Multiple Sclerosis

Seven weeks or so ago Megan began experiencing numbness in her right arm. She began also to experience numbness in waist, right side and right leg and foot. A crappy doctor told her it was diet coke or a pinched nerve. A chiropractor began work to perhaps decompress a nerve in her cervical spine. My brother told us to put a stop to this until seeing a neurologist and having an MRI. At first the neurologist (Duke, Harvard and Emory trained) was doubtful, pre MRI, that Megan had MS, a possibility both my brother and he had mentioned, but wanted to be positive. But given the MRI results, the results of a nerve conductivity study, the symptoms paired with the location of the lesions on Megan's spine along with his experience diagnosing Multiple Sclerosis, this once-skeptical neurologist (and my brother whom I'd sent the MRI images) concluded with 95 percent certainty that Megan has symptoms and MRI results consistent with Multiple Sclerosis (Latin "many scars"). The good news is there were no lesions or plaques on her brain, no new lesions which means I suppose we caught it early. The bad news is she most likely has this degenerative disease. The good news is 55 percent of folk don't have a recurrence of symptoms. The bad news is we just don't know if things will go well or poorly.

Multiple Sclerosis is an auto immune disease. The immune system attacks the nervous system. No one knows why. I think this is correct. I'm still learning.

On Wednesday Megan will have a spinal tap (lumbar puncture is the euphemism) to rule out infection as a possible cause. Given no other explanation arises, she will begin interferon soon to reduce chances of further damage to the mielyn sheaths, the fatty substance insulating nerves as rubber does electrical cords. If we take our chances and wait for a second wave of problems to really solidify our already very solid evidence then we risk another (perhaps weakening) attack. The downside is interferon is lifelong, from what I understand, and is possibly very hard on the liver over the long term.

We need wisdom. We need your prayers. We need simply to treat this season of our lives as one purposed for sanctification and His Glory. How do we do Psalm 40? This is the chapter of scripture we've been teaching our children for about a year now for seasons when we must wait patiently in what I can only imagine was a disgusting pit impossible to escape without God. So we are in at least an inescapable, by our own power, pit.

And also how do I behave and pray and lead in this time? I don't want to lead out of fear but out of grace. I also don't want to lead out of or lean on my own understanding, but out of and on grace. I pray you'll pray for grace. Amazing grace in our lives.

Megan so nicely in a beautiful light moment commented on times in human lives where there's a turning, shift, of varying seismic proportions but of such great significance that one looks back at that point when life is changed forever. We have our life before MS. Now we have our life after MS. Now we find a new normal. Or perhaps the great shift is great fear up against God's healing in the face of medical analysis. Maybe it'll just all go away and we'll look back on this time as that in which God simply said "enough" and let our boat sail on through. He has great and perfect purposes. We'll see or maybe not but regardless may He be glorified, we sanctified and you alongside us, please, praying.