When I was 17 and it was my second or third time meeting with my neurologist, he was helping me understand what his part was in treating me and what all I needed to know might happen to me. One of the oddest things he told me though, was that when I got into a relationship and I thought it was getting serious enough, I was supposed to being them in with me for him to talk to them. Mostly so that I wouldn't have to explain MS and all the craziness for it. And that kind of shaped how I dated.
I was a super shallow and somewhat picky person. I even wrote up a boyfriend check list. None of them ever got to see it (my husband did after we had been married a year though), but there were a couple things I never wrote down but always had in my mind when dating someone. Those were, job, degree and (the biggest one I thought) health insurance. Most of my relationships only lasted a couple weeks because I was get bored, they didn't measure up to my list, didn't care to listen to me about my MS, or I had better things to do.
Enter the man I married. After dating guys that honestly didn't care... In some cases they thought MS wasn't a real thing. I was shocked when my future husband told me he looked it up and researched it. And we weren't even dating yet! So I played it cool, we were friends for a long time (mostly because I was on the west coast and he was about 2500 miles away).
I'll go off course for a minute here and talk about something I talked to one of my sisters-in-law about and somewhat came up with because I never asked my doctor. It's that a person with MS might have an attack after giving birth. And the fastest way to combat that is to go on chemotherapy. First I didn't even know if I could have kids with all my health issues and chemo just doesn't sound fun. So it kind of ruled kids out in my mind anyways.
So about 2 years after getting married, I had been around enough pregnant people that I finally asked my doctor if it was safe for me to have a baby. He said it should be fine since I hadn't had a major flare ups in years.
I was probably the dumbest pregnant lady you will ever hear about. Instead of listening to all the doctors and nurses and even mothers that every pregnancy is different, I only listened to one person. I figured she had kids, she knew what she was talking about and I'd have the same things happen to me.
Oh my gosh was I wrong! First of all, that whole morning sickness thing (that really doesn't only happen in the morning) didn't stop until that baby was literally out of me. Second, contractions hurt a lot worse than just bad menstrual cramps (even more so with back labor, which I had). Third, labor can (and did) last a lot long than a couple hours. Fourth, I really did want that epidural, and it does help. By the 8th hour of labor, I stopped answering my phone because I felt like I had been lied to.
Have you ever felt like everything you were saying wasn't coming out right and no one was understanding what exactly you're trying to say? Enter the anesthesiologist. I tried to tell him I was worried about having an attack after having the baby and the epidural masking it. He left for a couple hours and came back with some research on how epidural don't cause MS to do anything. I turned to my husband and my friend that was with us (who also has MS) to try and explain what I was trying to say. Long story short I happily got the epidural.
Odd thing that I need to put in here though, is that when I had my second baby, the research did show that in some cases, an epidural can cause an MS attack.
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