I have lesions on my brain ...

Well, actually I have one lesion and some hyper-intense foci and thus begins this particular blog ...

(Or to skip the long reading ahead, just click here to donate to the Multiple Sclerosis Society's Bike for a Cure)

On March 5, 2007, my 25th birthday, I presented to the emergency room with tingling throughout the entire right side of my body. It wasn't numb, just tingly. It felt like it does when your leg falls asleep and then it "wakes up," only for me, it was the entire right side of my body. It was really weird.

After a few tests (CTs, EKGs, and X-rays), I was sent home with the diagnosis of "anxiety" even though I told them that I was not feeling anxious or stressed. They told me to go home and rest.

So I did.

However, every six months or so I would go back to the doctor with the same complaints. The site of the tingling sensation

would change but it would always be the same thing -- tingling in strange parts of my body. Sometimes the tingling would be accompanied by a sensation of "heat" in strange places. For example, once it felt like it does when you stand too close to a fire -- you're not actually on fire but you can feel the extreme heat emanating from the fire. Then there was the time where it felt like there was ice water running through my veins. And, at random times it feels like there's popcorn "popping" underneath my skin. Fun, fun, fun!

Each and every time I would go to the doctor with these complaints, they'd send me home with the diagnosis of anxiety and tell me to go home and rest.

After awhile, I quit going to the doctor because there was nothing that they could do and they didn't seem to listen to me when I said, "I'M NOT ANXIOUS!"

Then one day, when I couldn't tolerate it anymore, I went to the doctor with the usual tingling, sensation of heat, and popcorn feeling but this time the entire left side of my face was tingling and I had this extremely loud ringing in my ears that had been going on for a week. The tingling was actually painful this time because it felt like someone was sticking me repeatedly with pins all over the left side of my face. Couple that with the fact that the sounds in my ear alternated from a loud ringing to static (like when there's no reception on the TV) and it was unbearable and intolerable. I refused to be told that it was just anxiety.

They finally ordered an MRI of my brain (that's actually my brain pictured left). That was in April of this year. And now we're back to the beginning of this blog ...

Lesions on the brain can be caused by many different things -- one of which is multiple sclerosis (MS).

The tricky part of MS is that it is a diagnosis of exclusion. What that means is that because no one knows what causes MS and so many other diseases can mimic MS, all other diseases and disorders must be ruled out. Additionally, to arrive at a diagnosis of MS, there has to be separation in time and space of symptoms and lesions.

Well ... after over 20 (not an exaggeration) tubes of blood were drawn from me and everything was ruled out -- from lupus to syphilis to rheumatoid conditions -- and a lumbar puncture came back inconclusive and two additional MRIs of my cervical and thoracic spine were done, and with nothing else to explain my symptoms and lesion, well ... you can guess ...

So ... that's why I decided to participate in this year's Bike MS event to raise money to not just find a cure but a cause and in future posts I'll write in more detail about treatments (or lack thereof) and my own personal journey.

But, with that being said, please help my cause by clicking here to donate and, if you really like me, forward/share this post to/with your friends. Or if you don't want to support this cause, please find a cause, any cause, to support.

I know we live in hard economic times but it's not so hard that you haven't spend five dollars somewhere on something that you didn't need ... or even particularly want ... or something that was bad for you ...

*shrug*

That is all.

-Kornika