How having MS has changed my life and my famil

I am a 47 yo nurse who was diagnosed with MS in 1998. I was scared and wasn't sure how this would affect my life and my life's goals. I began taking medication right away, a drug called Avonex once a week by self intramuscular injection. The side effects were flulike symptoms for about 24 hrs after the shot. These side effects were easily managed by Tylenol. I took that drug for ten years and it really didn't significantly affect my life. My MS stayed relatively stable for the 10 years I took the drug and I thank God every night that I have no significant physical limitations. I now take a drug called Tysabri once a month by IV infusion, I get this right at my doctors office and have had no side effects at all, some may have heard about a serious side effect that can be caused by this medication called PML,
which is a type of brain infection similar to encephalitis. There is no treatment and no cure for PML so I think the decision to take this drug is very personal, and should not be taken lightly. There should be serious discussion with one's neurologist about the pros and cons, but I think in the end it is the patient's decision. In my case, I felt the pros outweighed the cons and decided to go on the medication. It is highly regulated by the FDA, and strict guidelines must be met. You can take no other immune suppressant medication while on this drug, but for me my MRI's have been stable if not improved.I think one of the biggest impacts this disease has had has been on my family. I stopped nursing and began collecting SSDI about 5 years ago and our financial situation has gone steadily downhill. I went through a long period of feeling guilty because I no longer worked and felt this was putting a hardship on my family. We almost lost our home to foreclosure, but luckily we were able to sell it before that happened. We moved to a very nice home in Milton, NH and our Mortgage payment has been cut in half. I truly love it here, its so peaceful and the people are more than friendly and helpful. I still feel guilty because of the fact that I can't help my 18 y/o son out financially and he's living on his own in MA. But we (my husband and I) have our own debts that we have to pay with only one income. In order to survive before we moved, we had to rely on credit cards, and now we are definetly paying the price for that. When I first stopped working I was obsessed with finding a way to make money from home, I tried many things and only ended up putting us further in debt because there are so many scams out there and they will take as much of your money as you will give them. I am now trying to settle our credit card debts with my disability check only, so that my husbands check will go towards the household bills, etc. After all I think thats only fair since I got us into this mess in the first place. Someday I hope to have all our debts paid off and not have to worry about that anymore. I would say that over these past 12 years I haven't had a day go by that I haven't been worried about money. My MS has actually taken second fiddle to our financial struggles. If I keep feeling fairly well I may try to work part time at an easy job just for the extra few dollars it would bring in. As I write this I am crying because I feel so bad about this situation and yet we are so much better off than alot of other people. See how much guilt has become a part of my life. I'm trying to work on that because I did not ask to get this disease and I think I have done what I have had to do to keep my family above water. I will continue to keep updating this blog because I think it's a good thing to write about all this and get it out of my system. Until next time, Trixiec1