Nobody wants MS

Howdy all.....

I am new to the forum but not new to MS. diagnosed in 1999 at the age of 40, I have been on Avonex (didn't work at all for me), Rebiff (stabilized me and was tolerable), and finally moved to Tysabri (2 mild attacks in over 5 years) and love it. I know one of the possible side effects is PML, and I test positive for the JC virus, but all medications have their demons.

There seem to be a lot of newly diagnosed folks on this forum, and I just wanted to say that nobody wants MS, but pretending you don't have it or hoping it gets better won't make it go away. I always tell newly diagnosed folks to attack this disease very aggressively. The sooner you get on one of the disease modifying medications the fewer disabilities you will have to deal with.

I had two doctors at the very beggining, and one said that I had MS and we needed to treat it...the other said I possibly had MS and said we should just wait and see what happened. I listened to the second doc because that was what I wanted to hear. Bad decision.

I have issues today that I might not have if I had listened to the first Doc.

If you are having odd symptoms find out what it is. Go to several doctors. If you get a dirty MRI and are having odd symptoms which include some that commonly accompany MS, then don't delay in beginning treatment. Yes MS is scary, it is expensive to treat (there is some financial help out there), but it is more costly to not treat it in terms of quality of life.

If your doctor is a 'lets wait and see' doctor I would find another Neurologist. And I would do it today. There are many treatments available today and they don't all work for everybody. Avonex might be the drug that collars your disease....but it did nothing for me.

I didn't intend to write a novel. Bottom line....find out if you have MS or not....if you do attack it like the enemy it is....immediately.