Hi everyone!
Brief history for those unaware:
Bapperwife has Multiple Sclerosis (heretofore MS) and is in the midst of a significant relapse. The chief factor in this relapse is Optic Neuritis. MS is a disease where your immune system attacks your nervous sytem and Optic Neuritis is when the optic nerves are the ones being attacked. In most cases, vision is temporarily (up to half a year) affected. Bapperwife’s first Optic Neuritis left some minor permanent damage.
Current state:
I wanted to take a moment and update you on our situation. Bapperwife had a very bad weekend recently – all starting with a trip to the ER. Her doctor is concerned about the (unlikely) possibility of losing her sight. With this relapse being so bad, we are all afraid of anything bad happening. She already underwent a round of steroids – a 5-day infusion of steroids by IV and then steroid pills as she tapered off the steroids. She encountered steroid-induced psychosis and had to stop the tapering near the end. Her vision and pain had improved under the steroid infusion but were slowly worsening as she came off the infusion. By Friday of last week, it had become severe and her doctor’s office sent her to the ER. We were there 6 hours and ultimately wasted time – the Neurologist we finally talked to contradicted everything we have ever heard from other Neurologists, Opthamologists, Nurses, and our own research. He did confirm the diagnosis but didn’t do anything beyond that.
The weekend went badly overall but she began to improve on Tuesday (she was not good, just…better). Yesterday, Thursday, she started a new treatment for her MS. (Note: MS medicine is generally preventative – the goal is stop prevent future MS attacks, not to treat the existing.) Since her last medicine led to this severe relapse, she has been moved to a monthly infusion of an MS medicine. So for 3+ hours she went through the first treatment of this. It has left her very tired and nauseaus – we are waiting to see how long it takes to recover.
Through all of this, I’ve received tons of support – 1) aid with meals and care for kids from our Church and 2) encouragement and monetary support from the Geekly community. We finally completed a 15,000 medical debt from 2004 and have been treading water with newer medical bills. My recent kidney stones ate into our emergency savings and now everyting with Bapperwife has destroyed our savings and taken a bite out of our monthly budget. We had to do very minimal grocery shopping while we figured things out, I maxed out my credit card and had to increase my card limit so we could get by. One of my absolute best friends, Gwynn, has setup a GoFundMe and the Geekly community has contributed. We still cannot believe all that you Geeklies have done – over $2500 at the moment. I’ve been extremely emotionally drained so it’s hard for me to find the words I want to properly thank you Geeklies, but it’s amazing. My wife knows about Geekly and a few of my friends, but she did not expect this. I hated to ask for support because I did expect this – Geeklies always want to help – and didn’t want others to feel obligated to help. But…ultimately we needed it. We can pay off the bills we have received so far (we’re still waiting on a few) and can start setting aside money for next year’s bills (we always spend a lot on medical expenses, even without major relapses).
TLDR: Bapperwife’s MS got bad. It’s improving. Still not good, but better than it was.
Most importantly, to my dear Geeklies, I love you all. So much.
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