January 14th, 2003

My father and Nina leave this morning, still joking about the incident from the night before, and my mom is on her way to see me and to go to my appointment tomorrow. My mother is driving when Dr. Francis’s office calls and asks to reschedule for an appt. today at 12:45p.m.this afternoon instead. It is 10:00am now and I move the appt. to 12:45pm and call my mother to tell her. She asks if I want to wait for her. I tell her that I’ll be all right and will call her when I am done. I go to the appt. before she gets there only because I don’t know if I can keep from breaking down in front of her. Dr. Francis shows me the imaging films from the neck and spine MRI. There are lesions on both consistent with MS and she believes this to be the cause. She lets me digest this. Again my eyes fill with tears and flow down my face. I am so shocked I am not even crying, tearing rather. She explains that I am in the middle of an acute attack. She says she would like to start a steroid treatment of 4 days by IV at home and a 6-day oral steroid follow up. I schedule an appt. for tomorrow the 15^th to come in with my mother again and talk. I leave to go and I set up the IV treatment with Jennifer the admin before I leave. I am in shock again. I schedule the therapy to start on Wednesday, the 15th.