This is how I feel about the treatment that I started since being diagnosed with MS. I was officially diagnosed in February 2009 and was urged to start a treatment regime immediately. I had a couple different options laid out for me and I went with an injectable medication, Copaxone. This medicine had fewer side effects, but was the one medicine that you need to give yourself a shot every single day for the rest of your life. At the time I thought. . . If this is going to keep me healthy, alive and out of a wheelchair I will gladly do it. It has only been 3 years and I am already tired to doing it.
Some days I know I have MS all day long by how I feel or different things that happen to me throughout the day. Other days I completely forget that I have it until 7:15 PM when it comes time for me to give myself this dreaded injection. It is a constant reminder that I have this chronic disease and I will have it forever. I am a baby. I don’t like pain and these injections hurt!
I start getting anxious around 6:30 PM when the house starts settling down and we begin our nightly routine. We clean the toys up or clean up whatever craft we are playing with. I send Ayden into his room to get his jammies on and then either Reuben or I get Makayla’s jammies on. I start feeling a tingle wherever that evening’s injection site is scheduled to be. We go into the bathroom to brush our teeth and a shiver runs down my spine as I look at the container that holds the syringes as well as alcohol swabs and the sharps cutter I use to dispose of the needle when I am done. When we are done brushing our teeth we move into Makayla’s room to read a book and say our prayers. Up until recently we used to end one of our prayers with “A special prayer for . . . . and Mommy’s health”. I decided to cut this out and just pray for those that are having current struggles. I don’t want another reminder of my illness. We kiss our babies goodnight and I get a sick feeling in my stomach. I go straight to the bathroom because I am sick of building it up for the last 45 minutes. I give myself the injection and there it is, like someone screaming at the top of their lungs to me, “YOU HAVE MULTIPLE SCLEROSIS!!!” For the next hour the injection site is warm, itches, burns, aches and I know tomorrow I will have what feels like a ball in that spot and it will be tender to touch for the next day. Which is another reminder of the disease and that I get to do it all over again tonight.
I was able to go off Copaxone when we decided to have our second child. I went off it in October 2009 and we got pregnant right away. I was symptom and pain free for 10 glorious months while I was pregnant with Makayla. It was a vacation away from thinking about MS and what it was doing to my body. I didn’t have my nightly 7:15 PM reminder ever single night. It was so liberating to not have that on my mind every night. I need to stay healthy for my husband and my two wonderful kids. They need me and I need them even more. I would do anything for them so I went right back onto Copaxone as soon as my baby girl was welcomed into the world.
I continue to do this treatment because I have been told that it will suppress some of the flare ups that are associated with Multiple Sclerosis. There is no treatment that will completely take away all the symptoms and there is no cure for this disease. I am going in to see my neurologist on Thursday, May 10th and I have a list of questions for him. It has been 3 years since I had an MRI so I assume that he is going to want me to go and have another one done. I am interested in seeing if the Copaxone is doing what it is supposed to be doing.
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