The loss of myelin from the nerve sheaths, as in multiple sclerosis.
July 4, 2009, when the neurologist told me that it was most likely Multiple Sclerosis that had made my face go numb down one side I was, weirdly enough, numb.
I remember thinking ‘ahh well, that explains it’.
The really shitty part about that story is that it took almost a year to pass, literally to the day, thinking about it all the time, wondering if it would happen again, thinking every little ache, pain, stammer, forgotten word etc was caused by MS, before the medical fraternity could really clinically point at me and say, yep that’s what it is.
So I waited for a year before having more tests and finally they said just that. You’ve got MS. I don’t really feel any different. I certainly don’t look different.
And nothing else has gone numb since. I get tingly bits now and then, stumble around a bit, and have some pretty wild fatigue which is a bit of a drag, but I am determined that it isn’t going to pull me down.
So I finally drew a picture of it.
It was quite cathartic, and even though I think the picture is a bit crap, I think it accurately tells the story of how I feel about what is happening inside my brain because of this disease.
Lightning is trying to zap my brain and stop it from working properly!
So I have to inject stuff into my fatty bits (and there aren’t many of those) to repel the lightning and make it stop trying to zap my brain, and even if it does zap it, then at least the injection stuff (Betaferon) will stop the lightning from doing too much damage.
That is it in laymen’s terms anyway. The more technical explanation of demyelination is something like this: the destruction of myelin-the fatty sheath that surrounds and insulates nerve fibers in the central nervous system. See? Way more boring.
Here is a picture of me with the top of my head cut off so you can see it better. Bit like those monkeys they eat live, gross really.
Demyelination in action