Day +181//6 months

Another month in the books! Overall I’m feeling the same as previous months. Feeling stronger and taking it one step at a time getting closer and closer to taking my life back.

At 6 months I’m cleared to eat at restaurants and drink alcohol and stop my prophylactic medications. I celebrated by enjoying a date night at a local restaurant eating tacos and I had a delicious blueberry cider from a local brewery.

Last week I met my new neurologist and it was so much better than I could have expected. She specializes in MS patients specifically women of childbearing ages and it was the first time I went through the normal testing (hop on one foot for 10 hops, now the other, walk down the hall and back as fast as you can, walk like you’re on a balance beam, touch your nose and then touch the docs finger, etc.) and I was absolutely shocked when I finished and she said “well I can definitely tell you have MS”. I wanted to ask her how she could tell so I could repeat that part of the test, but I didn’t. This was the first time someone could see my invisible disease from the outside. It was a great first appointment and I’m so happy to have her on my team of doctors. She ordered MRIs for me to get that will be my new baseline images that we will compare future ones to. My last MRIs we’re done shortly before going to Mexico so there is a chance that the new ones I get will show some new lesions that happened between my last MRI and my treatment. What we dont want to see is any active lesions which my brain is typically littered with. I’m still waiting to get them scheduled but I’ll update next month with any results that I get from them. My neurologist said that if everything looks fine, she will see me in 6 months and she would call me if anything looked off with my MRI.

Now I’m all set with my general practitioner who has been on board in helping me in any way since before I went to Mexico, a hematologist who treats people having and recovering from stem cell transplants, and now a neurologist who is treating multiple patients who have been to Mexico for HSCT and is ready to help out in any way-monitoring MRIs and ordering and administering any Rituxan if it’s ever needed. I have my team and we are strong!

My hair is as curly as ever and as a 6 month birthday surprise, I noticed that my armpit hair is back. It was a nice little break I got from not shaving!