When I was diagnosed with relapsing remitting multiple sclerosis (rrms) in 1995, I was a 17 year old who needed a walker to get around. Lots of steroids, youth and God’s merciful kindness saw my disease remit to a point where it became more annoyance than disability for the next 10 years.
I started out on the every other day injections of Betaseron, until I developed antibodies to it after two years. I then began weekly injections of Avonex. I had two exacerbations while on Avonex and found the side effects of flu like symptoms to be severe. I was then taken off Avonex and began daily Copaxone injections. While the injections site reaction of painful raised bumps all over my arms, legs, belly and rump was quite uncomfortable, I was exacerbation free for the two years I was on Copaxone.
Then I had two back to back pregnancies. I, obviously, stopped taking Copaxone during pregnancy. I was fine in the first with my daughter, but experienced a flare-up while pregnant with my son and again six months after he was born. I began the Copaxone injections and experienced no distinct exacerbation, but saw some amount of gradual symptom ramp up.
This was my status at 27 in 2004 when my husband lost his job, I lost my health insurance and I went “off the grid” with treatment.
