"How did you find out?"

It's everyone's favorite question.

It was a 90 degree April afternoon when I started to get a pounding headache directly behind my left eye. The headache turned into a migraine, the migraine turned into physical eye pain, and the physical eye pain turned into horrible vision problems. A few doctors and MRI’s later, a neurologist confirmed that while I didn’t have any visible inflammation to suggest Optic Neuritis, there was a lesion on my brain that was suspicious. He suggested that if I was having any other symptoms it might be indicative of Multiple Sclerosis. At the time, I didn’t have any other "in your face" symptoms so I pushed off the idea that something was seriously wrong. I had a slight tingle in my back but it came and went in waves, and my eye had recovered by about 95% by being on steroids for a week. So, I did what most 22 year olds would do - I pretended that everything was fine and ended a rough month with a lot of alcohol.

I was able to mostly ignore the event with my eye until a few months later when the tingle in my back started to happen more frequently. WebMD told me that it was either cancer, MS, or a pinched nerve. I decided to side with the pinched nerve conclusion (because that’s what happens when you’re in denial about a serious disease). I started getting a little nervous about these symptoms, but instead of going to the doctor, I flew off to England to see my sister get married.

My body had obviously had enough of me not taking my symptoms seriously and decided to wage war on me. I was walking around Scotland one day when I kept thinking that my phone was vibrating. It happened about 15 times throughout the day before I realized that it wasn’t my phone vibrating, but my body. Every time I looked at the floor, my entire body would vibrate and tingle from the bottom of my neck, to my big toes. The vibration would wrap around my stomach, shoot towards my hands, and eventually make its way to my feet. I was absolutely terrified but tried to push it out of my mind until I got back to LA.

When I got back to LA, things got inevitably worse and my feet started to go numb every time I would walk more than 5 feet at a time. I remember telling one of my good friends about all of my symptoms and included a sarcastic comment about what might be going on. It took one look of sincere concern to finally convince me that my denial was unhealthy and I needed to get looked at.

The MRI showed multiple lesions on my brain, spine, neck, active and non active. And that was that. There was a certain helpless peace to finally getting diagnosed - I finally knew what was going on with my body and other small symptoms that I hadn't thought too much about suddenly made sense. It explained why at 23 years old, I felt like I had been hit by a truck each morning, why I would use my lunch breaks to take naps in my car even though I had gotten 10 hours of sleep the night before, and that it wasn't just sciatica that was making my leg and back spasm for the last few years.

Having MS is like being in a constant war with my body. There are days that it wins, there are days when I win, and the only way to overcome this disease is to never stop fighting. I've been in remission since February of this year (finally!) after loosing battle after battle for 2 years.

roaming around Scotland, probably looking down at the rocks confused about why I couldn't feel my feet