Welcome To The Zoo

Hi, My name is Tracy and I have MS {ahem, this is where you would all say "Hi Tracy" in your most somber AA voices...What? Nobody wants to play along? Fine.}



Well, I guess I'll try it again.

Hi, I'm Tracy. I have three kids who are insane monkeys most of the time. More often than not, I feel like the zoo keeper instead of the homemaker. No, seriously, I'm told they're great so that's good right? My oldest, who was probably the biggest surprise I've ever had in my entire life, will be 9 soon but she acts like a raging, pms-ing, 16 year old most of the time. My favorite thing that she says is "I want to be treated like an adult!" So I'll treat her like an adult and then she gets mad and stomps off to cry in her room. As I watch her go, I think "Gee, if only we could all choose when we want to be adults like she can."

My second child, also a girl, is 7. She was probably the second most biggest surprise of my life since my first baby wasn't even a year old yet when I found out she was on her way. She's an interesting kid. I'm pretty sure that she is a reincarnated 80 year old woman from Jersey who used to smoke a lot of Pall Malls. Actually, I'm pretty sure that Em has lived a lot of passed lives because there are times when she starts talking in a brittish accent, then suddenly she's southern sounding like Scarlett O'Hara. But the Jersey thing has lasted the longest. Plus, she always gives you the feeling that she's way smarter than you and she's just tolerating you until she can reach world domination.

Then there's the wee-man. My little two year old tazmanian devil. I swear, I thought I knew what I was doing with this whole mothering thing until I had a boy. Geesh. He never stops moving, what he can't climb, he eats, and he's more than happy to piss his sisters off. He also has times when he's cuddly and sweet. Usually he's sleeping during those times but they still count.

I'm not going to give you the long, detailed road of how I came to be diagnosed with MS. I'll just give you the important stuff and we'll build up from there.
Here's the low down. Around the age of 16 or so, I remember having a week when I had a horrible headache, a blind spot in my right eye, and it hurt just to move my eyes. I didn't really mention it to anyone and after a week it went away. Problem solved. I just assumed that I had taken some bad drugs or something. I know now that what I had was Optic Neuritis and that was probably my onset to MS.
Years went by, a marriage happened between myself and my wonderful husband, and lots of babies kept appearing out of nowhere (and by nowhere I mean my whooohaaaa!) and life went on.
Over the past ten years, I've had times when I was a little "extra clumsy" and I would trip over random things, like oh, say, air, but I always managed to explain these things away. It doesn't do for mother to get sick afterall.
Two years ago, after my son was born, I started having a lot of migraines. Like three to four crippling migraines a week. I had the blindspot, sensitivity to light, smell, noise, and people. I started seeking help from neurologists for these migraines and since none of them knew what to do with me but were to arrogant to admit it, they would just write me a prescription for some pill that would do nothing and then send me on my way.
About eight months ago, I had a migraine that was so bad I ended up in the E.R. The next day I followed up with my family doctor who was an elderly, smalltown doctor that I basically used for antibiotics. He said "Hey, you know, you've never had an MRI. We should maybe get one of those." So, I did.
Two hours after my first MRI, my family doctor called me to tell me that I needed to see a neurologist ASAP. That I had 19-20 lesions in the white matter of my brain, consistent with MS.
My life changed at that exact moment.
I do have another blog that I've had for about four years called Rambling Thoughts of The Neverending Mind but it's more of my funny, everything is peaches and cream and everyone is shitting snowcones kind of blog. I didn't want to weigh it down with MS stuff so I decided to start this one.
I'm hoping to find some people who also have MS. Right now I only have one person that I exchange emails with and I would really love to hear from more people, compare some notes, curse the illness, whatever hits our fancy.
So, Wecome to the Zoo!