In April of 1976, upon waking one morning, my upper back felt funny, kind of tingly. I asked my hubby to please scratch it. I could see his arm moving out of the corner of my eye but I could not feel him touching the upper half of my back.It was like a numbness had set in. We never thought much about it at the time.
Then after awhile I started being what we termed as *clumsy*.
I started dropping things.
When I would take dishes or glasses out of the cupboard, more often than not I would drop and break them. It seemed my hands would just let loose of things.

By December of 1976 I was experiencing a lot of numbness in my hands and up my arms to my elbows. Then came the double vision, so for the next year and a half I watched very little TV and I was unable to drive. I hadn't had many medical problems prior to all this, since my marriage to Dick so we didn't have a regular medical doctor.
Someone suggested that I see a neurologist as I had become pretty unstable on my feet at times and my legs and arms were really weak at other times.
My symptoms were never the same.

After seeing the neurologist several times she recommended that I have a myelogram to see if she could determine what the cause of my problems were.
I agreed as so many things were happening. I really felt at times, I must be losing my mind. I felt all this can't be real......But it was!

I was admitted to the hospital and told that after the myelogram I would have to lie flat for twenty four hrs. and then I could go home.
Well, what a surprise! During the proceedure I developed a major headache, the worst I have ever experienced. This myelogram proceedure was the old type, I found out later, where the spinal fluid is removed and dye inserted into the spinal column, while pictures are being taken all the while. When the filming is finished, the dye is to be removed and the spinal fluid is to be put back in.

Well, another surprise, I found out later they couldn't get the dye back out , for whatever reason.
Once the headache came on, I started sobbing with pain. After a couple gruff coments to me, I heard him reply to his assistants....."Just forget it and remove the needle."
I was put back on the guerney and wheeled back to my room. As we were going along the halls, the overhead lights made me cringe with pain. As soon as we got into my room I begged my hubby to shut the blinds as the light shining in, hurt my eyes and head so bad.

I was in the hospital for nine days and I was so very sick. I could not eat or drink and NO ONE would explain why. Every one acted like nothing happened and everyone acted like they didn't know what had happened to me. As the food carts were wheeled along in the hall, just the thought of eating would make me nauseated all over again. I wasn't able to tolerate fluids so taking pills was almost an impossibility.
Several of the nurses would tell Dick, well if she isn't going to eat, then you may as well eat it.
I honestly have never felt that sick before in my life and I felt as if I were going to die, but I also felt if I stayed in the hospital any longer I would die as no one was listening to me, or my husband.
At my insistance, they released me on the ninth day and I was so weak when I went to get up from the wheel chair to get in the car, I almost passed out. The nurse commented on it, but I pooh-poohed it off be- cause I just wanted to go home by that time, or I felt I would die there.

Upon arriving home, Dick called his sister who is a nurse and she was aghast at the amount of pain pills they had me on and none of them would work as I couldn,t keep them down long enough to work.
Dick had to go back to work on Monday, so we had my oldest daughter stay home from school and watch over me. Shortly after he left for work I tried to get up to go to the restroom and fell flat on the floor. I was too weak to move or get up. She called an ambulance and called Dick to come to the hospital immediately. When I was on the floor it felt like the whole world was spinning around and I couldn't make it stop.

Upon arriving at the hospital, (a different one), we had to explain all I had been through. The nurses tried frantically to get an IV running to get fluids going in me, without success. After seventeen tries, they got the emergency room doctor to come talk to me as he tried to get a vein that wouldn't roll or collapse. He was very calm and tried very hard to calm me. I was told later this doctor saved my life. He came to talk to me the next day and explained to me that I had, had a major allergic reaction to the myelogram dye and within twenty four hours more I would have died of dehydration.
Yes, God saved me, but this is only the "beginning"....it gets better.

While I am in the hospital, the myelogram results come back, so my neurologist comes in to see me with two nurses and another doctor, that I have never met before. She introduces him and he walks to the end of my bed and scrapes the full length of my foot with a pointed spoon handle and she walks around behind me as I am sitting in bed and pokes a large needle into the upper part of my back. I do not know this at the time as I cannot feel anything there. I discover it later as the blood trickles down over the lower back and I can feel something moving there. I think it is a fly or bug and as I feel back there my hand comes away bloody.

The reason for the spoon being scraped on the bottom of my foot was because while in the hospital this time my right leg was going numb and I had mentioned it...This was apparently their way of testing to see if what I was telling them was factual, or *all in my head*.
I think they knew as I never felt either proceedure ----the spoon or the needle.

After that, the neurologist proceeds to look kind of stern and says to me they have decided that I have multiple sclerosis. She explains that is why she has brought in a medical doctor as I will be needing one from now on. She then proceeds to explain that the myelogram showed there was a lot of myelin missing on the left side of my brain and also on my upper spinal column. Where the myelin is missing, it is replaced with patches of plaque. That is like patches of plaster. She goes on to explain when the brain sends a message to another part of my body, it travels along until it hits an area of plaque, then short circuits and then that is when everything goes haywire and I drop things or my legs don't work right., etc.

Click the button below to read the remainder of Dede's testimony in her own web site.

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