This Is MS Multiple Sclerosis Knowledge & Support Community

G, I finished last year but took the treatment for four and a half ears, although only one year full time. I never took flagyl for more than five days, though, being a wimp.

I stopped getting reactions to the treatment, apart from it making me damned depressed and tearful but I am still seeing MS improvements after stopping treatment, though, since the damage caused by the ripping off of the myelin involves more than just getting rid of the infective cause. This is from someone who has had MS damage since she was 24, though, now nearly 25 years. If I wasn't married to the doctor who was treating me, I would probably still be doing it now because I would be too frightened not to.

Sarah

I just added this to the original post, but put it here, too, so you can avoid slogging through the whole long thing just to get to this little bit:

22 April 2008 - I forgot one odd thing. In recent weeks, I've recovered an ability I'd lost in the year before I was diagnosed with MS. I can once again tell the time without looking at a clock. I used to be able to tell the time, within a few minutes, accurately, no matter the weather or location. It gradually faded between 2001 and 2005, til I would be hours off the mark. In the last few weeks, I tested myself regularly, just because it's so cool to have it back again. I've been dead-on, to within three minutes, each time. I really do like getting my old life back again!!

It has only just occured to me, but I used to be able to do that: I never needed an alarm clock, no matter what time I had to get up. I hadn't realised, but now I can do that again. Can't say the same for David, though.

Sarah

The part of our mind that would normally be occupied with the ability to know the time - is in fact occupied by the ability to know how to get anywhere at anytime without looking at a map or stopping to ask for directions.

This of course got me thinking.......

Has anyone explained why CNS CPn infection is twice as likely in women than in men? Ken, Driver of the Car Uncluttered with Maps

Sarah, it's amazing that you have the time-thing, too. Nancy in D.C. mentioned she has it, as well. Maybe once the cpn goes, the magical brain has a bit more space for the fun stuff in life.

Um, Ken, I think that's a uniquely male issue and we can't help you there. Especially the part of the male brain that refuses to allow its owner to stop and ask for directions!!!!! (I've always had good radar, though, in addition to the time thing. I can always find the place without a map and have been called 'the navigator' by more than one person.)

I'm guessing at your question, but I'd think fewer women are in a position to be outside getting their dose of vitamin D than men are, thus one of the discrepencies. (remember those women who are all covered up in burkas - their incidence is higher) It's also possible, though I wouldn't embrace this one just yet, that something genetically allows the cpn through female blood brain barriers more readily than male.

Hey, wait a minute, Ken, women might be twice as likely to get MS but what about all the other diseases in which CPn is implicated? DW treated himself very successfully for cardiovascular problems and now has the pulse and blood pressure that someone not yet 20 would be proud of. This treatment isn't a cure-all for everything, though: I have always been less messy than he is!

Sarah

Oh, please, let's not go there! The only time I've been meticulously neat and everything was perfectly in its place was when I was first diagnosed. They gave me steroids for the optic neuritis and it was like someone gave me the 'anal-retentive' pill.

I was up all hours of the day and night organizing closets and kitchen cabinets. I couldn't rest til my shoes pointed the right way and were color-coordinated on the shelves. I picked up lint from the floor and cleaned the litter-box several times a day. It wasn't bad enough that I was newly diagnosed with MS and couldn't see out of one eye, but that I had this new affliction of extraordinary neatness, too.

Whew! Glad that's over! I could never have survived the fourteen months of construction here if I were still on steroids. I can't imagine how the contractors would react to having the paintbrushes and tools all lined up by size and color each day.

Note: I only said I was less messy than DW, that doesn't mean I am neat and tidy.

I do clean my mongoose brushes, though. I got into that habit when I was using acrylics because the damned stuff dries solid if left. I also put my books back on the shelves, but only because the big art books hide the messy paperbacks behind.

I'm sure, Sarah, my contractors wouldn't know a mongoose brush if it jumped up and bit them. It's all I can do to make them stick their paintbrushes in water at day's end. Yours are a bit more precious, I expect.

Helloooo peeps! You've just given me two EUREKA! moments.

Eureka1. Thinking back, my time perception went completely berserk before I got the MS diagnosis. I'd be at my desk working away when my OH would arrive home from work, just as I was thinking I ought to go get some lunch.

Eureka2. Get OH on Steroids and point him at the vacuum cleaner.

Is now having visions of Sarah brushing Mongooses. Mongeese? Mongogeeses?.

Eureka 2 doesn't work: men just don't know what they are. Well, a slight untruth because mine did use one once in his study when I refused to go in the place.

As for the mongeese, I'd better pass on them because according to Maneka Ghandi, I shouldn't be painting with them at all. Naive maybe, but I just managed to convince myself that like the horse hair used in violin bows, it was cut or shaved off once a year and then regrew. Perhaps it is because I know that what I use doesn't come from either of the two endangered species, so is proably farmed.

In which case, how do people know that they can live for twenty years in a farm?

Sorry Mac, getting totally off topic here, but I just don't like synthetic brushes.

Sarah

Well, Sarah, now you can fire up that carrot and stick for me; I'll be starting my second thirty day flagyl pulse Sunday, 18 May.

I'm not going into it as enthusiastically as the first one, since I know the last week is just funky, but I can do this. I just realized, at 31 months, I can do darn near anything. (Kicking and screaming all the way, but I can do it.)

I'll get the carrot ready but Ill leave the stick to one side. We will be well into the carrot season by then: the little, tender and juicy ones that you can just pick out of the ground and eat.

Hey, its much warmer here than in Chicago at the moment and all of next week! Too hot for pond loving felines, though.

Sarah

I'm not jealous! I have lovely spring flowers on all the fruit trees my dad planted thirty years ago and I've just gotten the semiferal Momcat to finally let me pet her (she had two kittens yesterday - one died and she rejected the other, who's now in foster care), and, as I'm still on vacation, I can sleep late and go to bed later, if at all. I've been a sloth and I'm wallowing in it. (Okay, I have emptied out two of the five rooms I need to clear before the floors can be sanded next week... and I am painting the parlor this evening, while there's still light.)

Oh, and I'll be eating lots of carrots soon. Now that I'm nearing the end of full time abx, I think it's time to take on the new fun challenge of dieting. I must be a masochist.

How did I miss this? Too much stress maybe, although my friend is going to be fine. Stress is good for dieting as well. Leastwise I have never needed to do one and Oedipuss told me I was underweight!

I didn't mean those sorts of carrots, I meant the two dimensional sort................................

Sarah