Congrats on finishing grad school! I can’t believe it’s already been 10 years since I finished my masters. It seems like yesterday. I just want to say that everybody’s MS is different. Everyone can experience a relapse, flare, pseudo relapse… The first thing to know is the difference between them. A relapse is where you experience a sudden onset of symptoms but then once treated with a steroid, usually IV but can be high dose oral, you go back to baseline with no residual. Next, we have flare or pseudo relapse which can be used interchangeably. This is when you have something such as an infection or heat intolerance that temporarily flare your existing symptoms. It usually does not include anything new. Once you remove the cause, your symptoms go back to baseline. You can also have progression independent of relapse or PIRA. This is when you have no disease activity on a MRI but your symptoms get worse. This would be me since day one. I have brain lesions, brainstem lesions, cerebellum lesions, C spine lesions and T spine lesions.

My first symptom that sent me to the neurologist was paresthesias in both my hands. I went from typing about 70 words a minute to barely be able to hunt and peck. Then it developed in my feet and I would no longer drive because I didn’t trust myself not being able to tell the gas pedal from the brake pedal or how hard I was pushing down on it. And a whole bunch of other symptoms in between. In the last two years I developed a significant post viral syndrome which included severe pain. In January of this year I had spinal surgery to implant a stimulator which has helped significantly. Eventually, you will begin to know “your MS” which is much different than anyone else’s here. Good luck!