The Saga Begins (post 1)

I started writing a post for MS Awareness week, but as you can tell by it not now being MS Awareness Week, I didn't manage it. What I started writing was a post about how I got to where I am now with my MS, and as the post lengthened, I came to the conclusion that it might be better to break it up into parts. So here is part one of my journey with the Monster.

Date: March 2007

Age: 17

In my little cinquecento, on the way to work, minding my own business, and WHAM, all of a sudden I can see two copies of the same car in front of me. Double Vision. Great… I manage to get myself to work by aiming roughly in the middle of the two identical cars I could see. Admittedly, .looking back, I probably should have pulled over at that point, but I don’t think of sensible things like that at the time… By about lunch time, I decided that working when you have double vision is less than ideal. Every time I looked round to talk to someone behind me, I must have looked like I was stoned out of my tree. I was concentrating so hard on trying to determine which version of the person was real, I don’t think I was really paying much attention to what they were saying to me.

I went to see the doctor later that day, only to be told I had to see an optician before they would even think about helping me. I’d already worked out that, since the double vision came on so suddenly. But apparently that didn’t matter. I had to see an optician. Who told me I have astigmatism (which don’t *tend* to be diagnosed when you’re 17…). Queue lots of faffing over an almost negligible astigmatism for a few months… Luckily the double vision settled down after about a week and a half, so back to work I trundled, and on with life I went.

Of course, now I know that double vision (or diplopia) is quite a common symptom in MS. Ahhh, if only I'd known that sooner! The joys of hindsight...