually perfect, but it had definetely improved.
She got ready to pull up my brain MRI scans to review them with me and I asked her if I could take a picture because I wanted to show my siblings what my MS lesions look like. My brother, Ryan, was coincidentally in town from California speaking at a tech conference in Kansas City so all my family was getting together that night. She thought it was an odd request and let me take a picture of my MRI. It would have been nice if she told me that the picture I took shows nothing of my MS because of the view but that’s just how she rolls so we kept it pushing through the appointment. Then we got to the fun stuff of my MS lesions from my MRI. Every appointment the neurologist will put up your updated MRI to see if there are any changes with your MS. She pointed out all the different MS lesions followed by the phrase “there’s one” then going on to the next one like an iSpy picture, and then she got to one that had grown. We then had the very hard conversation that MS lesions don’t have growth like this. They thought it could be a tumor and best case scenario it’s just a really bad MS lesion. The doctor patted me on the shoulder (which is a VERY big deal for her) and handed me a box of tissues then left the room. She knew how to top the basketball coordination roast.
That was the first and last picture I've taken of my brain scans.
