It Got Worse Before It Got Better.

I've been missing again. It's because I was back in Portland at the hospital. I'll give you the short-ish version. I was on a medicine that was making me very very sick. My doctor admitted me to the local hospital to take me off the med. Then the neurologist told me I needed to go back up to OHSU hospital in Portland (5 hours away). You can only get a bed if a doctor refers you and a doctor up there agrees you need to be admitted. So when they say you need to go, you don't argue, you get in your car or the ambulance and you go right then. When my mom and I got up there, they did more MRIs and found another lesion, a really big one, down my neck and a good portion of my spine. So if you're keeping track, that's a lesion on my cerebellum, lesions on my optic nerves, a small random lesion in my brain, and a ginormous lesion down my spine. I like to rack them up.

I also had some other developments that weren't so fun. In addition to my previous issues of being really weak from not being able to eat without vomiting, having problems with my balance, being dizzy, etc. all of the sudden, I couldn't feel my right leg anymore. That's not quite accurate. The sensation in my leg changed. When the doctor took a safety pin and pricked my right leg, I couldn't feel it. My leg just felt warm and tingly, from my toes to my hip. That was one of the scariest moments of my life. I'm 26 happy and healthy one moment, I get the flu and a few weeks later my leg feels like a log. What the heck? So the doctors have decided that I have post viral encephalomyelitis. At least that's what I think he said. Really they aren't sure what's wrong with me and that's one of three things he said but he thinks it's the most likely so we're going with that. With auto immune issues, it's hard to give a definitive answer.

So what is post viral encephalomyelitis? I don't know. From what it sounds like, I had the flu, when the flu virus left my body something else in my body decided to go all crazy and attack itself thinking it was helping attack the virus, giving me these lesions. Gee thanks body, I appreciate it. So I've been home for about a week. I have in home physical therapy which is so nice. My physical therapist is super nice and awesome and I've been doing my exercises like crazy. The best part, the sensation in my leg has changed again. It still doesn't feel like it should but it feels a lot lighter to me, which makes it easier to walk. It used to feel like a stump I was dragging around. So that's good. They told me it could take 6 months to a year to recover, if ever. I may still have problems with my legs, my eyes, my thinking, for the rest of my life, but let's hope not.

The other issue I was having was that my skin felt like it was itching all of the time. I felt like I needed to scratch my skin clean off. I didn't care if I had flesh hanging off, and I was scratching, so hard that I was breaking blood vessels. I didn't have a rash or anything and lotion did not help. Finally I had a doctor say that it was probably a nerve problem and he prescribed me some medicine that was developed to help with seizures but it never did, but the people with seizures realized it was helping their nerves. So now I take it 3 times a day to calm the nerves in my body, otherwise I have this obnoxious itching issue.

So that's what's been going on in my world. I've just been working hard exercising my legs, trying to get muscles to return. Last week I could barely walk with my walker. I'd get 5 feet and have to stop. Today my gait is almost normal. I can't even tell you how good it feels to make progress so let's hope it continues.