So for those of you who don't know, my mom has been having some health issues lately. Towards the end of January, she suddenly was having major headaches which quickly turned into double vision. She couldn't drive, couldn't work, and really couldn't do much of anything. It came out of nowhere and happened very quickly. She saw numerous doctors and specialists and had dozens of tests done but everything came back normal and healthy. Normally that would be a great thing, but the double vision continued and just looking at her eye, you knew something was wrong. She wore an eye patch the majority of the time, and tried to keep busy, but I don't think any of us really knows how much we rely on our vision until its gone. She couldn't watch tv for too long, couldn't read, couldn't look at a computer screen, couldn't drive, couldn't crochet. She would do small tasks for short periods of time because when she wasn't in pain, she frankly was bored. She would garden and clean the house but that's pretty much all she could do.
After a couple weeks, her vision started to improve a bit and slowly she started doing a little bit more and after six weeks, even though her vision wasn't 100%, she went back to work. She was so excited the morning she woke up and finally could see with no double vision, which happened about a week after she went back to work. She still had the headaches, but with no answers from the test results, the doctors just gave her some pain meds and told her to keep down on the stress.
Unfortunately, about 3 weeks after she had gone back to work, she started to get the same weird feeling on the other side of her head that she had gotten when this whole thing started, and sure enough, within a week we were back where we started, this time on the other eye. Another round of tests and doctor visits brings us to about 2 weeks ago, when her primary doctor gave her the results of her MRI, MRA, and CAT scans. Everything showed up normal yet again. I know, I know, this should have been good news, but this eye looked even worse than the last one, so there was obviously something wrong! A phone call later, the doctor got the results from one more round of blood tests, this time from the neurologist. FINALLY, we had a diagnosis. Myasthenia Gravis. Yeah, we had never heard of it either. The doctor only told my mom that is is rare and he didn't know much about it other than it is a debilitating disease that affects the muscles, causing them to get weaker and weaker over time. Yeah, I know we wanted an answer to why this was happening and what it was, but it still came as a crushing blow. He said within a few years she would have trouble walking and swallowing food.
Over the past few weeks we have been researching the disease, waiting until we got the official diagnosis and more info from the neurologist herself. We obviously had a lot of questions especially after all the research we did. Her appointment was this morning and we found out she does NOT have Myasthenia Gravis....she has OCULAR Myasthenia Gravis. Basically there are two types, one that only affects the eye muscles and one that affects all muscle groups of the body. The vision problems are universal with the disease, no matter which type you have but the good news is, although she will probably have flare-ups where the double vision will continue to occur, it won't be affecting the rest of her body. Small miracle, but one I think the entire family, especially my mom, is grateful for today. There is no cure, but it is 100% treatable and she will be able to keep a lot of control over it.
Thanks everyone for all your thoughts and prayers. Its been an emotional few months but I'm thankful my mom can finally get back to enjoying her life. < 3
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