Author: mslabrat

Teetering on the Verge of TRAP (part 3 of Ms. Lab Rat’s Latest NIH adventure)

I didn’t jump into the TRAP trial eagerly.

When I first got a pamphlet from the National Institutes of Health advising me of my eligibility for a new study, I thought perhaps there’d been some mistake. This study was designed for people with progressive MS, the most serious form of multiple sclerosis, a most serious degenerative disease. That couldn’t apply to me. I was an MS success story. I was Ms. Lab Rat, the patient who had cleverly evaded a continued barrage of MS lesions by taking a fortuitous risk on an off-label drug. In over a decade of respite from new inflammation, neurologist after neurologist  told me I was doing everything right, told me I was doing great. None of them mentioned I was slipping into the progressive form of the disease.

And yet.

I myself had not been satisfied, had not felt I was doing everything I could to stop or slow the ongoing catastrophe that is MS. As much as I was grateful for the drug I was taking, I thought for sure that the drug had worked more efficiently when I first took it back in my late 30’s, when it was delivered off-label via IV infusion. The form of the drug that I later took for an NIH study, the form that eventually hit the market as Zinbryta, came in a little tiny vial, not a whopping big IV bag, and felt that much less miraculous. Sure, I was still avoiding MS relapses, but I was also no longer swimming for hours or taking long hikes. Or even short walks.

The cover of the NIH pamphlet asked, Is your MS progressing, in spite of treatments?

I wasn’t exactly sure.

Wouldn’t some neurologist have told me if my MS had become progressive?

One would think.

Would I have wanted them to?

Hell, no. Back in 2005, I fired a neurologist for telling me my MS was never going to get any better. Which started me on the search that led to Dr. Bielekova, who actually did make my MS get better, without ever making any promises that she could. She had prescribed the drug she was researching with great reluctance, because I’d been insistent. She’d warned me there was no guarantee of success. Yet it had been a success.

As I set the pamphlet down I saw Dr. Bielekova’s name was attached to the study. While I was still mostly in denial that the pamphlet could apply to me, I did have friends with progressive MS, friends who had lost their employment, much of their mobility, and in the worst case, much of their memory. Connecting them to an NIH study could give them access to some of the most nimble minds examining this insidious disease. I picked the pamphlet back up.

The trial proposed to measure the effects of four established medications, currently treatments for other diseases, to see if they could ameliorate the effects of MS. The drug that had changed the course of my disease had originally been used to keep the immune systems of organ transplant patients from attacking the transplanted organ; Dr. Bielekova had guessed that perhaps it could likewise be used to keep the immune systems of MS patients from self-attack. Clinical trial patients like me had helped to prove her theory correct. Apparently she was looking to repeat this success.

The pamphlet didn’t make any claims of how any of these four drugs might potentially help a person with MS. Instead, it went into detail about potential side effects. Which was all very above board. But not very tempting.

Furthermore, the timing of the pamphlet was off.

The pamphlet arrived in the spring, a time of hope. I had just enrolled in a clinical trial examining the effect of diet on MS. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if a teaspoon of cod-liver here, a sprig of seaweed there, would be all it took to fix me? I could only do one trial at a time. Why not stick with the wholesome one? The one without potential side effects.

When I called the number on the pamphlet, I disclosed my participation in the diet trial right away. I explained I was asking… for a friend. The doctor I spoke with was unfamiliar to me, but warm and sympathetic. She urged me to let the NIH pay to fly me out anyway, just to keep  updated on my progress with Zinbryta. I had nothing to lose beyond a wee bit of spinal fluid, which I would easily replenish. If there were signs of progression, I would qualify for the study. If it turned out I wasn’t progressing, well, that would be good information to have.

And that was how I’d wound up back at the NIH late last June for a spinal tap.

The results came in during the July 4 holidays. I got a voice mail message that I did indeed qualify for the study. The unspoken implication was clear. I could consider myself as having progressive MS. My calls to the clinic went unreturned. I blamed the holiday. Then summer vacations.

I didn’t want to admit to myself that I was devastated. I decided to look on the bright side. While the Swank Diet I was on for my current clinical trial wasn’t yet working any wonders, maybe its competitor, the Wahls Diet, would do the trick.  And if neither diet reversed my symptoms, at least there would be TRAP to turn to. If only someone from the clinic would return my calls.

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TRAP (part 2 of Ms. Lab Rat’s Latest NIH adventure)

The vast lobby of Building 10 of the NIH was nearly vacant of the usual international mix of medical professionals and imperiled pilgrims, yet it felt cluttered. This majestic bastion of scientific research had been stuffed with numbered tables bearing garish gingerbread houses, presumably made by the in-patients and staff. It looked like a pop-up church raffle. I glanced past the hapless man marooned at the Welcome Desk and noted that the coffee shop was now barricaded by scaffolding. The scent of coffee had been replaced with insidious notes of powdered white sugar. I wondered if perhaps my system of always accepting the first appointment of a given span of available dates would finally let me down. We were three days out from Christmas. The speculation on the van was that the leading physicians would still be on vacation. I didn’t buy into that. I expected to see leading physicians. Then again, I’d also expected coffee.

I ducked into the area on my right to fill out the paperwork for meal reimbursements. Over the years, the reimbursement office has retained the right to perpetuate various iterations of needlessly awkward exchanges. The first few years I’d gone there, the cashier’s desk was an inch or two too deep for the cashier to actually reach the exchange window to grasp a lab rat’s ID or to pass a lab rat some cash. It added a bit of tension, a bit of comedy, to every exchange. After a few years of these capers, the cashier figured out she could use a pincer device to bridge the troublesome gap. Her victory was short lived. By my next visit, the entire office was moved. By the visit after, the “short-armed” cashier was gone.

The tradition of inventive obstructions was still in full force, I noticed. There was a sign in front of the office that receives reimbursement forms which instructed all form fillers to stand at a certain distance in front of the glass door, and further warned that those who did not stand would not be seen. In other words, Wheelchair Users, Begone.

Furthermore, the very layout of the office was designed to prevent eye contact, even with compliantly standing non-wheelchair users. The L-shaped desk for the sole employee in the office was set back and to the side of the glass door. The computer was placed along a wall at a ninety degree angle from the door, so that the occupant of the office effectively had her back to the door every time she looked at her computer. Once again, the office had been created to make it structurally impossible for the employee to do her job effectively.

I wish I could say this office is an anomaly in the NIH. It is not. There are doors in the MS clinic without wheelchair accommodation. If that’s the NIH plan to stop MS progression…it isn’t working yet.

The only other pilgrim there was a man sprawled out on a chair. Had he been conscious, I would have asked him if he needed me to signal to the functionary behind the glass door. Instead, I waited for the functionary to complete her personal phone call, then check her computer screen, then finally swivel somewhat to notice me standing the appropriate distance from the glass door, like a good wheelchair-free pilgrim.

She waved me in.

I used to feel unworthy of meal reimbursements. But that was before the drug the NIH tested on me came out on the market, and my monthly deliveries came with an invoice of seven thousand four hundred and something dollars per month.

I handed in my clipboard, feeling entitled to every last penny, darn it, and headed for my appointment at Phlebotomy.

The acronym for this new study? TRAP.

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Addicted to Trials (Part 1 of Ms. Lab Rat’s Latest NIH Adventure)

My name is Ms. Lab Rat. I have multiple sclerosis. I am addicted to clinical trials.

It had been 32 days since I’d finished my last clinical trial in Iowa City when I slipped out of a white van on a cold December morning and surrendered my coat and my purse to the jocular security crew at The National Institutes of Health in Baltimore, Maryland. When asked by a cheerful ex-navy, “Have you been here before?” I had to smile back. I’m terrible with numbers, but by my feeble estimation, I’d been to the NIH 44 times before: once a month for three years during the trial for Zinbryta, once every six months for the three years it took for the FDA to approve Zinbryta, plus twice for initial trial visits. Gentle reader, chances are your brain is less riddled with lesions than mine. You do the math. Numbers aside, I think we can all agree; I’ve been a regular.

Back when I started the Zinbryta trial, when the drug was still fairly new to me, my life had been much more limited by my disease. I was a regular at my drug store, a regular at the places I volunteered. No one paid me to hang around. Zinbryta stopped the raging inflammation that had peppered my brain with lesions. My relapsing remitting multiple sclerosis stopped feeling so…unremitting. And gradually, I was able to get small but super-meaningful jobs. First I was hired to host creative writing sessions with a uniquely brilliant group living at an upscale assisted living center. I am in awe of the supportive creative community we have maintained. Then I was hired to teach writing classes to radical, relentless, radiant young artists at a celebrated arts college downtown. The younger generation fills me with hope for a more just, more equitable, more dazzling future. Through the years, I have maintained the same prolific community writing workshop. We all publish. Some of us publish quite a lot. Zinbryta has allowed me to expand my identity beyond MS patient, to teacher. When the security guard handed me my one-day NIH ID, you’d better believe I thanked her.

I hopped back into the white van with a couple from Georgia. The husband had spent the trip describing the career he’d had to abandon. “I want to get back to work, do what I can from a wheelchair. But first I’ve got to get this cancer under control.”

I could relate to his frustration. I could relate to his hope. Zinbryta has helped rein in my MS. It’s been necessary. But it hasn’t been sufficient. When we reached good old Building 10, I hopped out of the van. I was eager to get my MS under control.

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Disclaimer

Gentle Reader,

Never forget that this blogger’s brain has shrunk to the size of a side dish of cauliflower. Lectorum admonere potent. Or, Reader, be warned. (Don’t feel insecure, bigger brained one, if you didn’t know the Latin. I didn’t, either, I had to look it up.)

 

 

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I got Swanked. Then I Wahled. Now I’m Galled.
			


			

			
		

	
	
	

			
 


When I started the trial to determine which diet was better for people with MS—Walhls or Swank—I’d promised the good people at the University of Iowa that I would not reveal which MS Diet I’d been assigned to until my participation in their clinical trial had ended. My contribution to trial has been completed. Drumroll, please.


I’d been assigned to the Swank Diet. For 36 weeks, I wrote a record of every morsel of food that passed through my lips. I ate no red meat, no avocado, no coconut in any form. No fats exceeding four teaspoons a day. I ate at least two servings of fruits and two of vegetables a day, as well as a minimum of four ounces of low fat protein, such as chicken breast. I drank no sodas, ate no sugars, no transfats, no deep fried food (OK, I cheated once and ate one half of the best falafel ball of my life.) I took the assigned five supplements: 1 tsp Carlson’s unsweetened cod liver oil, 5000 IU Vitamin D3, 1000mcg Methyl B12, 1000mcg Methyl Folate, and a Nature Made Multivitamin for Him 50+ ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.


I was to drink either skim milk (yech) or some milk substitute every day. After trying soy milk, then rejecting it based on scary stuff I read online, I moved on to rice milk, which I then rejected after reading more scary stuff online. I then turned to nut milks, which were a) yum and b) a little fatty…but by that time I’d lost more weight than the study wanted, so I’d hoped that would make drinking nut milk OK. I turned to the study nutritionist, who is supposed to help… but oddly enough, she deferred answering my nutrition questions until she’d checked with her boss, Dr. Wahls, who then expressly forbade her to guide me. Which led me to suspect… nothing nice. Dr. Wahls has a vested interest in the subjects given the Wahls Diet to succeed, and the Swank subjects to do poorly. Which is why I think it undermines the legitmacy of this very crucial study to have her at the helm. Well, Dr. Wahls, I did poorly.  Dr. Wahls calls those who follow her diet Wahls Warriors.  I guess I’ll consider myself a Wahls Martyr.


On my last study visit, the nutritionist asked me what advise I would give myself if I were just starting the study. I responded immediately. From my gut. I said, “Don’t do it.”


Aside from keeping track of what I ate every day, I had to keep track of my energy levels and my pain levels every day. My energy levels had gotten lower over the course of the study, and my pain levels remained fairly high.  The Swank Diet wasn’t right for me. It might have been a real improvement for another person with MS, someone who perhaps had weight to lose or had genuinely unhealthy habits to unlearn. But through thirty six weeks of deprivation of healthy fats, I’ve come to appreciate healthy fats all the more.


My first meal as a free woman was an avocado. I let bygones be bygones, and jumped right in to the Wahls Diet, diving right past level one to level 2/3. Thanksgiving came and went, and I ate (and abstained) as a Wahls Warrior should. Turkey? Yes! Organ meat? Yes! Good fats? Hell, yes. Neapolitan pizza and cannoli from New Haven’s renowned Wooster Street? No, thank you.


Was it worth it? It seemed like it. My energy level rose immediately. My pain level went down. I thought, This is the beginning of the rest of my life.


My new life lasted… ten days. The evening of Day Eleven, I got a fever. My side ached. Had I pulled a muscle in the gym? My whole body went cold. My fever worsened. I shivered. I called my primary care doctor the next morning. By the time I went in to see her, my fever was down. My side was still tender. Turned out, my white blood cell count was scary high.  My gallbladder scanned very clearly… and all they saw were some polyps.  My white blood cell count has since normalized, so I’ve opted for a wait-and-see approach instead of further scans. What did this incident mean? There are no clear answers yet. My gallbladder is still tender. My doctor has advised me to stay away from fats.


So for now, I’m on Wahls without the fun…I mean, the fat. Which is basically Swank plus organ meats plus seaweed. And no, I’m not chanting to myself, This is the beginning of the rest of my life. Though technically, it is.


Eat well, folks. Whatever that means for you. Stay healthy!




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Balance of Superpowers
			


			

			
		

	
	
	

			
Yesterday, my MS flared up out of nowhere.  That’s how I saw it, anyway, when out of the blue my legs just sank from beneath me. What an insult! I kept saying,”This is so surprising.”


My husband was unflappable. Finally he said, “This is not a surprise. You have MS.”


You would think, twenty three years after the diagnosis,  I wouldn’t need to be told I have multiple sclerosis. But it does still surprise me. I haven’t had my legs drop out from beneath me in months. I’d kind of hoped maybe that symptom would remain in the past.


While I depend utterly on my husband’s acceptance of my MS, I depend equally on my own stubborn denial to ensure I live my fullest life. Denial may be my greatest superpower. Acceptance may be his.




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It’s a Small World
			


	
	
	

			
refugeedimer


While at the refugee potluck, my husband and I met two guys from the Congo who like to play soccer. One Syrian mom and all six of her children. A Cincinnati lady who specializes in refugee stress reduction through drumming and art. A professor who happened to have taught at Macalester College, our alma mater. “Small world,” we said. Two young doctors in town for a conference on pediatric medicine, from Toronto and Long Island, respectively, who had wound up here by searching the net to see what cool things Cincinnatians might do on a Thursday night. Turns out, the doctors specialized in  auto-immune disease in children. When I mentioned I had MS, the Long Island doc told me her best friend was newly diagnosed with the disease. “Small world.”


For years when I’d meet someone who told me they had a loved one with MS,  I used to ask, “How is your best friend/uncle/brother/mother doing?” I don’t know why it took me  a long time to realize that I would never get an uplifting answer to this question. But it did, it took me years to stop expecting something more hopeful than,  “pretty bad, worse than you, confined to bed, dead.”


Recently I’ve started trying out a new go-to answer. I’ve learned say, super solemnly, “I am so sorry.” And damn, not one person yet has said, “Oh, it’s not that bad.”


The young doc said her friend was doing everything right: diet, exercise, meditation. And her friend was pretty depressed. No matter how virtuous she was, the MS did not go away. I might have said what I always want to hear, “Oh, I’ve had MS for over twenty five years, and I’ve managed. It’s not that bad.” But underneath, I had to agree. I, too, was doing everything right, I had love, good food, swimming, pilates, yoga. And I too, was frustrated that my MS has not gone away. MS is bad. It’s just bad. I didn’t give the doc my card, or tell her about my blog. I didn’t feel like I had any super inspirational advice for her friend.


And yet. We were sitting in this vast room, full of happy people of all ages, from all over the world, who were here because of an idea I’d had. And that’s all  I had contributed—an idea (plus a tub of broiled vegetables plus a salad)—the Clifton Cultural Arts Center and Catholic Charities, and every single person in that room, had done all the rest. We followed the very easy tried and true guidelines set up by refugeeswelcometodinner.com. Anyone can follow them. Even a person who still can’t mangage to outsmart MS.  You, too, can gather a bunch of random people together, and find you share the same pleasures. And the same struggles. It’s a small world.




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Community Potluck
			


	
	
	

			
A few months back, my family and I were eating really crazy delicious food at a local café. When we learned the cook was a Syrian refugee, I wanted to know more about her story, starting with: how did you make this food taste so good.? I started to wonder what it must be like to be a refugee, and then I started to wonder why there are so few opportunities to really get to know my neighbors. So I turned to my local Cultural Arts Center, and asked them if they wanted to do something cultural. We checked out the Refugees Welcome to Dinner Project. Clifton Cultural Arts Center took it from there.


Clifton Cultural Arts Center will be holding a free potuck dinner for members of our community, old and new (and middle-aged like me)  from 6-8 pm on October 19. I am so glad we will all get the opportunity to share a meal together.


And yes, my contribution to the potluck will align with my MS Diet. No cheating!




			

			

				
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What Would Lisa Do?
			


			

			
		

	
	
	

			
When I enrolled in a study comparing the efficacy of the Wahls Diet to the Swank Diet in reducing fatigue in MS patients, I agreed to the following:


Item 1: I would hold off on any food not on my randomly assigned diet, while documenting every meal and morsel that passed through my lips. (And every bowel movement that passed elsewhere. Note how I choose to modestly tuck this admission into parenthesis, as though to hide it.)


Item 2: I would hold off on making any changes beyond the diet: no new exercise routines, no new medications, no new supplements. (This element worried me from the start. To have multiple sclerosis is to be on constant alert as to what works, and what hurts, and to adjust accordingly.)


Item 3: I would hold off on writing about the study until after my participation was complete. (I was told: “You can still take notes.” This riled me. How dare anyone presume I would grant them the power to prevent my taking notes? Still, I’ve held off on blogging about the study. Until now.)


As the study continued, I’ve been ceaselessly repeating my end date to myself like a convict scratching out roman numerals on a cell wall: November 14, November 14, X1 X1V.


It’s not that I’ve been worried about my ability to stick with an MS diet. I have all the motivation imaginable: I have zero desire to feed the disease that has riddled me with suffering.


At this very moment, I am sitting in a lovely urban café with my gorgeous husband, pristine sunlight streaming through the floor to ceiling windows, mellow trumpet streaming through overheard snippets of conversation about…a study on epilepsy (disease is ever present in our culture.) My husband’s almond croissant looks esthetically appealing, but it does not spark my appetite. It might as well be a croissant in an oil painting.


It occurs to me that growing up poor may have primed my willpower. I have always divided the temptations of this world into that which I can afford, and that which I cannot. As I have always been able to afford library books, hugs, conversation, trees, and sky, I have never felt privation while all sorts of shiny things— luxury cars, diamonds—sparkle out of focus as they pass me by. To be on an MS diet is to acknowledge that I cannot afford an almond croissant. But as it happens, I haven’t felt privation. I have a neighborhood grocery store around the corner full of fresh, healthy food—and a husband who is an amazing cook, capable of spinning delicious meals out of any assortment of options. (I’m a capable cook, myself. Just not a brilliant one, like he is.) Holding off food outside the diet has not been difficult; it’s been like holding off on invitations to disease. Easy scheamsy.


So much for Item 1.


I had thought, (too optimistically, in retrospect) that because I have an iron will, because I would follow any MS diet I was given to the letter, I would be rewarded with a respite from disease. This has not been the case. I’m not saying the sacrifices I’ve made in my diet have not been necessary—I believe they are. I am saying they have not been sufficient. The fact is, my diet before the study wasn’t all that different. Or at any rate, not different enough for me to experience any last life changes.


While an MRI I got from the NIH this spring did not reveal any new lesions…I was informed by voicemail that the game has changed. I am no longer being categorized as relapsing/remitting, but as secondary progressive. The damage in this phase of the disease process is more subtle that any lesion glowing on an MRI. But I can feel it.


Adhering to Item 2—holding off on changes to exercise, medication, and supplements—has meant continuing to allow my condition to further degenerate. And yet…I held off on any changes, as agreed, for weeks and weeks and weeks. I continued to make my healthy food choices. I filled in the bubbles in my diet record. I swallowed my assigned supplements. And I ceaselessly reminded myself I would be free to try something new on November 14, November 14, X1 1V.


All the while, there has been this one supplement I’ve been drawn to in particular: Biotin. There had been a promising study in France, which showed 300MG of Biotin daily had reversed symptoms in people with progressive forms of MS. Since starting the diet study, I’d joined an online group of people following the diet to which I was assigned. Many of them had started taking 300MG Biotin, and their first-hand reports of symptom reversal kept showing up on my feed. In my mind, Biotin was becoming something I could not afford—to be without. I mentioned this at my neurology appointment last week, and was in shock when the vivacious newcomer to my healthcare team handed me a prescription. Hadn’t she heard I couldn’t take a new medication until November? Maybe she thought—maybe I should think—I could not afford to wait.


In retrospect, my continued indecision seems almost comical. I talked to my husband. I talked to my mother. I texted a sister. I felt it would be wrong to drop out of the study. The investigators had invested so much. I’d invested so much. Over the years, participating in clinical trials has become my identity. Or one of my identities. I was Ms. Lab Rat, wasn’t I? Who was Ms. Lab Rat to jump out of the maze?


But losing my alter-ego was the least of my concerns—my health was at stake. My health had to take priority. Which was why I’d become a Lab Rat in the first place.


One of my interlocutors suggested that I just take the 300MG Biotin, and not report it. That would be easy enough. I’d learned, through the Biotin grapevine, that if one held off ten days before bloodwork, the supplement would not be detected. This option did not appeal to me. What was the point of doing any study if it didn’t give real people with real MS real answers? If I didn’t report honestly, I’d be negating all the work I had done so far. The study would be worth nothing.


A friend of mine tells me that, when faced with a difficult decision, she asks herself, What Would Lisa Do?


I tried to imagine myself as the sage friend she sees in me. I asked myself, if our situations were reversed, what council I would give her? What Would Lisa Do?


Lisa wouldn’t hesitate to tell her to drop the study and do whatever she thought she needed to do to take care of herself.


But did I drop the study? Not so fast. I wondered if there was maybe a way I could stay in the study and take care of myself. One of the advertised perks of being in the study is that you have access to a dietician. I emailed the dietition, asking for a pep talk. “This diet is not working for me.”


It wasn’t just the diet that wasn’t working. Zinbryta, the drug that radically improved my quality of life for over ten years, now seemed to be responsible for my having a decreased ability to heal. (I have had the same skinned knee for four and a half months. It’s kind of eerie.)


I wrote, “I need to get more assertive in my treatment, and just can’t wait until November 11 … To stay in place is to decline, and I just can’t continue to harm myself in this way.”


Since the dietician has had access to my food records, I was hoping she might be able to detect some tactical error I’d been making, and would write back with a suggestion of some simple dietary change I could make that would change everything. Something like: replace soymilk with cashew milk and you will live healthily ever after.


That didn’t happen.


So when the dietician called on Friday, I announced, “It’s with a heavy heart that I have to give up this study. I’ve been given a prescription for high dose Biotin, and I’ve decided it wouldn’t be right to delay getting it filled.”


Unbeknownst to me, my announcement contained a magic word.


“Prescription.”


If I’d been paying more attention to our agreement, I would have remembered that the study does allows one to make modifications to medications or supplements…prescribed by a physician.


I could, in fact, take my Biotin and continue on the study diet, too.


Back when I was discussing my conundrum with my mother, she’d said, “You are just like me. You care too much about pleasing other people and about being a good girl.”


Then there had been a long pause. We both knew, from a lifetime of experience, that I have never cared a whit about being pleasing other people or about being a good girl.


Here’s the latest proof: in writing this blog post, I have violated Item 3. I have not held off on writing about the diet study.


And now, I am excited to announce that I am launching my own study. On my own terms. I will try out 300 MG Biotin per day. And I will write about it as much as I please.


 




			

			

				
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Doctor’s Note
			


	
	
	

			
catncouchMy doctor’s notes of yore were full of warmth, “Thank you for sending me your delightful patient…”


Earlier this week, I caught a glance of a recent doctor’s note from the NIH: “The patient is normal in behavior and appearance.”


What’s changed about this patient in the past twenty years?


I have come to consider even weak praise a win.


My sister recently described my MS as “a slow motion hurricane.” I am still waiting for my CNN interview.


Meanwhile, Hurricane Irma wends her inexorable way North. She has leveled an island I’ve never heard of…not Bermuda but another island with a name beginning with a B. By the time Irma reaches Cincinnati, she will have spent the bulk of her wrath on leveling Miami, and will toss us a mere drizzle. Again, no CNN interview!


My husband and I are in full drizzle-preparedness mode. This morning, I shampooed with Living Proof’s humidity shield shampoo, conditioned my hair with Living Proof humidity shield conditioner, and sprayed my hair with Living Proof humidity shield hair spray. My husband’s water resistant LLBean Duck Boots and my school bus yellow waterproof Converses are at the ready, should the impending drizzle accumulate on the Cincinnati sidewalks. Sadly, our pets are wearing personalized LLBean pet collars with my name and contact information, minimizing the chance of their becoming displaced. My husband has checked the gasoline levels in our Honda Civic, in case we must flee the incoming Floridians. Our Civic has half a tank. As our Civic is a Hybrid, that should be sufficient.


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