I was diagnosed with MS in September 2000, when Texas had nearly a week of 100+ temperatures. I had no idea that it was partly the heat that was so debilitating, but it finally landed me in the hospital, where I spent an extra day after the IV prednisone because the temperature was still 112 degrees outside.
My neurologist gave me the choice of which ABC drug to go on, and was pleased when I chose Copaxone as the least destructive to my immune system. I religiously took a Copaxone shot every day for nearly 9 years. I swear that I probably did not miss 10 shots in that entire nine years.
Being older at diagnosis (52), I was lucky to not progress rapidly during that time. But the accumulated disabilities did start to add up. My left leg would occasionally give out totally and even when it was good, there was marked weakness. The fatigue was tangible as only an MS patient would understand, and the heat would put me in bed for days at a time.
Worst of all was the mental fog. In my younger days, I had a photographic memory. Now, I have entire years that are missing from my memory bank, when the short term memories did not get stored into the long term vault.
Then in the spring of 2009, the unthinkable happened -- along with my job, I lost my employer provided health insurance. There was no way that I could afford the $1,900 per month to continue the Copaxone. Even the $600 per month insurance payments would put us in the poor house.
I had no alternative than to do the research on my own and see if there were something else out there that would make a difference in my life.
I am so GREATFUL that I found LDN, the new protocol for using Low Dose Naltrexone to help repair the immune system and put my symptoms in remission.
I cannot adequately express the difference that LDN has made in my life. Now at 61, after being on LDN for only a couple of months, I have just returned from a trip to the Colorado Rockies where we took two of our horses and rode for 1-2 hours a day, for over a week. I climbed mountains and breathed the thin, clean air with a renewed joy of life that I feared would never be a part of me again.
My husband is pleased to have his wife of 42 years back by his side and my Mother cried when she saw me on my feet with a grin on my face and a twinkle in my eye, not bent over struggling with each step that I took.
I am still somewhat atrophied from years of not being able to use my body the way that I wanted, but the muscles are coming back almost as quickly as the memory. The mental fog is rapidly lifting, and I can now remember a phone number after dialing it once.
It has not made a big difference in the heat problems, but I will learn to live with that. What it has helped with is no more fatigue, I sleep like a baby through the night, my cognitive function is vastly improved, my left leg and right arm are no longer nearly useless, but as normal as they were as a youth.
I guess the thrill is just how "normal" I feel. I will never go without my LDN.
I hope is that the MS Society will spend some of their massive research dollars on this cheap generic drug that has no side effects, that is showing so much promise to thousands of MS sufferers. I realize that the ABCR drugs help support the MSS, but the Society is there to serve us, the MS patients even if it means that the thousands that we all spend on expensive and scary drugs is cut way down by the use of this generic therapy that is cheap, safe and easy to administer either orally or topically with a cream that you just rub in.
I cannot thank my lucky stars enough that I lost my health insurance and found Low Dose Naltrexone. If anybody else wants to try it, there is a Yahoo newsgroup with 7,000+ happy members who are willing to tell their stories too, and help in any way that they can. There is also lots of free info at http://www.LDNers.org and many other websites with tons of information and references.