This site is for all the men, women and children with MS.  It is our attempt to provide a site that can be easily accessed and provides helpful information for your life with MS
Nan Kupecki
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In the Beginning. . .
    My eyelid started drooping.  It was 1980, and a very stressful year - stress can be the harbinger of MS.  That was the first sign but I ignored it, after all I was stressed and it would go back up to a normal position.....wouldn't it?

     Three days after I began treatment for a kidney infection,  my right arm began to be paralyzed. The year, 1981

     In the evening my arm would feel as if a thin, sharp  "wire" were being tightened around my bicep.  The pain was excruciating. I would take a prescribed pain medication and go to bed.  Later I would learn this is called "banding'.  In the morning  I would awake to numbness and paralysis.  The first morning the paralysis was in my fingertips, every morning it would creep up to the next joint.  Knuckle to knuckle, then my wrist and onto my elbow.  Eventually to the exact point of the "wire", midway between my elbow and shoulder.

    Eventually my right arm was completely paralyzed.  Unable to move it I had to shift my car with my left arm and was unable to write, cut my food etc.  My family doctor explained if the paralysis went up higher than the point of the 'wire', the banding, I would have to be hospitalized as it could paralyze my lungs.  He said an Iron Lung could be in my future?  I was terrified.  He sent me to specialist after specialist.  Their diagnosis - Bells Palsy, Gullian-Barre' even Hysteria.  Who wouldn't be hysterical?  They recommended a spinal tap, biopsy etc.  My family Doctor, Dr. Thomas Miller, said in his humble opinion it was probably MS.  There were no definitive tests at the time, only spinal taps and biopsy etc.  He had seen people, in wheel chairs, who had MS take these painful tests and the results would be negative.  He recommended I wait until a decisive, less invasive test was developed for my diagnosis.  I will always be thankful to Dr. Miller for his calm reassurance and this advice.

      I moved to another state and had to leave Dr. Mille so I had to search, read & keep pestering before I finally got a doctor to thankfully, order the "new on the market" MRI.   I received a firm and a physically painless diagnosis of MS.  If you too are having unusual MS-like symptoms & feel you are not getting the correct diagnosis don't give up.

    In 1984, my eyelid had not returned to an open position - the eyelid had to be surgically repaired