How It All Started: The Summer Everything Changed
I’ve sat down to write this post a dozen times. Looking back at 18-year-old me feels like looking at a completely different person—a teenager who had no idea how quickly a quiet, ordinary life could shift on its axis.
Back then, life was simple. I went to school, hung out with friends, and tried to figure out who I was. But even in the middle of a crowd, I always felt different from everyone else. I was clumsy, I walked noticeably slower than my peers, and I had a slight tremor that nobody could explain. People made fun of me for it, treating it like a quirk or a punchline. I didn’t have the words for it then, but looking back, my body was already dropping subtle hints that something wasn’t quite right.
Then came the day my vision changed.
It started with a slight blurring in my right eye. I didn’t panic; I figured it was nothing serious and that it would just clear up in a couple of days. Instead, day by day, it got worse. The world out of my right eye grew darker and cloudier. Realizing it wasn’t going away, I finally made an appointment with an eye doctor, fully expecting to walk out with a prescription for some eye drops or a pill that would fix everything in twenty-four hours.
That wasn’t what happened.
The eye doctor took one look at me and told me I had to go straight to the hospital. Not tomorrow—now.
I remember sitting outside the clinic, pulling out my phone, and typing a quick text to my best friend: “Why always me?” The doctor hadn’t given me a diagnosis, and he hadn’t told me what he suspected. He just sent me away with a sense of urgency that left my head spinning.
When I arrived at the emergency room, the whirlwind began. Hours turned into an endless sequence of tests, eye exams, and consultations. Eventually, I was transferred to the neurological department. I still had no idea what was waiting for me; the phrase “Multiple Sclerosis” wasn’t even on my radar.
They hooked me up to an infusion—which I later learned was a high-dose corticosteroid treatment—and told me to come back every day for five days. Still, no one told me what they were actually looking for. During those five days, they mentioned needing to perform a lumbar puncture (spinal tap). The only problem was that I had a trip to Tunisia booked. I asked the doctor if I could still go, and to my surprise, he gave me the green light. (Knowing what I know now, flying into a hot country on massive doses of corticosteroids was an awful decision, but back then, I just wanted my vacation.)
Before I left, they scheduled the MRI and the lumbar puncture.
After the MRI scans were completed, an assistant came out and told me the senior doctor wanted to talk to me in his office. My naive, 18-year-old brain actually thought: Oh, what nice service! You get your pictures and then a doctor takes the time to discuss them right away.
I walked into that office completely unprepared for what was coming.
He sat me down and was the very first person to say the words out loud: “It looks like MS.”
I had no idea what Multiple Sclerosis meant. I had no concept of what was coming next, how it worked, or what it would do to my future. I just nodded, took my papers, and went home.
The moment I got back to my room, I opened my computer and started researching. As I read through the symptoms, the prognoses, and the descriptions of the disease, a strong sense of denial kicked in. I shut the laptop and thought: No. I don’t have MS. This doctor is completely wrong. When I go back to see my main neurologist at the hospital, he’s going to tell me it was all a mistake.
I was so utterly convinced that this couldn’t be happening to me.
Looking back now, that denial was just my mind’s way of protecting me from a reality that was too heavy to absorb all at once. It took a long time to bridge the gap between the teenager who thought she just needed a quick prescription and the person writing this today.
In my next post, I’ll share what actually happened when I got back from that hot, chaotic trip to Tunisia—and how I finally had to face the diagnosis head-on.
Thank you for reading along as I piece this story together, chapter by chapter.
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