By Kade Seyfried
You have MS. The three words I was dreading to hear. I had heard about Multiple Sclerosis before, how it takes over your body and you lose control of yourself. I didn’t want that to happen to me; I didn’t want that to happen anyone. But as the doctor said, I was the unlucky one.
Let me tell you what MS is. Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a disease in which your immune system attacks the protective sheath (myelin) that covers your nerves. Myelin damage disrupts communication between your brain and the rest of your body. Ultimately, the nerves themselves may deteriorate, a process that’s currently irreversible.
It was the beginning of my senior year of high school, everything was planned out for me: where to go to college, what classes I was going to take, who I would take to the homecoming dance. Everything seemed perfect, until I couldn’t see. Maybe I have makeup in my left eye, I thought. Maybe there’s a film on my left contact lens? I tried washing my face and flushing out my eye over and over again and nothing changed.
After dealing with my blindness for a couple of days, I contacted my ophthalmologist and scheduled an eye exam. The tests are normal Miss Seyfried, we can try again? I heard this statement three more times until I was recommended to a neurologist. Driving down Harlem Avenue to Dr. Mizen’s office was nerve racking and terrifying. There were so many possibilities as to what could be wrong with me: I could have a tumor in my brain, maybe I had cancer. Cancer is the only thing I thought about the entire ride there.
Nothing seems wrong with your eye, perhaps I’ll order an MRI for you. I was even more terrified at the mention of an MRI. Yup, I have cancer; it’ll show up on the scanner and I’m going to die, I just know it. We drove to Rush Hospital in Oak Park, my palms sweating and my heart racing. The technicians laid me down on the table and put a plastic casing over my face: that must be the scanner! I laid in that dark machine for forty minutes, listening to the loud sounds of the machine analyze my brain for any abnormalities. As I laid there I began to cry, thinking about the possibility of leaving this Earth, of leaving my parents and friends behind. Okay, Kade, you can get out now. Thank God I could leave this room, leave that infernal machine, and go home to my bed. I would rather cry there than in a cold box.
The phone rang a couple days later; it was my neurologist. Well the good news is you don’t have a tumor. However, you have white lesions in your brain indicating Multiple Sclerosis. My heart sank. I wasn’t going to die, but I would lose function of my body, not that great of a trade. I hung up the phone and fell to the floor in tears, even my own mother’s comforting words could not console me.
My doctor referred me to my current doctor, Dr. Ko at the downtown Rush location. We went over the causes of how I was specially chosen to get this disease since it was not a common disease in my family. Bad luck, is what he said. Bad luck, is this some kind of joke? I sat there in silence, listening to my parents and the doctor discuss treatment plans I could take. Tysabri. The miracle drug. It is a monthly infusion by IV that freezes the MS in it’s tracks and prevents more lesions from sprouting up in your brain. I began the treatment in December 2013 and after one treatment, I gained 99% of my vision back.
Without tysabri my life would be very different than what it is now. With this drug I am my old self again, like nothing has changed. I am still the same old me as I was before I got diagnosed with this “annoying” disease. I can still play sports, I can eat what I want, I can drive, I can do all of those things because of tysabri.
I have MS, but MS doesn’t have me.
