J Howell

I dunno, but for years I wondered why the small town I went to high school in had such a high rate of MS cases among people just slightly (3-5 years) younger than me, my brother included…and then I was diagnosed.

I always thought it was strange that one of the big 3 employers in town was the originator of aerosols, and their one remaining big…[Read more]

These aren’t symptoms I’ve had so far, though since I was diagnosed I haven’t had dental work or flown. I do need to schedule some dentistry, though…hopefully I won’t have any extra discomfort.

The “hot foot” I haven’t experienced since I was diagnosed, or recently, though I had something very similar off and on for a long tie years ago.…[Read more]

I’m all for it!

Ha! Yeah…I never had much skill rolling either, even back when I was a recreational connoisseur. I use a lovely glass pipe made by a friend who’s a talented glassblower.

I don’t mind the liquids I’ve tried thus far, but so far my experience has been that even the better ones weren’t as consistent as I’d like. Some bottles seemed very…[Read more]

One week of Gilenya down…so far, so good, though I can’t say that I notice much difference other than some stomach upset (that frankly might be a lingering side effect of Solumedrol a couple of weeks ago) one way or the other.

Hoping it will pump the brakes on new lesions and give my CNS some time without disease activity to recover. We’ll see.

Hahahahaha! Nice.

I have a few friends (and friends of friends, mostly) who do standup, and a few more who do stage comedy- usually drag shows built around things like the Golden Girls, etc. It takes a special kind of clever to be good enough to keep that sort of thing up for a month, much less thirty years. Bravo!

I’ve found CBD to be incredibly helpful! I’ve also found that all CBD products are not created equally. The ones that are good, though, are great! So far I’ve found that, averse though I am to smoking, the most effective CBD I’ve found has been cannabis with high CBD and no THC content smoked. It seems to work faster that way. Your mileage may…[Read more]

Interesting…I’ve not heard of Modafinil, but I’ll look into it. At the moment the real chore is ascertaining what is actual cognitive fog, and what is normal- aside from having MS become a “thing” recently, we’ve had a ton of other things going on in our household and at work as well, I find it difficult to get to bed early enough to get a…[Read more]

Thanks Nicholas! I’m a little anxious but keen to start tomorrow. “Cog fog” is one of the most worrisome aspects of MS for me already- I write for a living, so not being able to quite find the right word is a big problem for me! I’m already worried that I’m slipping sometimes, but my colleagues assure me that I’m worrying more than I should- so…[Read more]

Jono- I hope you’re doing well. How are things now?

Nicholas- what were the side effects you experienced with Gilenya that led you off it for a bit?

I was just diagnosed a few weeks ago and get my monitored first dose of Gilenya next Tuesday. I’m a little nervous about the whole heart rate drop thing, but my brother has done very well with it.…[Read more]

Hey there. I was just diagnosed about a month or so ago, but this exacerbation seems to have started in early July. The symptoms initially were some neuropathy-like numbness and tingling in my right hand.

Even though my brother was diagnosed with MS almost two decades ago, I wasn’t particularly fearful- I’ve had some issues related to…[Read more]